In the past few decades, Wall Street has made finance a central feature of both the global economy and of our everyday lives – a process often described as “financialisation”. Silicon Valley, almost contemporaneously, has done the same for digital media technologies. That process, too, has a fancy name: “mediatisation”.
With reports that Facebook is seeking to buy a drone-manufacturing company, ostensibly to connect the most remote corners of the globe, the days of blessed disconnection seem firmly behind us.
Understandably, many social critics find this troublesome, blaming technology for invading our lives. But it is a false target: mediatisation is actually financialisation in disguise. Having disrupted Madison Avenue, the likes of Google and Facebook – armed with better data, better engineers and better databases – will disrupt Wall Street next.