"For the past six years, every Black Friday that made-up carnival of consumption Amazon workers and their allies have mobilised across the world in coordinated strikes and protests. At first glance, these disputes look like the standard struggle between a giant capitalist employer and the people who keep it running. But Amazon is no ordinary corporation. It is the clearest expression of what I call technofeudalism: a new economic order in which platforms behave like lords owning the fiefs that have replaced markets."
"altogether. They own the digital infrastructure that everyone else must use to trade, work, communicate and live. Amazon sits at the apex of this new order because it owns the cloud computing platform Amazon Web Services (AWS) upon which other technological firms, such as Uber, rely, but also large parts of banking, healthcare, logistics, public administration, media and education sectors."
Amazon represents technofeudalism, a new economic order where platforms act like lords controlling digital fiefs that replace markets. The company owns critical digital infrastructure, notably Amazon Web Services (AWS), which hosts other firms across sectors such as ride-hailing, banking, healthcare, logistics, public administration, media and education. Embedding businesses in AWS creates prohibitive switching costs, turning firms into vassals and transferring customer data to Amazon. Amazon vertically integrates logistics, cloud services, data extraction and algorithmic command. Inside warehouses, workers face minute-by-minute surveillance via scanners and devices while algorithms monitor pace, productivity and behaviour, producing concrete forms of technofeudal domination.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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