The Condition of Digitality: A New Perspective on Time and Space

Chapter Four argues that the condition of digitality is not an ideology of time and space but a reality. Three elements are salient here: first is the category-shift in the technological basis of modernity. The analogue-to-digital turn is the ‘mutation’ aspect is developed by the author together with its reificatory effects upon the human relationship with technology, production and nature. Second is the effects of digitality upon global capitalism: what exactly is capitalism in the age of digitality, when information is a major creator of value? Wolfgang Streeck imagines that capitalism (as neoliberalism) is devouring itself, but with no viable ideological alternative, nor political constituency to replace it. Thirdly the effects of digitality upon liberal democracy are discussed, a social relation that emerged and developed in the context of modernity’s institutions and which has been based upon print culture and nation-states. These institutions still exist but can the time-space contexts of analogue institutions properly function in the dominating context of digitality? If so, how might this happen? If not, then what can replace them?