Don Draper is perhaps the ultimate prototype of Romanticism. (…) And he used his talent to commodify this mixture of memory, fickleness, feelings, and intuition, in order to extract money from consumers they might not otherwise have spent.
Alexa, her algorithmic doppelganger, may not be a Romantic, but cloud capital monetizes our emotions more effectively than Don [Draper, from Mad Men] could ever have achieved. It creates bespoke experiences that exploit our biases and induce consumption, and then uses our responses to further refine those experiences. (…) In addition to modifying our behavior as consumers in ways that would astonish Don Draper (…), cloud capital has a far more impressive ace up its sleeve: it can command us to work directly on its reproduction, reinforcement, and maintenance.
(…) All of that would be worthless without “content.” The most valuable part of the cloud's capital stock is not its physical components, but the stories posted on Facebook, the videos uploaded on TikTok and YouTube, the photos on Instagram (…). By providing these stories, videos, photos, jokes, and movement, we are the ones who produce and reproduce—outside of any market—the cloud's capital stock. This is unprecedented. (…)
Of course, most of us choose to do so, even enjoy it. Apparently, disseminating opinions and sharing intimate details of our lives with our digital tribes and communities satisfies some perverse expressive need. (…) The fact that we do so voluntarily, even willingly, doesn't mean we are not unpaid manufacturers; servants/serfs of the cloud whose daily, self-directed labor enriches a small group of billionaires, mostly residing in California or Shanghai.
(…) The digital revolution may be turning wage workers into cloud proletarians, with increasingly precarious and stressful lives controlled by algorithmic bosses. And it may have replaced Don Draper with extraordinary behavior-modifying algorithms, hidden behind sleek desktop devices like Alexa. But that is not the most significant fact about cloud capital. Its singular achievement, a feat far surpassing any that has come before, is the way it has transformed its own reproduction. The real revolution it has imposed on humanity is the conversion of billions of people into servants/serfs of the cloud willing to work for free to reproduce cloud capital for the benefit of its owners.
Alexa, her algorithmic doppelganger, may not be a Romantic, but cloud capital monetizes our emotions more effectively than Don [Draper, from Mad Men] could ever have achieved. It creates bespoke experiences that exploit our biases and induce consumption, and then uses our responses to further refine those experiences. (…) In addition to modifying our behavior as consumers in ways that would astonish Don Draper (…), cloud capital has a far more impressive ace up its sleeve: it can command us to work directly on its reproduction, reinforcement, and maintenance.
(…) All of that would be worthless without “content.” The most valuable part of the cloud's capital stock is not its physical components, but the stories posted on Facebook, the videos uploaded on TikTok and YouTube, the photos on Instagram (…). By providing these stories, videos, photos, jokes, and movement, we are the ones who produce and reproduce—outside of any market—the cloud's capital stock. This is unprecedented. (…)
Of course, most of us choose to do so, even enjoy it. Apparently, disseminating opinions and sharing intimate details of our lives with our digital tribes and communities satisfies some perverse expressive need. (…) The fact that we do so voluntarily, even willingly, doesn't mean we are not unpaid manufacturers; servants/serfs of the cloud whose daily, self-directed labor enriches a small group of billionaires, mostly residing in California or Shanghai.
(…) The digital revolution may be turning wage workers into cloud proletarians, with increasingly precarious and stressful lives controlled by algorithmic bosses. And it may have replaced Don Draper with extraordinary behavior-modifying algorithms, hidden behind sleek desktop devices like Alexa. But that is not the most significant fact about cloud capital. Its singular achievement, a feat far surpassing any that has come before, is the way it has transformed its own reproduction. The real revolution it has imposed on humanity is the conversion of billions of people into servants/serfs of the cloud willing to work for free to reproduce cloud capital for the benefit of its owners.
***
Don Draper tal vez sea el último prototipo del Romanticismo. (…) Y utilizó su talento para mercantilizar esta mezcla de memoria, inconstancia, sentimientos e intuición, con el fin de extraer de los consumidores un dinero que, de otro modo, no se habrían gastado.
Puede que Alexa, su doble algorítmico, no sea una romántica, pero el capital en la nube monetiza nuestras emociones con más eficacia de la que Don [Draper, de Mad men] podría haber alcanzado jamás. Crea experiencias a medida que explotan nuestros sesgos e inducen al consumo, y luego utiliza nuestras respuestas para perfeccionar aún más esas experiencias. (…) Además de modificar nuestro comportamiento como consumidores de una forma que asombraría a Don Draper (…) el capital en la nube tiene un as en la manga mucho más impresionante: puede ordenarnos que trabajemos directamente en su reproducción, refuerzo y mantenimiento.
(…) todo eso carecería de valor sin “contenidos”. La parte más valiosa del stock del capital en la nube no son sus componentes físicos, sino las historias publicadas en Facebook, lo vídeos subidos en TikTok y YouTube, las fotos en Instagram (…). Al proporcionar estas historias, vídeos, fotos, chistes y movimiento somos nosotros quienes producimos y reproducimos –al margen de cualquier mercado– el stock del capital en la nube. Esto no tiene precedentes. (…)
Por supuesto, la mayoría de nosotros elegimos hacerlo, incluso disfrutamos. Al parecer, difundir opiniones y compartir detalles íntimos de nuestra vida con nuestras tribus y comunidades digitales satisface alguna perversa necesidad expresiva. (…) El hecho de que lo hagamos de manera voluntaria, incluso con gusto, no quita que seamos fabricantes no remunerados; siervos de la nube cuyo duro trabajo cotidiano, fruto de su iniciativa, enriquece a un pequeño grupo de multimilmillonarios que residen en su mayoría en California o Shanghái.
(…) La revolución digital puede que esté convirtiendo a los trabajadores asalariados en proletarios de la nube, con vidas cada vez más precarias y estresantes, controladas por algoritmos jefes. Y puede que haya sustituido y Don Draper por extraordinarios algoritmos de modificación del comportamiento, ocultos tras elegantes aparatos de sobremesa como Alexa. Pero ése no es el hecho más significativo del capital en la nube. Su singular logro, una proeza muy superior a cualquiera de las anteriores, es la forma en la que ha transformado su propia reproducción. La verdadera revolución que ha impuesto a la humanidad es la conversión de miles de millones de personas en siervos de la nube dispuestos a trabajar gratis para reproducir el capital en la nube en beneficio de sus propietarios.
abandoned hotel in Los Charcones, Lanzarote, Canary Islands, Spain (2025)
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