The primary purpose of this seminar is to develop a common background for understanding the new forms of production and valorisation based on the Internet and the emerging identity eco-system. In particular, this workshop wants to investigate the emergence and expansion of the "identity marketplace." and focusing on its implications and consequences on the economy and shifting relationships of power.

During the last few years, the Internet economy has mainly developed using a business model that offers services for free to the end users, but at the same time creates profits by aggregating, exchanging, and selling personal data with implications on the users’ privacy and digital rights.

The principal purpose of this work is to develop a common background for understanding the new forms of production and valorisation based on the Internet. In particular, this workshop wants to investigate the emergence and expansion of the the new identity marketplace and focus on both the social and economic implications.

The huge financial and technical resources needed for the worldwide processing, and managing of such a massive amount of personal information, leads naturally to the formation of global oligopolies. For example, already the internet is increasingly dominated by a small number of platforms: Google controls nearly 82% of the global search market and 98% of the mobile search market, Facebook is dominates over 90% of social networking, and Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft dominant the mobile market and cloud-based services platforms. Given this trajectory, it seems that the new identity eco-system will also likely globally be dominated by a single company or handful of competitors. Another possibility is state intervention, but so far this has not been forthcoming, although it has been revealed that state intelligence agencies like the NSA have been gathering vast amounts of personal data.

Due to the complexity of the internet and the emerging identity ecosystem, much analysis so has been limited to specific disciplinary backgrounds. We are facing the difficulty of grasping this pervasive system in an holistic way where the actors involved in the production and shaping of this system (such as developers, hackers, and designers), often perceive only a very limited role, while those who develop socio-economic approaches do not understand the technical details.

This initiative aims at activating a process of recomposition of subjectivities from various disciplines that will raise awareness of the stakes of the political economy of the Internet, resulting in a common vision that can lead to the creation of a constituency to work on awareness, rights, claims, self-governance issues, and technical standards: the kind of work necessary in order to preserve an open multi-stakeholder governance in the new identity eco-system.