DIGITAL CAPITALISM AND ITS LIMITS, technotopia, power and risk

192pp., paperback, Wits University Press, Johannesburg, 2025

ISBN: 9781776149407

A collection of essays on the risks and power dynamics involved in the digital-techo shift, as well as the possible emancipatory futures of these technologies.

Contributions include:

"The Dangerous Contradictions of Digital Capitalism" by Vishwas Satgar

"Mass Digital Surveillance and National Security Technotopias " by Jane Duncan

"Digital Platforms and Emerging Forms of Worker Struggles" by Ruth Castel-Branco, Seipati Mokhema and Edward Webster

"Digital Platforms, Class Power and Control in the Waste Pickers’ Economy" by Vincent Siwawa

"Digital Degrowth as Decolonisation" by Michael Kwet

"New digital technologies, rather than fulfilling their emancipatory potential, are increasing inequality, entrenching power in elite hands and bringing significant risks and iniquitous outcomes. This volume makes the compelling argument that, to be emancipatory, our digital technology choices must be located within the framework of a just transition." Professor Imraan Valodia, Director of the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies and Pro Vice Chancellor: Climate, Sustainability and Inequality, University of the Witwatersrand.

"Given our current polycrisis and the intersecting and accelerating risks of resource over-extraction, rapid technological change, environmental pollution, weakening democracy and inequity, this book presents a clear-eyed analysis of the digital systems in our lives, and the need to reimagine new ones that better serve humanity and the planet." Ruth Richardson, Executive Director, Accelerator for Systemic Risk Assessment

Vishwas Satgar is Associate Professor of International Relations at the University of the Witwatersrand. He is the editor of the Democratic Marxism series, and the principal investigator for the Emancipatory Futures Studies in the Anthropocene project.