The Blind Spots of Digital Innovation Fetishism

Market-centred ideas surrounding innovation have established themselves as key ideological forms in contemporary capitalism. The role of digital information and communication technologies (ICTs) has been particularly prominent in mainstream discussions on innovation and economic development, often singled out as the defining technologies of the current age of ‘new economy’ allegedly based on knowledge, imagination and human creativity. In this dominant role, they have been endowed with fetishist characteristics. Whatever the problem, the official solution is almost invariably a technology produced for the market by start-ups or other companies, and institutions of higher education are expected to assist in this by becoming more entrepreneurial. In this chapter, I will call such mainstream understandings into question, using financial innovations and military technology as examples to discuss the destructive aspects of digital innovations and the reasons why they are produced. Thus, the text directs attention to what is missing from the fetishist discourses of digital innovation, namely, the systematic production of technologies, software and applications whose overall impact on society is negative and insufficiently politicized.