{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a","title":"Media and New Capitalism in the Digital Age The Spirit of Networks","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781349379743","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a","id":"8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a","uuid":"8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a","title":"Media and New Capitalism in the Digital Age The Spirit of Networks","normalized_title":"mediaandnewcapitalisminthedigitalagethespiritofnetworks","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9781349379743","isbns":["9781349379743","9780230106062"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":258,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Media%20and%20New%20Capitalism%20in%20the%20Digital%20Age%20The%20Spirit%20of%20Networks","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/8a3d8546-8fbb-485e-b423-37bc08c3284a/search"},"page":{"printed_page":116,"pdf_page":119,"physical_index":119,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"5a0862e04406d0cf91a06206be5cd3b27783dad0a1adaa35cbf2d46ff9fdb293"},"chapter":"Media and New Capitalism in the Digital Age","content":"The network mode of production offers a way of responding to two demands that are at the heart of modernity: economic rationality and human emancipation. Not only were the two demands historically thought to be at odds with each other; moreover, the zenith of industrial society, with its centralized, mechanical technology and its organizational corollaries, came to epitomize the suppression of the demands for emancipation through work and technology. But now network technology is construed as the means by which the two demands can be met. Moreover, it is met not by a political, externally imposed compromise between contrasting interests (which was ultimately what the welfare state and Fordism was all about) but rather by their complete fusion or enmeshment through the internal rationale of network technology and its corollary, network production: “With open source, you’ve got the first real industrial model that stems from the technology itself, rather than simply incorporating it” (Goetz 2003). Network production absorbs both rationalization and emancipation and resolves their hitherto contradictory (and crisis-laden) tendencies.\n\nAccording to the digital discourse, network technology changes the balance of power between managers and capitalists on the one hand and worker and innovators on the other. In contrast with the assembly line, network technology puts the premium on workers—their skills, creativity, satisfaction, and their ability to control the process of production. In sociological terms, it allows for a process of reskilling after two-and-a-half centuries of deskilling (which many of the critics of technology—from the Luddites to Braverman, Noble, and Aronowitz—have been lamenting). And—echoing the language of Kelly—it puts “the people” back in charge (Goetz 2003).\n\nCrowdsourcing: Redrawing the Labor Line\n\nThe narratives of the digital discourse presented thus far assert the emancipatory effect that network production has on individuals, how it improves the rationalization of the process of production, and perhaps most important, how both emancipation and rationalization come to complement each other through network technology. The historically contradictory demands of capital, industry, efficiency, competition, and productivity on the one hand and the demands of labor, satisfaction, creativity, cooperation, and personal fulfillment and authenticity on the other hand come into alignment with the introduction of network production and, as a result, persistent tensions that characterized industrial production are resolved. But what are the terms of this resolution? If capital and labor align along a shared line, what is the shape of this line, and what is the topography of the terrain it traverses? To uncover some of those terms of truce between the demands for accumulation on the one hand and emancipation on the other hand, I will examine a key innovative technique of network production: crowdsourcing. The practice is relatively new and marginal in quantitative terms (i.e., it is not a dominant mode of production in contemporary capitalism). But because it is such an exemplary case of network production, the discourse on crowdsourcing helps uncover the hegemonic dimensions of the digital discourse in general. I will focus on two articles in Wired that report on crowdsourcing.\n\n116\n\nMedia and New Capitalism in the Digital Age","previous_page":115,"next_page":117}