Platform Capitalism

Nick Srnicek

Jul 2023 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Jamie Renell

About this audiobook

What unites Google and Facebook, Apple and Microsoft, Siemens and GE, Uber and Airbnb? Across a wide range of sectors, these firms are transforming themselves into platforms: businesses that provide the hardware and software foundation for others to operate on. This transformation signals a major shift in how capitalist firms operate and how they interact with the rest of the economy: the emergence of platform capitalism. This book critically examines these new business forms, tracing their genesis from the long downturn of the 1970s to the boom and bust of the 1990s and the aftershocks of the 2008 crisis. It shows how the fundamental foundations of the economy are rapidly being carved up among a small number of monopolistic platforms, and how the platform introduces new tendencies within capitalism that pose significant challenges to any vision of a post-capitalist future. This book will be essential for anyone who wants to understand how the most powerful tech companies of our time are transforming the global economy.

About the author

Nick Srnicek is a lecturer at City University. He is the author of Platform Capitalism and After Work: What's Left and Who Cares? (with Helen Hester).

Jamie Renell originally hails from New England and is a rabid Red Sox fan. He has been involved in films, TV, and voice-over for more than ten years, and has credits that run the gamut, including Prison Break, Homeland, Jumanji, and Pitch Perfect. He has narrated nearly 200 audiobooks.