Attunement of Value and Capital in the Algorithms of Social Media

This chapter seeks to link ideas about rhythm and time to issues of labour, social media and capital. In doing so, it draws insights from a large-scale research project under the title of Values & Value. Using custom software to gather intersecting perspectives of temporal activity across participants’ use of Facebook and the wider internet, the Values & Value project explored how such platforms effect an attunement between different processes, from personal social interactions to speculative investments in advertising and the circulation of capital within financialisation. 1 We consider attunement as a process through which different spheres of activity are brought into momentary alignment. These spheres of activity unfold in distinct and sometimes conflicting rhythms that cannot be easily coordinated. The relation between time, technicity and capital as attunement is analysed through concepts drawn from Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis and Ingold’s notion of the taskscape, seeking to make more explicit the ways in which algorithms intervene in and constitute processes of the capture of value and circulation of capital. We argue that platforms such as Facebook seek to encourage and maximise the most profitable moments of attunement by monitoring and intervening in these different spheres of activity through various algorithmic processes that constantly evaluate and task the user in a way that both consumes and closes down time.

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