Jacob Rigi

Cultural and Political Economies of Knowledge In the Era of Digital Technology

My research explores the impacts of digital technologies on the following arenas:

• The transformation of forces and Infrastructures of Production: Two transformations are central: 1 ) digital automation (DA), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Intelligence (AI),  Digital Data Basis, and Cloud computing, Robots and 3D printing; and 2)  the impacts of ICT on R &D and its infrastructure and organization, and the resultant specializations, the new uneven division of labour [knowledge versus labour intensive], globalization of value chain and networked factory.  This section examines the following hypothesis: the viability of the  automation of the overwhelming parts of  material production makes  knowledge and land-nature- the main productive forces of our era. 
• The  modification of the capitalist relations of production: The enclosure of knowledge and land -nature-  through intellectual an landed  property, the concomitant regimes of rent based on the uneven division of labour, and their contributions to the financialization of the world economy are the main topics.
• Changes in production of culture and  public sphere-media: The decentred and communal contributions of networks of various actors from prosumers to highly paid professionals  to the production of culture, ideas and news is the main topic.
• Changes in the forms of social organisation  of firm, state and social movements: Biopolitics versus discipline, and horizontal forms of organization versus vertical ones are the main problematics of this section.
• Openings for a transition  to a non-capitalist civilization: Openings for the transformation of knowledge, culture, land, strategic infrastructures and services to commons and the social and ecological urgency of communing of strategic forces of production are the main topics of this section.

Jakob Rigi is an associated researcher with the Frontlines of Value project. He holds a PhD from the department of Anthropology and Sociology, SOAS, University of London. He has taught at Cornell University and Central European University and been a fellow at NYU, Edinburgh University, Manchester University and SOAS.  His research interests in addition to digital technology include social transformation in the former Soviet territories, China, and the Middle east; and, the current forms of sovereignty and historical transformation.