4.4.7. Liquefaction
Paid labour in the culture industry is also becoming more like play today. The playground-like Google ofices that at a first glance hide the inhumane reality of working long hours are the best example. Among others, Gill (2002) as well as Hesmondhalgh and Baker (2011) show the ambivalence of much creative industry work that is precarious, but cherished, because of the fun, contacts, reputation, creativity, self-fulfilment, and self-determination that it tends to involve. The dificulty is that labour feels like play and that exploitation and fun thereby become inseparable. Play and labour are today in certain cases indistinguishable.
The liquefaction of boundaries between labour/play, working time/leisure time, production/consumption, the ofice and the factory/the home, the public/the private is one of the tendencies of contemporary capitalism. It is however not the only or main feature of modernity as claimed by Bauman (2000/2012) who speaks of liquid modernity. Liquefaction is rather combined with other developments of modernity such as neoliberalism, individualisation, globalisation, financialisation, the commodification of everything, informatisation etc. that are constitutive for the continuity of capitalism through creating discontinuities.
4.5. Herbert Marcuse, Ideology and Social Media
4.5.1. Technological Rationality
Herbert Marcuse used the term ‘technological rationality’ for describing the phenomenon of instrumental reason. He wanted to express that ideology and manipulation try to make human consciousness and human behaviour function like an automatic machine that has only a limited set of available response behaviours. Technological rationality contains ‘elements of thought which adjust the rules of thought to the rules of control and domination’ (Marcuse 1964b, 138). Technological rationality denies that reality could be other than it is today. It neglects alternative potentials for development. It aims at ‘liquidating the oppositional and transcending elements’ (Marcuse 1964b, 56). Technological rationality causes a one-dimensional thinking, in which ‘ideas, aspirations, and objectives that, by their content, transcend the established universe of discourse and action are either repelled or reduced to terms of this universe (Marcuse 1964b, 12).
Herbert Marcuse and Social Media
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