The problem of innovation in technoscientific capitalism: data rentiership and the policy implications of turning personal digital data into a private asset

Abstract

A spate of recent scandals concerning personal digital data illustrates the extent to which innovation and finance are thoroughly entangled with one another. The innovation-finance nexus is an example of an emerging dynamic in technoscientific capitalism in which innovation is increasingly driven by the pursuit of "economic rents". Unlike innovation that delivers new products, services, and markets, innovation as rentiership is defined by the extraction and capture of value through different modes of ownership and control over resources and assets. This shift towards rentiership is evident in the transformation of personal digital data into a private asset. In light of this assetization, it is necessary to unpack how innovation itself might be a problem, rather than a solution to a range of global challenges. Our aim in this paper is to conceptualize this relationship between innovation, finance, and data rentiership, and examine the policy implications of this pursuit of economic rents as a deliberate research and innovation strategy in datadriven technology sectors.

Post-Covid-19 Education and Education Technology ‘Solutionism’: a Seller’s Market

“…For companies in various fields, behavioural data has become the most important asset to be monetized (Zuboff 2019). This is increasingly the case with digital learning platforms as well (Birch et al 2020). Datafication of education is based on principles of business intelligence and using data for improving competitive edge.…”

“…Technology and datafication of education are typically synonymized with progress and economic growth (Birch et al 2020). The proponents of data mining argue that education generates growing volumes of data, so this data should be processed to improve education.…”

“…Still, as Peters, Jandrić and Hayes (2019: 252) have noted, '[t]he idea that education can resolve the problem of technological unemployment is a political construction which has by and large failed to deliver its promise'. Indeed, as Birch et al (2020) observe, there is increasing concern that technoscientific innovation is not solving, or even mitigating, societal challenges; instead, it has become subsumed into finance, and return on investment is triumphing over all other considerations, including pedagogical and ethical ones. As a result, ed-tech solutions may reinforce problems rather than fix them-a good example being the earlier discussed phenomenon of datafication and analytics-based applications that have been criticized for fostering an unjust, behaviour-based performative culture, decision-making based on decontextualized and potentially flawed data, surveillance and behaviour modification, and promotion of a worldview in which the way to success is grounded in neoliberal notions of competitive individualism (Manolev et al 2019;Knox et al 2020).…”

“…In addition, and more disturbingly, some of these tools employ login requirements and tracking cookies to capture and gather data that can be monetized in the future. This is a rising business model in technoscientific capitalism, where the development of useful technological products and services is less important than the ownership and control of assetized personal data (Birch et al 2020).…”

Automation, APIs and the distributed labour of platform pedagogies in Google Classroom

“…Through these opacities, enabled by a sprawling apparatus of algorithms and specialist knowledge, digital platforms turn data into intangible assets, channelling them along financial circuits and subjecting them to capitalisation. As noted by Birch et al (2020), the mechanism through which data are turned into assets is a futurefacing undertaking based on expected rather than current revenues. In this sense, Google's extractive tendencies in education acquire a mission-critical purpose that transcends the tensions and disagreements likely to exist within its organisational structure.…”