Working Paper No. 89, Towards a Veblenian View of the Digital Realm

This inquiry seeks to establish that Thorstein Veblen’s writings offered insights that could assist us in understanding the digital realm in contemporary times. Through advancing his thinking for dealing with the instincts of idle curiosity and workmanship, in particular, Veblen provided an understanding of capital as technologies, especially, that should be valued as contributions to the common and joint stocks of knowledge. Back in his day, Veblen’s understanding of capital, ownership, and private property offered ways for us to think of some of the potential usages of technology as well as a range of possibilities for sabotage. What is more, the understanding that Veblen advanced in the first decades of the twentieth century could be viewed as offering insights as well as ways for approaching currently available digital technologies taking forms as software and digital media, in particular. With this inquiry it shall be argued that in contemporary times Veblen’s legacy does indeed assist us in understanding diverse forms of softwaresuch as open source, proprietary, and freeas well as approaches to their ownership, production, and applications.