The Network Spectacle [chapter]

2018 Social Capital Online: Alienation and Accumulation  
Networks of promotion/control slide imperceptibly into networks of surveillance/disinformation. Guy Debord (1988, 74). This chapter takes up the issue of whether more of us are being caught up in a kind of network spectacle whereby all that is digitally networked must, by definition, be good -including social life. Moreover, online social capital becomes a kind of lure to entice more participation, where obtaining signs of approbation through social buttons and incremental increases is built
more » ... o the platform as a means of perpetuating this spectacle. To carry this out, it will be important to explore the nature of the spectacle as theorised by Guy Debord, applying this to the digitally networked world that he might not have foreseen. In having focused on the theories of Marx and Veblen regarding alienation, it is time to complete this book's 'triad' by including Debord's often prescient -and sometimes gnomic or oracular -statements on technology and alienation as it pertains to online social capital. The goal will be to discuss the movement from the notion of the spectacle and simulacrum to that of the social algorithm, and in this way provide more of a 'meta' understanding of the implications of online social capital as it operates on platforms powered by networks and the 'digital sublime. ' Neoliberal capitalism, having made technological innovation its exclusive instrument, develops more effective ways of perfecting social separation. This, combined with the perversion of cybernetics and the compression of both time and space in digital environments, gives the illusion of connective immediacy and proximity. However, despite the collapse of spatial distances and the ease by which connections can be made speedily in larger quantities, the social ties may be weak and contingent upon mediating through the devices sold by capital. More than simply neutral devices, the devices themselves exist in a
doi:10.16997/book16.g fatcat:ob63ignkuffovnngwkbrmvazfu