KTub8

Structural Transformations
in larger contexts. As more social processes rely (or are
made to rely) on software based infrastructures, the
easier they can be reconfigured, and the more ‘liquid’
they become. 17 Capitalism needs flexibility, new
technologies enable it more than ever. This is a selfreinforcing
development, where accelerating flexibility
is turned into an imperative, echoing Marx’s famous
‘coercive laws of competition’. This is even reflected in
the built infrastructures that are increasingly becoming
multi-functional. Data-centres – giant warehouses full
of servers that provide much of the computing power for
the public internet and for private corporate networks
– being the most pronounced example. While they are,
indeed, heavy built environments with very long term
trajectories – located following the classic industrial
logic of cheap energy and good (data) transportation
links – nevertheless, they can support any process that
can be embedded in software. To reconfigure a data
centre to support a new web based application that
reoganises an entire industry (say, the distribution of
eBooks) is much easier than to build a new factory to
produce a new product. Data centres consist mostly
of highly standardised, commodity infrastructure,
running globally interoperable protocols. Yet, on top of
these, highly specific, proprietary services can be built.
They are part of new globally distributed, standardised
infrastructures, which also include supersized airports
and shipping ports that produce flexibility, even if they
themselves are not particularly flexible.
Thus the value of knowledge, particularly practical
applied knowledge, is degrading constantly and expanding
the experience of not-knowing correspondingly. The
more the world is becoming interconnected, the more
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