{"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":123,"pdf_page":126,"physical_index":126,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"4cb9a9209e153bdd4603833a4e2bb78b90bd27a6c4ab666c70805562674d418c"},"chapter":"Media and New Capitalism in the Digital Age","content":"CROWDS AND ENTHUSIASTS\n\nNetwork production allows for a significant reduction in production costs by creating a business model based on the labor power of uncompensated and undercompensated laborers. But more than that, network production seems to be dependent on a new social compact, where “the people” receive more opportunities to engage their skills, creativity, hobbies, and passions and corporations receive hitherto unexploited sources for capital accumulation. On the other side of the coin, “the people” give up stable compensation schemes embedded in institutionalized employment and corporations surrender their claims for authority, professionalism, and control over content. The full scope and significance of this new social compact is unraveled in another case study of crowdsourcing, which goes to the heart of the new capitalism: the use of network production for research and development (R&D).\n\nNetwork production can not only help mobilize the crowd in general but also separate the wheat from the chaff and get the best out of the crowd of highly skilled and professional individuals. “Not everyone in the crowd wants to make silly videos,” posits the article. “Some have the kind of scientific talent and expertise that corporate America is now finding a way to tap” (Howe 2006). The underlying assumption in this statement, and indeed throughout the story, is that the old way of tapping into people’s talent and labor power—by employing them—fell out of favor and that network production offers new ways to do it; indeed, network technology facilitates new relations of production.\n\nThe story focuses on one such professional—a retired physicist named Ed Melcarek—and one such mechanism for tapping into talent—the Inno-Centive Web site. Companies, the article says, are restructuring their R&D departments in accordance with crowdsourcing: “Forward-thinking companies are changing the face of R&D. Exit the white lab coats; enter Melcarek—one of over 90,000 ‘solvers’ who make up the network of scientists on InnoCentive, the research world’s version of iStockphoto” (Howe 2006).\n\nThe shift is from a standing army of scientists—tenured, employed full-time, and receiving benefits—to a reserve army in the form of a networked crowd. The reference to the “white lab coats” is telling: a staple, perhaps, of scientists’ habitus (like a physician’s stethoscope or a professor’s book under the armpit—a tool that is at the same time a professional signifier) but also an allusion (or a connotation, in Barthes’s terms) to a much deeper set of meanings. A white lab coat is the “uniform” of the worker; it stands for tenure, for being an integral part of a greater system—a peon perhaps, but a member nonetheless, without which the structure will not survive. The white coat—like the white collar and blue collar—is the emblem of the bureaucratic organization of industrial society par excellence. The figurative “exit the white lab coats” is therefore literal as well: exit tenure, mass employment, working class, collective bargaining, and so forth.\n\nNetwork Production\n\n123","previous_page":122,"next_page":124}