Dendriform Capitalism: Data and the New Logistical Regime

Cinema and Media Studies Colloquium

Miriam Posner

Dendriform Capitalism tells the story of the development of the modern global supply chain through a close investigation of SAP, the software suite at the heart of most large supply chains. Despite this software’s pivotal role in mediating global economic relations, from Wal-Mart to Coca-Cola, no comprehensive analysis of its affordances is yet available. Synthesizing techniques from the fields of software, platform, and media studies, I show how SAP’s supply chain modules are best understood as the algorithmic enshrinement of what David Harvey calls the “spatial fix”: they identify and heal rifts in the global network of supply chains with lightning speed — but still not fast enough to resolve some of global capitalism’s fundamental tensions.