MOBI<sub>L</sub>IZING N<sub>E</sub>TWORK Q<sub>U</sub>A<sub>L</sub>ITI<sub>E</sub>S TO PROD<sub>U</sub>CTION
From the point of view of Lego, outsourcing the development of Mindstorms had nothing to do with economic gains, according to the article, but rather was a more radical attempt to take advantage of the new and promising qualities of networks. “The boldest part of the Mindstorms overhaul,” the article argues, “is Lego’s decision to outsource its innovation to a panel of citizen developers” (Koerner 2006; emphasis mine). In this language, workers, professionals, and engineers are deemed citizen developers. The use of the word “citizen” distinguishes them from the bureaucratized ranks of Lego employees. Their identity as citizens, rather than the rank and file of the Lego organization, supposedly unfetters in them some quality (Creativity? Joy?) that is deemed missing from Lego employees. For Lego, network production is likened to bringing in a breath of fresh air (with “citizens”) and ventilating the stultifying closed ranks of a military-like institution. Like the aforementioned “white lab coat” (Howe 2006), “citizen developers” also connotes the army as the archetypical bureaucratic organization.
Network production, according to the digital discourse, offers a revitalization of a dead-end production process, reigniting it with enthusiasm and fresh creativity. The article even recommends that this production strategy be imported to other Lego products: “Who,” it asks rhetorically, “would know better how to improve the company’s building systems than the people who spend hundreds of hours preparing for Brickfest [a convention of Lego fans] every year?” (Koerner 2006). Play, creativity, fun, enthusiasm, and leisure—features associated with the consumption of Lego products—are rendered forces of production in the digital discourse. Instead of wasting them, network production allows for their commodification and introduction into the production process of knowledge-intensive components, and in turn increases their value. The move, therefore, is complementary: network production accommodates the “libidinal” energies of workers, and these energies, in turn become new forces of production.
Concurrently, underlying this model is the assumption that since such play is done anyway, it requires no compensation. The rationalization is similar to other cases of nonpaid labor, such as child care and housework, which are perceived to be done by women “anyway,” or even “naturally,”
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