Database economy and transnational cinema

Abstract

Digital or electronic cinemas are dependent on a global regime of standards covering such features as aspect ratios, colour gamuts, screen resolution and compression– decompression algorithms. These standards are worked out by a variety of intersecting organizations representing a variety of interests. This article argues that such standardization is isomorphic with the convergence of biopolitical and commodity forms in an emergent political economy that can be described as a database economy. This infrastructure of standards and ordering principles constitutes an actually existing transnational public sphere. The article discusses the possibilities for developing an alter-globalizing public..