4AAVC101 - week 1
« Back to 4AAVC101These are my notes from September 26 for 4AAVC101 at King's College London for the 2017-2018 school year. The lecturer, Nick Srnicek, is the author of two excellent books at the intersection of technology and leftist politics: Inventing the Future (with Alex Williams), and Platform Capitalism.
The usual disclaimer: all notes are my personal impressions and do not necessarily reflect the view of the lecturer.
The Digital Economy
(I didn’t attend this lecture because I didn’t consider the possibility of auditing this course until the following week. What follows is a summary of the readings listed in the course handbook.)
Readings
The Second Economy from McKinsey Quarterly, 2011
A fairly light and business-friendly read about the digital economy. The most salient takeaway I got is that technology is not just an industry, but an intelligent system (akin to a nervous system) underneath the entire economy. The challenge, now, is not greater production, but rather better distribution of the prosperity that it can bring us.
Platform Capitalism by Nick Srnicek
This was in the “Recommended Reading” section which could be seen as a bit of a cheeky way of boosting sales of his book (it’s relevant to the course, obviously). I read this over the summer and thought it was excellent. You can find some of my notes, attached to specific passages from the book, on Bookmarker.