Dr. Jason Dou presents a short vlog announcing a new Harvard seminar, "Theorizing Digital Capitalism" (Fall 2024). The video summarizes the course's focus on the historical co-evolution of computation and capitalism and contemporary debates (platforms, AI, automation, code-as-law), and the speaker reflects on the class's relevance for entrepreneurship and his intent to possibly audit it.
Hello everyone, I'm Dr. Jason do today I want to share with you guys A new class is opening at Harvard University in fall 2024. Called Theorizing Digital Capitalism, it talks about the interplay between capitalism and computation. Here's what its introduction talk about it has become commonplace to observe that we live in a digital society, but what are its laws of motion? Do they vary from place to place? And what role do specific technologies play in mediating them? Since at least the 19th century, computation and capitalism have co evolved with each other in many respects. Computers have served the interest of capital by creating new modes of of accumulation and means of automating, managing and outsourcing labor, as well as new tools for researching advertising tool and transacting with customers. However, computers has also been described as fundamentally changing or even overcoming capitalism, both for better and for worse. Theorists have credited to computer with eliminating work or turn it into play and transforming marketing exchange into gift exchanges. Contemporary platform and artificial intelligence inspire dreams of fully automated luxury, communism and fears that law and contracts are being replaced by code and new colonial and new for the form of coercion origins. So in this seminar will engage with an outpouring of recent scholarships that tend to describe and theorizing digital capitalism and culture. So why I found this class is very interesting because my background is in computer science study like build some computational thinking sdai but this class offer a social science a humanity perspective of computing and try to explore the interplay between computation and and capitalism. So really how this I think this will be very enlightening for our entrepreneurship journey because doing entrepreneurship is really thinking about how to commercialize technology, especially from our perspective. I really looking forward to interact with this professor and possibly audit this class. So this is what all I want to share in this video. If you are interested in feel free to like it, tweet it and share with other friends. Thank you so much.
