INTRODUCTION: POLITICS, POWER AND 'PLATFORMATIVITY' 1

Abstract

The Internet is vanishing: as its ubiquity increases, it has also become less and less visible in the production and experiences of network culture. Indeed, many of the operations that used to typify the Internet are now funnelled through so-called ‘platforms’. We do not have a single Internet anymore, but rather a multiplicity of distinct platforms, which in this issue are broadly defined as online ‘cloud’-based software modules that act as portals to diverse kinds of information, with nested applications that aggregate content, often generated by ‘users’ themselves. These are characteristics often associated with ‘Web 2.0’ in marketing and popular discourses; discourses that are wholly inadequate for a serious critical engagement with the politics of platforms. ‘Platform’ is a useful term because it is a broad enough category to capture a number of distinct phenomena, such as social networking, the shift from desktop to tablet computing, smart phone and ‘app’-based interfaces as well as the increasing dominance of centralised cloud-based computing. The term is also specific enough to indicate the capturing of digital life in an enclosed, commercialized and managed realm. As Eugenia Siapera points out in her article included in this issue, the roots of ‘platform studies’ in gaming and operating systems need to be extended to include digital platforms of all kinds. Therefore, while the presence of the Internet must not be forgotten, theories of network culture need to be supplemented with new frameworks and paradigms. The challenge can be seen most clearly in the contradictions of platform politics. The desire expressed by Mark Zuckerberg in the early days of Facebook ‘to make Facebook into something of an operating system’ has become a widespread stimulus to platform development. The motivation is obvious: ‘creating a platform that enables a software company to become the nexus of an ecosystem of partners that are dependent on its product’ (Kirkpatrick, 2010: 218)