{"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":175,"pdf_page":177,"physical_index":177,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"fc70b8a11c00d22726857fc57c55e94e8494fc70dad9724d008cfa700f8e5531"},"chapter":"Media and New Capitalism in the Digital Age","content":"FROM IND<sub>U</sub>STRIA<sub>L</sub> H<sub>U</sub>MAN TO N<sub>E</sub>TWORK H<sub>U</sub>MAN\n\nThe construction of the industrial human during Fordism—while allowing smoother integration of humans into the industrial machine—is seen in retrospect in the digital discourse as a hindrance to human emancipation and growth because it did not resonate with the true essence of humans but, in fact, suppressed it. During industrialism, the flexibility of the human body, mind, identity, and unconscious encountered stifling machines. The interaction of humans with machine followed the rigid rationale of command. It was not, in fact, interaction at all. In the best case, humans utilized technology by command, and, in the worst case, humans themselves were co-opted into the technology, becoming cogs in the system. With network technology humans have a much deeper interaction, which results in fusion, integration, and merging, and in the construction of a new subjectivity. The blurring of the boundaries between humans and network technology allows for a more meaningful, emancipatory, and natural interaction of humans with technology and unleashes the emancipatory potentials of humans.\n\nWe should recall here how the disciplining of humans to industrialism in general and Fordism in particular has been conceived by Gramsci. It is precisely this sort of analysis at the beginning of Fordism that the digital discourse continues and responds to (short of Gramsci’s critical thrust). It is precisely Gramsci’s concerns that are presumed in the digital discourse to be overcome by network technology. It is therefore quite instructive to juxtapose the digital discourse’s construction (and celebration) of the network human with Gramsci’s critique of the industrial human, a reading that reveals the extent to which the network human is constructed as a response to the industrial human. In “Americanism and Fordism” (Gramsci 1971), written originally in the 1930s, Gramsci says that,\n\nthe history of industrialism has always been a continuing struggle (which today takes an even more marked and vigorous form) against the element of “animality” in man. It has been an uninterrupted, often painful and bloody process of subjugating natural (i.e. animal and primitive) instincts to new, more complex and rigid norms and habits of order, exactitude and precision which can make possible the increasingly complex forms of collective life which are the necessary consequence of industrial development. This struggle is imposedfrom the outside, and the results to date, though they have great immediate practical value, are to a large extent purely mechanical: the new habits have not yet become “second nature.” (Gramsci 1971, 298, emphasis mine)\n\nNetwork Human\n\n175","previous_page":174,"next_page":176}