{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"a31b1606-7526-4f42-a12d-1edcb41ff0e7","title":"DIGITAL LABOR THE INTERNET AS PLAYGROUND AND FACTORY","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780415896948","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"a31b1606-7526-4f42-a12d-1edcb41ff0e7","id":"a31b1606-7526-4f42-a12d-1edcb41ff0e7","uuid":"a31b1606-7526-4f42-a12d-1edcb41ff0e7","title":"DIGITAL LABOR THE INTERNET AS PLAYGROUND AND FACTORY","normalized_title":"digitallabortheinternetasplaygroundandfactory","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780415896948","isbns":["9780415896948","9780415896955","9780203145791"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":267,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/a31b1606-7526-4f42-a12d-1edcb41ff0e7","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/DIGITAL%20LABOR%20THE%20INTERNET%20AS%20PLAYGROUND%20AND%20FACTORY","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/a31b1606-7526-4f42-a12d-1edcb41ff0e7/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/a31b1606-7526-4f42-a12d-1edcb41ff0e7/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/a31b1606-7526-4f42-a12d-1edcb41ff0e7","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/a31b1606-7526-4f42-a12d-1edcb41ff0e7/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/a31b1606-7526-4f42-a12d-1edcb41ff0e7/search"},"page":{"printed_page":106,"pdf_page":113,"physical_index":113,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"2059570304c1b6bd58387c232143e6445d547b5f572678247d9e7e6fc5a2dca2"},"chapter":"DIGITAL LABOR","content":"Terranova also addresses the contradiction inherent in affinity groups about which Hills writes—that is, the contradiction between communities' feeling that what they do is not work and does not warrant compensation versus the communities' creation of a great deal of real economic value. Terranova observes that “the sustainability of the Internet as a medium depends on massive amounts of labor (which is not equivalent to employment [.. . ]), only some of which was hypercompensated by the capricious logic ofventure capitalism (during the late 1990s dot-com boom). Ofthe incredible amount of laborwhich sustains the Internet as a whole (from mailing list traffic to websites toinfrastructural questions), we can guess that asubstantial amount of it is still freelabor.\"\n\nFree labor, however, is not necessarily exploited labor. Within the early virtual communities, we are told, labor was really free: the labor of building a community was not compensated by great financial rewards(it was therefore free, unpaid), but it was also willingly conceded in exchange for the pleasures of communication and exchange (it was thereforefree, pleasurable, not imposed).20\n\nThe fact that members of self-organizing communities such as the first AOL chat groups did not mind giving away their labor mirrors the way that fans freely donate their time, energy, and creativity to makingfan productions that they then share online; both groups do it for the “pleasures of communication and exchange,\" and both groups feel their Internet labor is “not-imposed.\" Terranova refers to the Internet “gift economy\"21 as one framework that affinity groups use to characterizetheir modes of exchange without pay, but the fact that groups do not regard what they voluntarily do as work does not make it less valueproducing. “[I]n 1996, at the peak of the volunteer moment [in AOL chat room moderation], over30,000community leaders' were helping AOL to generate at least \\$7 million a month,\"22 Terranova states. Today, the fan moderators, writers, and artists who post andcomment on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites number in the millions, and their activities contribute to far more massive corporate revenues than the \\$7 million monthly garnered by AOL in the late1990s.\n\nRoss, in his lecture “On the Digital Labor Question,\" builds on Terranova and Hills, emphasizing that the United States is transitioning to an \"Internet-based economy based on the widespread use of non-paid oramateur user labor.\" For Ross, this transition raises numerous questions about fairness of wages and working conditions that both corporate employers and creative workers are, for the most part, ignoring. Ross writes:\n\nIn the world of new media, where unions have no foothold whatsoever, the formula of overwork, underpayment, and sacrificial labor is entirely normative. The blurring of the lines between work and leisure, the widespread use of amateur or user input on the Social Web or in open source, and the systematic expropriation of Tiziana Terranova first described as “free labor\" has promptedsome commentators to ask whether the experience of digital environments should direct us to rethink entirely our basic understanding of labor and enterprise.23\n\n106\n\nInterrogating Modes of Digital Labor","previous_page":105,"next_page":107}