How strongly are the ideas of Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk influencing today's digital economy? An economic sociologist at the University of Basel has analyzed speeches, book contributions and articles from Silicon Valley, demonstrating the emergence of a new spirit of digital capitalism.
What justification is there for earning a lot of money? Nineteenth-century Calvinists interpreted economic prosperity as a sign that one was counted among God's chosen. This manner of thinking, centered in Geneva, influenced liberal capitalism.
Today's justifications for economic activity sound different. They focus on themes of flexibility or efficiency. In particular digital capitalists claim that they improve the world. Their credo: for every societal problem, from climate change to inequity, there is a technical solution that also offers the opportunity to make plenty of profit. This approach is known as solutionism.
Economic sociologist Oliver Nachtwey of the University of Basel, Switzerland, together with his colleague Timo Seidl from the University of Vienna, Austria, wanted to find out how influential this idea is today. For their study, they drew on a variety of texts from Silicon Valley, the global center for high technology on the US West Coast. Their results appear in the journal Theory, Culture & Society.
From the West Coast to the East Coast
