Lego not only tolerated the hacking of Mindstorms but actively encouraged it, and the company “wrote a ‘right to hack’ into the Mindstorms software license, giving hobbyists explicit permission to let their imaginations run wild.” As one executive explains, “We came to understand that this is a great way to make the product more exciting. It’s a totally different business paradigm—although they don’t get paid for it, they enhance the experience you can have with the basic Mindstorms set” (Koerner 2006; emphasis mine). Network production then is conceived in the digital discourse to extract from users a new source of value and incorporate it into its products. The value produced can be conceived both as “exchange value” (money) and “use-value” (fun and creativity) (Marx 1990, 125–31); while much of the exchange value is produced by consumers, it is transferred almost in its entirety to Lego. Admittedly, the use-value of the product for consumers is enhanced.
NETWORKS HAVE CENTERS<sub>,</sub> TOO
While the digital discourse constructs each and every node in the network as ontologically or qualitatively equivalent to any other node, network architecture is not necessarily flat and decentralized and can also work to exacerbate the power of one node at the expense of others. In fact, power differentials between nodes can be conceived as relational and dialectical (Bauman 1998; Castells 1996; Sassen 2001). Hence, even thought the narrative is one of mutuality between corporations and individuals as simply two nodes on the network of production, a closer reading highlights the asymmetry between the two—an asymmetry that seems to lie at the heart of network production.
The asymmetry between Lego as a strong node in the network of production and the MUPers as creative and skillful individuals that Lego is able to harness for its production process is reflected in the photographs of the main protagonists of the article (Koerner 2006). The photo of the Lego executives is a group photo; they are all copresent at the same time and in the same place.<sup>13</sup> The place is unmistakably a workplace: a large conference table in a large conference room (cutely decorated, naturally, given the nature of Lego’s products). In fact, the location can almost definitely be identified as Billund, Denmark, Lego’s global headquarters. This corporate photo can be contrasted with the photos of the four MUPers featured in the following page.<sup>14</sup> These are four individual photos taken at different times and in different places. The mies-en-scène in all of them is quite evidently not a work environment or an office but the MUPers private residences or private labs. The exact locations cannot be identified and could indeed be anywhere around the globe.
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Media and New Capitalism in the Digital Age