Audience manufacture, a salient topic in the digital labor discussion, reached a first height in the 1920s, when radio started to establish commonalities among suburbanites across the United States. Communities that were previously connected through national newspapers started to bond over radio and, starting in the late 1940s and 1950s, over broadcast television. Also cinema played a significant role in the capture of the masses and the creation of a common culture. Now, in the overdeveloped world, people are leaving behind their television sets—gradually but increasingly—in favor of communion with and through digital networks.
Beyond this historical context, Digital Labor: The Internet as Playground and Factory also contains the voices of those who are cautious of a discussion of digital labor altogether. Jonathan Beller and others remarked that we can fall victim to a technocratic fetishization of the Internet that takes away from a full acknowledgment of the “real" places of exploitation—namely the slums of economic developing countries. Digital laborin the overdeveloped world is contingent upon the sweat of exploited labor in countries such as China.
The focus on the Internet and the attendant issues of time theft and addiction may distract us from perhaps the most important issues of our time. Bluntly put, time spent on Facebook stops us from giving love and affection to others or from furthering projects that undermine capitalism. What's more, many people still labor on farms and in factories, and let's not forget the working poor, undocumented workers, and youth in rural areas for whom access to the Internet is not a given.
“The digital" does not sum up our entire condition. The essence of technology is not solely technological. But without fallingfor the fallacious rhetoric of “Twitter revolutions," digital media have also been instrumental for social movements worldwide. It is time to rethink well-worn conceptions of the digital divide by acknowledging the unprecedentedglobal turn in online sociability. While the 2 billion Internet users are indeed a global minority, the 5 billion people and their families who use cell phones are not. Facebook is becoming available on cell phones all across Africa, and it should be understood that digital labor is not just a predicament for the privileged few. Our silence will not save us from the tyranny of digital labor.
About the Organization of This Book
Following the structure of the Internet as Playground and Factory conference, this book is arranged in four parts. The first part, “The Shifting Sites of Labor Markets," introduces the broadest issues in the debate. The second part, “Interrogating Modes of Digital Labor," provides examples and case studies of emerging digital work environments. The third part, “The Violence of Participation," focuses on questions of exploitation. The fourth part, “Organized Networks in an Age of Vulnerable Publics,"reflects on near-future scenarios,including peer-to-peer alternatives.
Why DoesDigital Labor Matter Now?
3