Big Tech & Global Finance

Last week I attended a two-day DECODE Symposium in Barcelona on digital capitalism. It was an interesting and informative conference, with speakers giving perspectives from Europe, Asia, North America and South America. One somewhat predictable theme of comments from many Europeans was their concern that Europe, or their ‘own’ country, had a weak position in modern developments. They seemed to be more worried about US and Chinese competition than about how imperialism channels technical progress into an oppressive system of exploitation. For those interested in this topic, I would recommend taking a look at the readings listed on the DECODE website here. Over the next week or so, videos and presentation material from the Symposium should be available on the same site.

My talk at the Symposium was on the subject of ‘Big Tech and Global Finance’, the slides of which are reproduced below:

Note: the table on page 9 was corrected on 19 November to give the correct years, 2015-2017

 Tony Norfield, 22 October 2018