February 28th - Ben Thompson

• Ben Thompson’s Aggregation Theory
  • Defining Aggregators
  • Aggregation theory, overview and cases 
• Althusser (as per Koray’s email if you have time):
  • 'On the Reproduction of Capitalism' pdf
  • p. 53-57: Base and Superstructure
  • p. 92-93: Summary of part entitled the State 
  • p. 237 (skim parts of it): base and superstructure
  • p. 246 (take a quick look): On the reproduction of the relations of production
• Basic Info on "Stack"
  • Intro to Stack Data Structure (For understanding the ‘verticality’ a Stack entails)
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solution_stack  (relation btwn stack and platform)

March 14th

• Eben, Magali, Market Definition and Free Online Services: The Prospect of Personal Data as Price (July 3, 2018). I/S: A Journal of Law and Policy for the Information Society, Vol.14:2 (2018) 227.
  • PDF       
• Kashmir Hill, “How I Tried to Block Amazon.” Gizmodo. January 22, 2019.
  • Web Version (contains a video)
  • PDF (text only)
• “How data becomes valuable for AWS customers”:  Anna will present her research on AWS.

March 21st

• Plantin, J.-C., Lagoze, C., Edwards, P. N., & Sandvig, C. (2018). Infrastructure studies meet platform studies in the age of Google and Facebook. New Media & Society, 20(1), 293–310.
  • PDF
• Paul Dourish, The Stuff of Bits: An Essay on the Materiality of Information, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2017).
  • Read the Introductory chapter, and then focus on Ch 5: “No SQL: The Shifting Materialities of Database Technology” and Ch 7: “Internets and Othernets”
  • PDF (link updated)
• Srnicek 2017, Platform Capitalism (OPTIONAL)
  • PDF
  • LA Review of Books Interview (an equivalent of 10 single-spaced pages)
    • PDF of Transcript

April 4th

• Lowrie, I. (2017). Algorithmic rationality: Epistemology and efficiency in the data sciences. Big Data & Society, 4(1), 2053951717700925
  • PDF
• Van Alstyne et al 2016. Pipelines, Platforms and the New Rules of Strategy
  • https://hbr.org/2016/04/pipelines-platforms-and-the-new-rules-of-strategy 
  • PDF

April 11th

• Gurses, Seda, and Joris V. J. van Hoboken. 2017. “Privacy After the Agile Turn.” SocArXiv. May 2. doi:10.31235/osf.io/9gy73.
  • Moving beyond algorithms and big data as starting points for discussions about privacy, the authors of Privacy After the Agile Turn focus our attention on the new modes of production of information systems. 
  • PDF
• Pon et. al 2014. Android and the demise of operating system-based power: Firm strategy and platform control in the post-PC world
  • PDF

April 18th

• Poon, M. (2016). Corporate capitalism and the growing power of big data: Review essay.
  • PDF
• Gray et al. A reality check(list) for digital methods, New Media and Society
  • PDF

Suggestions:

• Value Modeling and Calculation for Everything as a Service (XaaS) Based on Reuse https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/6299275
• Chiehyeon Lima et al. From data to value: A nine-factor framework for data-based value creation in information-intensive services, International Journal of Information Management