Penelitian ini berusaha menggambarkan bagaimana situasi dan kondisi ekonomi-politik kontemporer bergulir. Realitas ekonomi politik kontemporer dianggap mengalami perubahan besar-besaran. Lebih tepatnya, realitas ekonomi-politik telah memasuki paradigma baru dimana informasi dan komunikasi menjadi variable sentral di dalamnya. Penelitian ini mengambil kasus freeware, suatu teknologi yang berakar dari penciptaan komputer dan internet di abad ke-20, untuk menjustifikasi bahwa realitas sosial-ekonomi-politik kontemporer bergulir seperti gambaran Antonio Negri dan Michael Hardt. Hal ini terkait dengan keberadaan kapitalisme postmodern yang berupa Empire, terjadinya produksi biopolitis sebagai corak produksi kontemporer, keberadaan immaterial labor, eksploitasi pada masyarakat secara menyeluruh di level global, hingga Multitude yang dianggap mampu melakukan perlawanan. Keseluruhan rangkaian fenomena tersebut dianggap terjustifikasi dengan keberadaan freeware. Freeware dianggap mengandung sendi-sendi kapitalisme postmodern, khususnya menyoal informatisasi dan komunikasi.

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This research is trying to explain how the contemporary political economic reality works. The contemporary political economic reality is assumed to have been totally transformed. Specifically, political economic reality has turned into a new paradigm which information and communication become the central variable in it. This research takes freeware, a technology which rooted from the discovery of computer and internet on the 20th Century, to justify that the contemporary political social economic reality woks as how Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt explain it. This is related to the existence of postmodern capitalism which formed as Empire, the existence of biopolitical production as a form of contemporary production, the existence of immaterial labor, the exploitation which happened totally to the social reality on global level, also Multitude which was born internally and oppose the Empire itself. The totality of theat combination will be explained as justifiable to the exsistence of freeware. Freeware is justified containting those principle of poatmodern capitalism, especially when it comes to the exploitation of information.