Preface

I commit myself to online urbanization research in the first place: to explore how emerging technologies can boost economic development in China and other developing countries; to break down the current urbanization approach driven by capital and power, so that counties and villages can participate in the international production chain and enjoy a global lifestyle; to improve commercial and public services in counties and villages, so that people don’t have to abandon their homes to make a living in a strange city. However, in the long run, online urbanization is merely one of the many stages in technological development. It is very likely that we may confront more severe threats later on.
Our future will be brought to extremes by technology revolution. The implications of human activities will be impacted by three major revolutions, and communities will be restructured.

Capitalism Without Men

While Artificial Intelligence (AI), Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) are continuing to evolve, capital is poured into virtual world expeditions. As a result, a new production and consumption cycle is about to come into being, or we may say that it has already been formed. Since the establishment of capitalist production relations, humans, once one of the productive forces, has been regarded as a fugitive and disruptive factor (men tend to feel uncertain about their future and have unrealistic expectations) that should be excluded from production means and forces. The newborn capitalism will become a closed cycle without the participation of men, establish new production relations, and generate a steady and constant flow of productive forces.
While the lives of the vast majority are transformed by technology and capital, they also lost the game. More and more people believe that their fate is doomed and out of control. They are somewhat aware of the plight. But how do they think of their role in this plight? Nowadays, more and more elites and grassroots share a pessimistic attitude toward the future. Have they foreseen the embarrassing tomorrow of their children?
Not only producers, but also consumers will soon lose their ground in the game of capital. When technology and capital make the match and create a closed cycle, the virtual world will become the main venue where production and consumption take place. As a result, the industrial world is supposed to reconsider the production means and relations, and make necessary adjustments to consumption relations. In fact, we have already entered this stage. When looking around, one may find that many of their family members, friends, and colleagues are spending much time on video games and online consulting. It is clear that many people are voluntarily living in a virtual world, interacting with their peers, the society, and the nature under the rules dictated by world of algorithm.
When kept stable, the world of algorithm is able to regulate the relation between men (compared with the industrial age where capitalism was in its cradle, economic crisis and social crisis broke out occasionally, and proletariats were working individually). In the new world where reality and virtuality intermingled, we need to redefine the meaning of consumption. Then what are the new implications of consumption? AI consumes data, machines consume energy, and men consume protein. In all these activities, consumption recovers its nature: utilizing and con- verting energy. Men are no longer the one and only consumer. Instead, robots, cloned men, and machines are new members in the consumer group. The definition of currency will also be changed. Cattle, sheep, shells, gold, silver, banknotes, digital currency, Bitcoin created by blockchain technology, and other consumption mediums used by non-human consumers are new forms of currency. The purpose, approaches, and means of consumption will all be changed.
Humans are emotional. Emotions may affect their expectations on future and further on add sensibilities to capital. But from now on, these sensibilities reflected in production and consumption may be replaced by logic, thanks to technology and algorithm. Therefore, capital as well as the production relations and productive forces of capitalism will become more sensible and stable. Will it break the inherent nature and infinite cycle of economic crisis? Is it possible that economic crisis may escalate social crisis? (The two world wars were outlets for economic crisis.) We may find an answer by looking at the restructured society.

Post-cyberspace in China

Those trends have brought new challenge to the world, meanwhile in China, some new phenomena are emerging.
The unprecedented prospects of China’s online services in urban and rural places, especially its soaring popularity in the countryside, have presented something dif- ferent: that those arguments are applicable not only in cities, the developed countries, Europe and America, but also in the countryside, the developing countries, and the oriental nations. In the meantime, the situation is somewhat different in China.

In this country, the central authorities have been vying with local ones for several thousand years. It boasts a long tradition of political-merchant reciprocity and regional autonomy by local prominent families and gentries. As a result, the information technology is bound to interact and integrate with local communities in unique and diverse forms. However, the uniqueness and diversity share something similar: well-established associations and the interaction between commercial organizations and local governments provide an organizational basis and political guarantee for the flow of various factors in urban and rural areas.

Singapore
Li Zi
December, 2018
University Town, National University of Singapore