New trends in Knowledge Capitalism: what can Argentinian cities do to promote socio-technological development?

ULISES GIROLIMO

Khanty-Mansiysk

Conferencia; Tangible and Intangible Impact of Communication and Information in the Digital Age; 2021

Information for All Program of UNESCO; Government of the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Area; Comission of the Russian Federation for UNESCO; Interregional Library Cooperation Centre

We are witnessing the proliferation of multiple theories that try to understand, explain and legitimize significant processes of socio-technological change. These processes began more than a decade ago, and are transforming knowledge (Boutang, 2004) and informational capitalism (Castells, 1999) as we knew it. The Fourth Industrial Revolution (Schwab, 2016), platform society (Van Dijck, Poell & De Waal, 2018), platform capitalism (Srnicek, 2018) and surveillance capitalism (Zuboff, 2019) are some of the most widespread ideas and approaches.This multiplicity of concepts reveal the existence of new socio-technical trends that are driven by the development of artificial intelligence, big data analytics, cloud computing, Internet of Things, augmented and virtual reality and blockchain. They are transforming economic, social, technological, cultural and human conditions for development, and fostering the shift towards a new technological paradigm. Additionally, they are producing new challenges that must be solved in order to achieve better living conditions.Some countries have designed public policies to insert themselves in this new global context in favorable conditions. In Latin America, Brazil, Mexico and Argentina have developed different kinds of instruments to promote the knowledge economy in their territories. Unlike other international experiences, where technological development was concentrated in specific regions, Argentina exhibits a distinctive feature: different types of cities have tried to promote technology-related activities, profiting of its advanced Universities and Research Institutes, which educate highly qualified human capital, and creating technology innovation poles. However, local governments face several challenges and barriers to lead successful strategies in this direction. These difficulties are reinforced by the fact that Argentina is an eternal peripheral country. Therefore, economic, technological and knowledge gaps with developed countries, make it difficult to advance into socio-technical development processes, that allow promoting productive and territorial development.The trends associated with this new stage of knowledge capitalism, such as the ?platformization?, digitization and automation of production and work (Míguez, 2020; Zukerfeld, 2020), may even be accelerated as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic (Finquelievich & Odena, 2021). In this context, concentrated economic agents have seen their profits soar, and platform companies have remarkably increased their income (and their power), while small and medium-sized companies struggle to survive in a context of economic and humanitarian crisis.A key factor to develop the knowledge economy is to have technological infrastructure and qualified human capital. COVID-19 has revealed different kinds of problems that Latin American countries, including Argentina, have not yet been able to solve: universal access to the Internet, difficulties for online education during the lockdown, obstacles for economic assistance packages for economic reactivation, high labor informality, among others.This paper aims to reflect on the socio-technological, economic and political challenges faced by cities in a peripheral country as a consequence of the new trends identified in knowledge capitalism. This situation is aggravated in the current context of the economic crisis, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. While local governments´ resources are limited in face of global problems, their needs have become pressing. It is necessary to generate strategies to strengthen the territories? capabilities to successfully face this new stage of Knowledge Capitalism. The paper uses a multidisciplinary approach, including literature from Political Science, Sociology and Economics. It uses a quantitative methodology, and has been carried out through specialized literature analysis and interviews with key informants . This work is part of an ongoing research, developed for the National Agency for Scientific and Technological Promotion: "Technologies 4.0 for Industry in Argentina - Analysis and R&D&I Tools for Public Policy Formulation and The Development of Industry 4.0".