Homo digitalis: narrative for a new political economy of digital transformation and transition

Abstract

The second digital wave has positioned artificial intelligence and digital platforms as new general purpose technologies, has driven the emergence of new value sources: prediction and circulation values, and has created a new explanatory phase into the relationship between digitalisation and economy: the digital transition. The governance of the digital transition, fully inserted in globalised capitalism, are not being able to reduce polarisation, economic inequalities, or the worsening environment. The article argues that failure in economic policy is closely linked to failure in political economy. The prevailing neoclassical approach is not being able to comprehensively explain the foundations, behaviour and results of digital economic life. To overcome this limitation, the article proposes a new narrative, the emergence of a new explanatory figure of economic behaviour and exchange. Homo digitalis extends the egotistical, isolated, and rational precepts of Homo economicus, and incorporates the scope of social welfare and environmental sustainability as enabling goals. The main components of Homo digitalis are the emergence of multiple biological, social and virtual identities and worlds; the integration of new forms of artificial and intelligent life into our bodies and minds (transhumanism); and the consolidation of a new egalitarian rule based on the access-platform-collaboration identity.