{"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":156,"pdf_page":163,"physical_index":163,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"1f6a3032e730d8d21f5cac0816679cea02427b1844c5b2bbe7b325732b3a8a64"},"chapter":"DIGITAL LABOR","content":"The obvious objection is that going online to converse, shop, explore, and network is clearly not a form of wage labor, even if people are in a sense compensated with free access to useful resources in exchange for submitting to detailed forms of value-generating monitoring. This activity is not a job (at least not for most of those who go online): they are not submitting their activity to the direct dictates of a supervisor, and they are not receiving wages. Exploitation can clearly take place in the absence of wages, but does it retain any meaning in a context in which users do not sacrifice control over their productive activity?The question is potentially misleading insofar as the digital environment facilitates what might be described as a redoubling of creative or productive activity. When we create a blog or post an item on Facebook or even purchase an item or view a web page, we do so in ways that are, in many cases, unsupervised and minimally controlled. At the same time, however, we generate information about our activities over which we sacrifice control in exchange for access to the infrastructure and the services it supports. In a sense, then, we lose control over some aspects of our online productivity even when this remains free from familiar forms of oversight and control.\n\nJust as we sacrifice a degree of control over the use of our productive activity when we enter into a workspace, so too do we sacrifice a degree of control over how our activity is used when we agree to the terms of service for a particular website or online service (or even when we browse the Internet, which collects information about our activities without notifying us). Those who control the means of online sociability have the power to set the terms of access, and these terms include the establishment of certain rights over the information provided by users—rights that tend to be outlined in cursory, oftenincomprehensible and qualified fashion. Separation (the private control over online resources for sociability) begets separation (the establishment of rights of use over information generated by users). The various “terms of use” and end-user license agreements posted by social networking sites establish their rights over the use, sale, and transfer of information collected online.\n\nThat is to say, forms of socializing, interacting, and transacting that once relied upon other resources, as well as new forms of sociability, are increasingly dependent upon an infrastructure provided by a third party. This is not to say that the introduction of a third party is entirely novel. Certainly the phone company, for example, served as a for-profit intermediary (although not an advertising-supported one). In the current context, rather, we can identify an increasing tendency toward the use of a commercially supported mediatedinfrastructure for a growing range of activities: the replacement, for example, of a cash purchase in a store by an online purchase; the tendency to text a friend or a colleague in the next dorm room or office instead of knocking on his or her door; as well as the creation of new forms of socialitó that are integrally tied to developing commercial infrastructures (such as \"friending\"someone on Facebook), and so on. When we are separated from the means of socialization, this does not mean we do not have access to them; rather, we come to rely upon the provision by their parties of technologies for socialization that separate us from the information upon which our social lives rely. Crucial resources for interaction are no longer in our own hands (at least to the extent that they once were), but are stored in servers owned and controlled by commercial entities.\n\n156\n\nThe Violence of Participation","previous_page":155,"next_page":157}