{"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":87,"pdf_page":94,"physical_index":94,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"e036e9ca23f4c78d17123269ebc7c5061f5e9577175b6a37cb4ac716a93f4ca5"},"chapter":"DIGITAL LABOR","content":"of a manufactory in which the division of labor, both mentally and bodily, is admirably illustrated, and in which also the effect of the domestic economy is well exemplified. It is scarcely imagined, by the thousands who read that paper in various quarters of the globe, what a scene of organized activity the factory presents during the whole night, or what a quantity of talent and mechanical skill put in action for their amusement and information (Babbage 1963: 216).\n\nFollowing Adam Smith's analysis in The Wealth of Nations, Babbage thought that the process of division of mental labor would serve for the eventualgoal of transferring the functions of the human cognitive labor to the operations of a machine. Thus, for Poe, chess-playing automaton, with its allusions to such a \"manufactory of information\" processing, must have posed an uncanny puzzle also for its implications about the exchange value of his previously irreplaceable intellectual labor. In one of his later speculative narratives, Poe depicted von Kempelen as an alchemist who transforms lead into gold, which results in an enormous reduction of the value of gold and an inflation in the price of lead in international markets.13 This narrative could be read as an allusion to the expected decline in the exchange value of the intellectual labor as an unavoidable outcome of the mechanization of reason through a division of cognitive labor.\n\nThe imminent threat for the privileged labor position of the enlightened subject as a result of the division of cognitive labor was already under way in the 19th century. Industrial capitalism's premise was that any of the roles in the socioeconomic chessboard could be played by anyone when these functions are regulated into smaller units through industrial organization.\n\nThis social program as an instance of the expansion of the Cartesian mechanistic universe is mainly guided by the flow of human thinking into computational organizations and apparatuses, including the state. In this volume, Jonathan Beller's essay emphasizes this point through a close reading of Villem Flusser's works. Particularly, the scientific discourse of the Enlightenment led the trend toward the encoding of human thought into numerical representations. My historical analysis considers the Chess Playing Automaton as one of the behavioral prototypes of this trend inhabiting the associated tensions of the emergent apparatuses that later realize these initially imaginary encodings into commodified social and cultural programs such as cameras or computers. In fact, Flusser finds similarities between photographers’ attempts to find possibilities within the program of the camera and the chess players’ pursuit of finding new possibilities in the program of chess (Flusser 2000: 27–30). In both instances, humans and apparatuses merge into a unity, which explains how human functionaries of apparatuses both control them and are controlled by them. These apparatuses, as a codified set of social relations, are integrated into other socioeconomic apparatuses ranging from industrial production regimes to disciplinary apparatuses of the state. By emphasizing this particular definition of apparatus, Jonathan Beller guides us through a potential and common risk of ignoring the socioeconomic ground of their emergence,\n\nReturn of the Crowds\n\n87","previous_page":null,"next_page":88}