At a more macro level, the narratives concerning network work also signal a shift from a Fordist discourse of class to a post-Fordist discourse of networks. In the discourse of networks, individuals are construed as autonomous nodes and defined by their connections to other nodes in the network; the social world is seen as a flat, decentralized sphere of ever-flowing, multiple, and ad hoc assemblages. This is a stark contrast to the Fordist conception of the social sphere as consisting of a hierarchized, stable, and category-defined arena. While the discourse of class stresses structural power relations, the discourse of networks is devoid of such a conception of power and instead associates power with the characteristics of autonomous nodes (i.e., power resulting from ingenuity, techiness, nerdiness, and entrepreneurship). The digerati, the new protagonists of network work, can no longer be defined by their position in relation to production (i.e., by their class) but are defined in purely meritocratic terms, or in terms of their relationships with the key means of production, network technology (i.e., their technical expertise). In the same vein, the central mode of social action in the network discourse is that of cooperation rather than struggle or competition, which characterizes the discourse on class. The notion of network work and its grounding in a technological reality allow for the substitution of a hierarchical, competitive, and antagonistic model of class by a dehierarchized, cooperative, agreeable, and inherently inclusive model of networks.
The digital discourse on network work is understood in this book as an ideational structure that supports the transformations of work under post-Fordism. Specifically, the narratives of network work should be seen as an articulation—through mediation and naturalization of a technologistic language—of a response to the critique of Fordist capitalism centered on industrial technology and built on authority, hierarchy and centralization. The digital discourse tells of a radical break from industrial-age order, and network work and the digerati are seen as the complete opposite (and in fact rejection) of their industrial counterparts. The work process is seen as a site of emancipation and personal freedom rather than of alienation, and network technology is rendered an axis through which social tensions are alleviated.
DEHIERARCHIZATION AS CONTRO<sub>L</sub>
While capitalism, and the market in particular, is said to thrive on spontaneous order—the decentralized mechanism that self-regulates the actions of individuals—corporations, the staple of capitalist markets, have grown throughout most of the history of capitalism to rely on centralized, planned order. The technology of the bureaucratic organization was imported by capitalist corporations and the modern state from the military. It is there, specifically in Bismarck’s Prussian military, that an organization based on impersonal ranks (or offices), hierarchy, clear orders, and record keeping was implemented on a large scale (Sennet 2006, 18–37), bringing about the “militarization of civil society” (Sennet 2006, 20). Planning, centralization, and control were seen as indispensable tools for capitalist organizations to achieve economic rationality. The bureaucratic, economic organization achieved better efficiency, control, and predictability through the construction of a hierarchical architecture and centralized control mechanisms.
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Media and New Capitalism in the Digital Age