Silicon Valley's ethos, historically a hub of innovation and greed, extends beyond geography, permeating culture and commerce. Recently, effective accelerationism (e/acc), advocating accelerated tech investment over altruism, has gained traction. Critics argue e/acc neglects ethical frameworks, fairness, and humanity's preservation. The ideology echoes philosopher Nick Land's anti-human views, positioning tech progress as paramount – even at humanity's expense. Amid declining public trust in tech giants, e/acc reflects a desperate attempt to uphold Silicon Valley's faltering moral narrative.

Presenting a methodological approach to understanding finance and investment within digital platform markets.

This Regulation aims to establish harmonized rules for AI within the EU to ensure safety, compliance with fundamental rights, and facilitate innovation and market function. It defines high-risk AI systems, sets prohibitions for certain AI practices, and outlines transparency obligations. The Regulation also designates national supervisory authorities for enforcement and creates an EU database for high-risk AI systems. It promotes AI literacy and principles for ethical AI development and use while providing measures to support innovation, with special attention to SMEs and start-ups.

Covid-19 saw states creating informational infrastructures to manage populations and in turn, the pandemic. This chapter considers how these infrastructures played out in their legal contexts. It shows how while privacy regimes, where they existed, largely remained applicable, particular technologies reshaped the privacy landscape and at times, pushed at the boundaries of the legal system. States seeking to use telecommunications data to shape behavior faced significant legal challenges as courts struck down a range of instruments, although some powers proved nebulous and hard to challenge.

Discussing potential implications for employment, specifically in the context of seasonal jobs and automation. This episode delves into the history of Luddism, questioning how contemporary changes in the workforce might disadvantage those least economically secure.

Regulatory scholarship on platform governance often confines the role of the state to mere rule-making. However, in examining the EU's Artificial Intelligence Act, this study reveals three additional capacities – facilitator, buyer, and producer – that inform and limit a state's regulatory domain over platforms. The analysis identifies two critical policy dilemmas: the EU's facilitative objective for digital markets curtails its regulatory measures, and its insufficiencies as an AI producer increase its reliance on Big Tech's cloud solutions.

Probing the intersections of platform labour and undocumented status among food delivery couriers in Paris. This study introduces the concept of citizen-rentiership to elucidate the exploitation and profits derived from precarious migrant labor. The research reveals how the complicity of employers, state policies, and the misuse of accounts create a hyper-precarious workforce, calling for urgent reforms in labor and migration laws to address the couriers' plight.

Examining the transformation of data within laboratories through the domestication process. Data are bounded, standardized, formatted, and cultivated to integrate and establish value within their new 'home' – the lab. The domestication paradigm reveals how data, tamed and localised, garner significance as knowledge tools, while concurrently influencing the identities of laboratory practitioners. This study highlights the inherent implications of domestication on the knowledge produced, notably the potential suppression of data outlier behaviors.

Exploring the implications of algorithmic management (AM) in the gig economy, this piece underscores the erosion of worker agency and autonomy. Utilizing an ethnographic and philosophical lens, it draws on de Certeau's 'tactics' to conceptualize how gig workers navigate AM constraints to reclaim control, emphasizing the importance of contributive agency within cooperative settings across epistemic, relational, participatory, and protective facets. The analysis reveals that agency is organically tied to organizational dynamics.

Delving into Palantir's controversial foray into healthcare, this study examines potential harms using Sharon's sphere transgressions framework, highlighting the risks of monopolistic practices and new dependencies beyond mere data privacy concerns. Drawing on the company's contentious history in security and immigration enforcement, the analysis posits that the transposition of its technologies into healthcare necessitates heightened scrutiny to prevent the perversion of logic and safeguard public interest.