A Maussian Bargain: Accumulation by Gift in the Digital Economy

The harvesting of data about people, organizations, and things and their transformation into a form of capital is often described as a process of “accumulation by dispossession,” a pervasive loss of rights buttressed by predatory practices and legal violence. Yet this argument does not square well with the fact that enrollment into digital systems is often experienced (and presented by companies) as a much more benign process: signing up for a “free” service, responding to a “friend’s” invitation, or being encouraged to “share” content. In this paper, we focus on the centrality of gifting and reciprocity to the business model and cultural imagination of digital capitalism. Relying on historical narratives and in-depth interviews with the designers and critics of digital systems, we explain the cultural genesis of these “give-to-get” relationships and analyze the socio-technical channels that structure them in practice. We suggest that the economic relation that develops as a result of a digital gift offering not only masks the structural asymmetry between giver and gifted but also permits the creation of the new commodity of personal data, obfuscates its true value, and naturalizes its private appropriation. We call this unique regime “accumulation by gift.”Introduction Markets from gifts "Information wants to be free" The Maussian bargain Research design Engineering reciprocal obligations Conclusion: From gift to market? Funding ORCID IDs Acknowledgements Notes Reference

Pressure broadening and frequency shift of the D-1 and D-2 lines of Rb and K in the presence of He-3 and N-2

We report the results of a study of the pressure broadening and resonant frequency shift of the absorption profiles of the D-1 and D-2 lines of Rb and K in the presence of He-3 and N-2 gases over a range of number densities. We have also examined the temperature dependence of the broadening and shift over a range of approximately 340 to 400 K. We compare our results for the broadening and shift coefficients for Rb D-1 and D-2 to current values and present coefficients for K D-1 and D-2. DOI:10.1103/PhysRevA.87.03251

Effects of task on the activation of predictive inferences

ABSTRACT Research on the activation of predictive inferences has provided inconsistent results that may be explained within a contextual view of reading. The present study tested whether the type of test for explicit memory would affect the activation of knowledge-based predictive inferences. The information necessary for the activation of a predictive inference was provided to readers in four different conditions (no inference, local processing, global processing, coherence). Manipulation was accomplished by varying the type of question asked after reading the passage (verbatim, factual, or inference). Analysis suggests predictive inferences are automatically activated and nor affected by contextual factors such as the question. Consequently, the current data do nor provide clear support for a contextual view of comprehension. These conclusions are supported by a two-stage view of elaborative processing