Technology and the promise of decentralization: Origins, development, patterns of arguments

Jan-Felix Schrape

No 2019-01, Research Contributions to Organizational Sociology and Innovation Studies, SOI Discussion Papers from University of Stuttgart, Institute for Social Sciences, Department of Organizational Sociology and Innovation Studies

Abstract: Digitalization has long been associated with the promise of a technology-enabled decentralization of social conditions. Although such expectations have regularly fallen short, their underlying generic vision has proven to be astonishingly stable. This paper strives to trace the origin of the notion of decentralizing socio-economic forms of coordination through technological means - from the do-it-yourself scene of the late 1960s, the computer counterculture of the 1970s and the 1980s, and the debates on cyberspace and Web 2.0 in the 1990s and 2000s to present day ideas of decentralized and distributed forms of production and economic systems. An elaboration of the basic patterns of arguments behind technology-based promises of decentralization and their communicative functions then follows.

Date: 2019
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his and nep-pay
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:stusoi:201901

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