From Welfare to Webfare
摘要
This paper theorises a new form of collective value—documedial surplus value—produced by the digital recording and circulation of human behaviour. Unlike capital grounded in merit or labour, this heritage originates from everyday acts of consumption, desire, and relationality, which become valuable precisely because they are documented. It is new in its ontological grounding in recorded life forms, rich in the complexity of behaviours it captures, renewable through digital iterability and shareability, and fair in recognising need as a legitimate basis of value. The work advances a documental ontology in which social objects emerge from recorded acts rather than intentions, displacing intentionalist frameworks. Within this docusphere, digitally archived behaviours constitute a new predictive and epistemic infrastructure. As productive labour wanes in the context of automation, consumption becomes the primary source of value, rendering the digitally recorded lives of all human beings a form of world heritage-collectively generated, collectively capitalised, and potentially redistributed according to need.