Page 113 - Carbon Capitalism and Communication Confronting Climate Crisis

100 V. MOSCO

friction-free capitalism and the Singularity. We are just beginning to see
some discussion of the serious policy issues that arise in a world of massive
data centres, nonstop analysis of human behaviour and ubiquitous con-
nectivity. These include the concentration of power over the Next Internet
in a handful of mainly US companies and the military-intelligence appa-
ratus; the environmental consequences of building and maintaining mas-
sive data centres and powering systems, threats to privacy and security and
the impact of automated systems on human labour.
Two things stand out about the early configuration of the Next Internet
industry. It is already highly concentrated and is dominated by American
firms. Indeed, on August 1, 2016, the top five Next Internet companies
were also the world’s top five in market value. These include Amazon,
which controls over one-third of the cloud computing market and has a
formidable presence in big data and the Internet of Things. The company
was among the first to build a one-size-fits-all cloud service that attracted
individuals and organizations with its simplicity and massively discounted
prices that suggest the not-so-fine art of predatory pricing was at work
here. Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Apple round out the list of firms
that use their control over the original Internet to become leaders in the
Next Internet. Legacy companies like IBM, Oracle, HP and Cisco have
scrambled to replace their expertise in servicing IT departments that are
now disappearing and pivot to the new digital world. However the need to
cannibalize old systems and remake their organizations has made the going
slow. In addition, there are firms that specialize in one or another of the
constituent Next Internet systems, such as Rackspace and Salesforce.com,
but these are constantly undermined by encroachment from the dominant
companies. A force of potentially great significance in the Next Internet
arena is General Electric, which is betting heavily on reinventing factories
with the Internet of Things.
Historians of technology will recognize the similarity of this pattern of
ownership concentration to the early days of electrification, telegraphy,
telephony and broadcasting. In each of these cases, regulation and outright
state ownership were required to control commercial abuses and increase
access at affordable rates. However, these remedies are less likely to be
applied in a world where regulation and government ownership are no
longer in favour. Moreover, as in the past, dominant firms are benefitting
from their close ties to the military and intelligence agencies, providing
them with Next Internet services and cooperating, more often than not,
with requests for information on users. In fact, close ties to the Pentagon,