An Interview with Michael Betancourt, author of Agnotology & Crisis in Digital Capitalism

Abstract

Sean Scanlan, NANO's editor, interviews artist, curator, art historian and critical theorist Michael Betancourt to discuss the nature of agnotology, a term that means the “creation of uncertainty and ambivalent ‘fact’; it is a competitive tool incompatible with the idealized ‘free market’ of capitalism.” Betancourt is skeptical of Big Data and the ways that the consumers who unknowingly “produce” data for business interpretation are increasingly becoming transformed into a “token of exchange (valorized) by the database.”

Keywords

• Michael Betancourt
• Sean Scanlan
• agnotology
• crisis
• capitalism
• competition
• play
• digital capitalism