{"product_id":"cloud-empires-isbn-9780262548380","title":"Cloud Empires","description":"\u003cb\u003eThe rise of the platform economy into statelike dominance over the lives of entrepreneurs, users, and workers.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe early Internet was a lawless place, populated by scam artists who made buying or selling anything online risky business. Then Amazon, eBay, Upwork, and Apple established secure digital platforms for selling physical goods, crowdsourcing labor, and downloading apps. \u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003eThese tech giants have gone on to rule the Internet like autocrats. How did this happen? How did users and workers become the hapless subjects of online economic empires? The Internet was supposed to liberate us from powerful institutions. In \u003ci\u003eCloud Empires\u003c\/i\u003e, digital economy expert Vili Lehdonvirta explores the rise of the platform economy into statelike dominance over our lives and proposes a new way forward.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDigital platforms create new marketplaces and prosperity on the Internet, Lehdonvirta explains, but they are ruled by Silicon Valley despots with little or no accountability. Neither workers nor users can “vote with their feet” and find another platform because in most cases there isn’t one. And yet using antitrust law and decentralization to rein in the big tech companies has proven difficult. Lehdonvirta tells the stories of pioneers who helped create—or resist—the new social order established by digital platform companies. The protagonists include the usual suspects—Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Travis Kalanick of Uber, and Bitcoin’s inventor Satoshi Nakamoto—as well as Kristy Milland, labor organizer of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, and GoFundMe, a crowdfunding platform that has emerged as an ersatz stand-in for the welfare state. Only if we understand digital platforms for what they are—institutions as powerful as the state—can we begin the work of democratizing them.1 Introduction 1\u003cbr\u003ePart I: Economic Institutions\u003cbr\u003e2 Reciprocity: The Golden Rule in Cyberspace 15\u003cbr\u003e3 From Reputation to Regulation: The Birth of a Giant 35\u003cbr\u003e4 The Privacy Dilemma: Maintaining Order in a Masquerade 53\u003cbr\u003e5 Death of Distance, Resurrection of Borders: Labor Markets in Cyberspace 71\u003cbr\u003e6 Centrally Planned Free Markets: Programming a Soviet Union 2.0? 91\u003cbr\u003ePart II: Political Institutions\u003cbr\u003e7 Network Effect: From Digital Revolutionary to Everything Emperor 113\u003cbr\u003e8 Cryptocracy: The Quest to Replace Politics with Technology 131\u003cbr\u003e9 Collective Action I: Workers of the Internet, Unite? 155\u003cbr\u003e10 Collective Action II: Rise of a Digital Middle Class 173\"\u003ci\u003eCloud Empires\u003c\/i\u003e is a terrific book . . . A strong recommend.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e– The Enlightened Economist\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e“If you are interested in the future that the tech sector is constructing for us, you must read this brilliant and utterly absorbing book. Crucial for understanding today’s debates about the role of the tech platforms.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Juliet Schor, Professor of Sociology, Boston College; author of \u003ci\u003eAfter the Gig: How the Sharing Economy Got Hijacked and How to Win It Back\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e“A fascinating and necessary guide to our new world in which the Internet giants have not only disrupted existing governments and power structures, but created their own, with significant consequences for the future.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Nathaniel Popper, author of \u003ci\u003eDigital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e“An essential book that demonstrates how online platform markets operate in practice and asks how challengers to state power might be held to account.”  \u003cbr\u003e—\u003cb\u003eDiane Coyle, Bennett Professor of Public Policy, University of Cambridge; author of \u003ci\u003eCogs and Monsters: What Economics Is, And What It Should Be\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e   \u003cbr\u003e “The rise of digital empires is one of the most critical political developments of our time. \u003ci\u003eCloud Empires\u003c\/i\u003e is the deepest and most urgent account yet written.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Rana Dasgupta, author of \u003ci\u003eCapital: The Eruption of Delhi\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eVili Lehdonvirta is Professor of Economic Sociology and Digital Social Research at the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford. A former software developer, he is the coauthor of \u003ci\u003eVirtual Economies: Design and Analysis\u003c\/i\u003e (MIT Press).","brand":"The MIT Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300089778405,"sku":"NP9780262548380","price":24.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780262548380.jpg?v=1767723854","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/cloud-empires-isbn-9780262548380","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}