In this formulation technologies of production are central tools in the reproduction of social relations, and technology in the workplace plays a central role in the reproduction of a capitalist class structure throughout the industrial era. But how, according to the digital discourse, does this nexus of technology, work, and class change with the introduction of network technology into the equation? What does the new nexus look like? This chapter examines the digital discourse at the intersection of network technology and the world of work. It asks what, according to the digital discourse, happens to the workplace, and the world of work in general, upon its integration into network technology. This chapter explores these questions through three narratives. The first narrative concerns the blurred boundaries between work and leisure, work space and life space, and work time and private time. The second narrative concerns the blurred boundaries between capitalists and workers, bosses and employees, that is, those who own the means of production and those who do not. These two narratives, I suggest, downplay the significance of power in the new informational mode of production and give prominence to network technology as the sole coordinate of social power. This conceptual move is further explored in the third theme, which highlights the prominence of professionalism and meritocracy and the centrality of network technology in their construction. Network technology becomes for the informational worker not only an instrument and a vehicle to define his class position but also the prime source of the self, a central axis to define the worker’s social position.
82
Media and New Capitalism in the Digital Age