{"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":29,"pdf_page":36,"physical_index":36,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"2158324f98920e73395b4e5f5f63a984f044119826a95e740380c4661b467704"},"chapter":"DIGITAL LABOR","content":"Foxconn's CEO, Terry Gou, launched an extensive public relations crusade in response to the outcry and promised to raise wages. The most telling response to the suicides, however, has been to move production inland to the western provinces; to Chongqing, 1,000 miles up the Yangtze River, to the Sichuanese capital of Chengdu, and to Zhengzhou, the capital of a province, Henan, that is home to one-fifth of Foxconn's workforce. The firm has a lot of company. In the biggest restructuring since the migration across the Taiwan Straits a decade ago, the entire PC industry looks to be moving lock, stock, and barrel to Chongqing and Chengdu to take advantage of the much cheaper labor, generous government subsidies (the result of fierce bidding among inland provinces), and locations that are farther removed from the scrutiny of labor and human rights groups. But this time, Foxconn is at the head of the pack, and its methods of labor discipline and vertical production models are setting the pace.27\n\nFoxconn's move to integrate production may seem like a throwback to the IBM model of the 1960s, when the original computer giant made everything in-house. So, too, Foxconn's vast, ruthlessly marshaled workforces are redolent of the Taylorism of the early twentieth-century assembly lines. Both of these industrial models are supposed to be gathering dust, irredeemably associated with the bygone era of mass society. Yet here they are, thriving at the profitable heart of one of the world's most advanced manufacturing sectors. For the best part of two decades, anti-sweatshop activists have tried to force consumers in the global North to confront the human costs that lie behind their clothing purchases. Whether the same moral crusade can be applied to information technology products remains to be seen. Apparel never had the air of magical production that sustains the aura of high-tech. For their part, Foxconn's Longhua workers used the most extreme means at their disposal to generate public attention—“To die is the only way to testify that we ever lived.\" Through their suicides, they spelled out the literal implications of the “dead labor\"precept used by Marx to explain the process of capitalist production. Nor are they likely to be the last to publicize their alienation in this way.\n\nTwo Ends of the Chain Gang\n\nIn Marx's well-known analysis, \"living labor\" is needed to reanimate the “dead labor\" embodied in factory machinery. As a result of the surplus generated (Marx described this as a vampiric act), capital is able to roam, zombie-like, wherever it pleases, until its profiteers are forced, under communism, to dig their own graves in an act of self-administered exorcism.\n\nIn the case of the new generation of work technologies, especially the mobile ones, the living labor is also allowed to range freely, choosing when and where to clock in, and whether to play along the way. In return for this rare permission, though not exactly out of gratitude, we seem to be offering up more and more of our work for free, or at a tidy discount. Mobile workers—whether they are\n\nIn Search of the Lost Paycheck\n\n29","previous_page":28,"next_page":null}