> According to McKenzie Wark when information becomes a commodity it means we will only be able to see the information produced by the vectoral class. This is because they are the ones whose profits depend on the scarcity of information. So when information becomes intellectual property we are bound to repeat the same commodity form, because this is what the market decrees. She states that the “hack” which monetizes information introduces the “vectoralist” class.
> It is the hacker class that produces new information, free from the restrictions of a property form. This however is then used by the vectoral class, who own and control the means of production of information on an industrial scale and mediates connections and access to information (Paolo Pedercini, the founder of the radical games project Molleindustria cites companies like Google, Uber or Airbnb as typical representatives of the vectoral class). The hacker and the vectoral class aren’t always at odds with each other. They can compromise on the free flow of information and the extraction of wealth from this information to fund its development. Think of the open source movement, Reddit and Wikipedia. McKenzie Wark believes that the hacker class should ally themselves with the other producing classes so that they together don’t have to answer to the vectoral class anymore.
But I'm not super convinced vectoralist/hacker is that useful a distinction. I think Orwell called it correctly in predicting Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia. Where he went too far[1], perhaps because he grew up in a parliamentary system, is in not predicting that the Oceanic outer party would be dualised in two distinct thought-monitoring parties: the pitchfork party and the torch party.
https://i.imgur.com/RlmIFzj.jpeg
[1] I haven't read anything but the Goldstein chapters, so all my knowledge of the rest is from pop culture. Is there anything there, or is it "fast-forward?" (Also, it seems pop culture overplays universal oppression: at least 87% of the population appears to be unaffected. Doesn't the severe dystopia only hit those readers who identify with outer party members?)
How am I doing so far?
> According to McKenzie Wark when information becomes a commodity it means we will only be able to see the information produced by the vectoral class. This is because they are the ones whose profits depend on the scarcity of information. So when information becomes intellectual property we are bound to repeat the same commodity form, because this is what the market decrees. She states that the “hack” which monetizes information introduces the “vectoralist” class.
> It is the hacker class that produces new information, free from the restrictions of a property form. This however is then used by the vectoral class, who own and control the means of production of information on an industrial scale and mediates connections and access to information (Paolo Pedercini, the founder of the radical games project Molleindustria cites companies like Google, Uber or Airbnb as typical representatives of the vectoral class). The hacker and the vectoral class aren’t always at odds with each other. They can compromise on the free flow of information and the extraction of wealth from this information to fund its development. Think of the open source movement, Reddit and Wikipedia. McKenzie Wark believes that the hacker class should ally themselves with the other producing classes so that they together don’t have to answer to the vectoral class anymore.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Hacker_Manifesto