Épisode 26 : L'économie selon... Amandine Gay

A travers deux documentaires et un essai, Amandine Gay montre comment facteurs culturels, sociaux mais aussi économiques pèsent sur les destinées des femmes, de la naissance aux choix de carrière, et plus particulièrement dans l’économie culturelle.

The Gig Economy: WTF? Precarity and Work under Neoliberalism

De la simple alliance vers la mutualisation des ressources

Il n’y a pas de définition ou de modèle unique de la mutualisation. Pour moi, il s’agit d’une manière de penser, de travailler en collaboration. Les fondements sont toutefois toujours les mêmes : l’action de partager ou de mettre en commun quelque chose. Bien entendu, dans la mutualisation, il y a l’idée de « mutuel », il faut regrouper plusieurs individus ou organismes dans un projet commun. Chaque partie prenante retire donc des bénéfices de cette collaboration, même si ces bénéfices ne sont pas nécessairement répartis également pour chaque partenaire. L’idée n’est pas de prendre des biens et de les diviser en deux. Il s’agit plutôt de mettre en commun des ressources mutuelles ensemble. La somme des ressources impliquées rend le projet plus fort.

The Future of Art, Economy, & Humanity in The Age of Algorithms

Some call it the fourth industrial revolution. The age of the Human-supported assembly line that began with Ford is long gone. This industrial revolution won’t be marked by a monstrous industrial machine supported by a robust middle-class, trained and molded by a public school system. This industrial revolution will be marked by machine learning, big data, and artificial intelligence making it possible for the giants of industry and tech to be bigger and more profitable, while relentlessly squeezing out the need for human labor. If all current trends hold, people will have no choice but to start to re-imagine their place in society. And though it may seem counter-intuitive, the answers to these questions will represent a giant societal leap forward. As the world pushes forward into the age of algorithms with a declining need for human labor, the stage is set for what comes next — a return to what brings us closer to being human; a great resurgence in the arts, entrepreneurship, and creativity; a global renaissance.

Applying Chaos Theory to Artistic and Cultural Practice

What is the mathematical metaphor that dominates us in the post-modern age? How will the math of today affect our cultural future? I propose that the Science of Complexity, also known as Chaos Theory, provides many concepts which help to give insight into the context and direction of contemporary culture, as well as providing new technologies, methodologies, and metaphors for the production of valid work and theory. What tools can it provide us, both practically and intellectually? Perhaps we should first ask what it is that we look would look for in such a paradigm.

Concepts: Chaos vs. Complex Systems

Advances in the scientific study of chaos have been important motivators/roots of the modern study of complex systems. There exists some confusion about the relationship of chaos and complexity. Chaos can be more or less strictly defined. A reasonably strict definition is that chaos deals with deterministic systems whose trajectories diverge exponentially over time. This property is expected to be found in the behavior of complex systems. However, how it can be related to various properties of complex systems continues to be an important area of research. Models of chaos generally describe the dynamics of one (or a few) variables which are real (ie represented by a decimal number). Using these models some characteristic behaviors of their dynamics can be found.

The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads

"Who exactly are the attention merchants? As an industry, they are relativelynew. Their lineage can be traced to the nineteenth century, when in New YorkCity the first newspapers fully dependent on advertising were created; and Paris,where a dazzling new kind of commercial art first seized the eyes of the person inthe street. But the full potential of the business model by which attention isconverted into revenue would not be fully understood until the early twentiethcentury, when the power of mass attention was discovered not by any commercialentity but by British war propagandists. The disastrous consequences ofpropaganda in two world wars would taint the subsequent use of such methods bygovernment, at least in the West. Industry, however, took note of what captiveattention could accomplish, and since that time has treated it as a preciousresource, paying ever larger premiums for it."