Amazon Web Services, the Lacanian Unconscious, and Digital Life

In late 2011, ex-Amazon developer Steve Yegge’s rant about his former company described Amazon’s rapid transformation from an online bookstore to a web-services entity with a ruthlessly unified platform, all guided by the idea that the company’s effort to streamline its internal efficiency could be monetized, and the resultant software products sold through Amazon Web Services. The media consumerism that fed Amazon’s early years funded a surveilling behemoth, one that everyone feared Microsoft would become. As such, AWS has become a manifestation of the internet’s Lacanian unconscious (even providing the services and hosting for Reddit), structured around the optimization of Amazon’s business model, built line by line with the labor of easily discarded programmers. In this article, we shall examine the subtle and far-reaching effects of Amazon Web Services platform on the Amazon storefront, “cloud services,” and social media, as well as the origins of AWS in theories of programming grounded in neural network theory and “artificial life,” as opposed to AI. In the end, AWS will be shown to be its own unique entity, a platform infinitely extensible, inexhaustible, and a monument to the circumlocutions of cybernetic capital

A Free Exchange e-Marketplace for Digital Services

The digital era is witnessing a remarkable evolution of digital services. While the prospects are countless, the e-marketplaces of digital services are encountering inherent game-theoretic and computational challenges that restrict the rational choices of bidders. Our work examines the limited bidding scope and the inefficiencies of present exchange e-marketplaces. To meet challenges, a free exchange e-marketplace is proposed that follows the free market economy. The free exchange model includes a new bidding language and a double auction mechanism. The rule-based bidding language enables the flexible expression of preferences and strategic conduct. The bidding message holds the attribute-valuations and bidding rules of the selected services. The free exchange deliberates on attributes and logical bidding rules for automatic deduction and formation of elicited services and bids that result in a more rapid self-managed multiple exchange trades. The double auction uses forward and reverse generalized second price auctions for the symmetric matching of multiple digital services of identical attributes and different quality levels. The proposed double auction uses tractable heuristics that secure exchange profitability, improve truthful bidding and deliver stable social efficiency. While the strongest properties of symmetric exchanges are unfeasible game-theoretically, the free exchange converges rapidly to the social efficiency, Nash truthful stability, and weak budget balance by multiple quality-levels cross-matching, constant learning and informs at repetitive thick trades. The empirical findings validate the soundness and viability of the free exchange

Individual Liberties and Intellectual Property Protection—Proprietary Software in Digital Electronic Voting Machines: The Clash Between a Private Right and a Public Good in an Oligopolistic Market.

The convergence of intellectual property protections afforded software, the fundamental liberty interests of voting rights of Americans and the conduct of voting machine vendors within an oligopolistic marketplace signals grave consequences for the public. In an election, Direct Recording Electronic voting machines (“DREs”) could be subject to malfunctions, inaccuracies and security problems. The DRE vendors have consistently failed to improve the voting machines or allow access for independent auditing and security testing. The vendors have operated collectively to maintain current inefficient output quality. Acting in concert to obtain higher pricing, the vendors operate against their individual self-interests, claiming proprietary protections. The result of this oligopoly is serious—the voting process, a public good, is diminished. Ultimately the federal judiciary and Congress will face the task of balancing these interests within the context of an oligopolistic marketplace. At risk is an American liberty