{"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":89,"pdf_page":96,"physical_index":96,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"290b1a13dfefbe972f9cd4a69820b9943de0ce96699049b2c81d46548beb187d"},"chapter":"DIGITAL LABOR","content":"Technological advances in everything from product design software to digital video cameras are breaking down the cost barriers that once separated amateursfrom professionals. Hobbyists, part-timers, and dabblerssuddenly have a market for their efforts, as smart companies in industries as disparate as pharmaceuticals and television discover ways to tap the latent talent of the crowd. The labor isn't always free, but it costs a lot less than paying traditional employees. It's not outsourcing; it's crowdsourcing. (Howe 2006:1)\n\nCrowdsourcing as an alternative to traditional employment methods also signifies an unexpected return of the concept of the crowds to the agenda of the global North. But atthis time, its discursive signification is limited within the communities of the global South. As William Mazzarella expounds:\n\nCrowds, supposedly, belong to the past of the neoliberal democracies of the global North. By the same token, they also mark the present of non- or insufficiently liberal polities in the global South. .. crowds are the dark matter that pull the liberal subject from its past, whereas multitudes occupy the emergent horizon of a postliberal politics. (Mazzarella2010: 697)\n\nMazzarella finds the distinction between crowds and multitudes as parallel to the distinction between Foucault's “society of discipline\"and Gilles Deleuze's postindustrial “control society.\" While crowds correspond to industrial discipline, multitudes can only be considered in the context of the postindustrial control society where command by control is “fractal and aims to integrate conflicts not by imposing a coherent social apparatus but by controlling differences\" (Mazzarella 2010:700). Command by control also characterizes the mode of production in the postindustrial service economy with full integration of computers and digital networks.\n\nAt this point, it is useful to look at the concept of immaterial labor and some of the assumptions it conveys, because it is the most prominent activity that gives its characteristics to the multitude. Because of its reliance on the commodification of communication, which inherently forms social relationships, immaterial labor denotes the process through which “social\" becomes “economic.\" According to Maurizio Lazzarato, as an extension of the commodification of social relationships, the subjectivity becomes the “raw material\"of immaterial labor (Lazzarato 1996). This is partly because the “production today is directly the production of a social relation\" (Mazzarella 2010: 700). Here, the key assumption that needs to be challenged is that the economic expression of the social relationships happens in the same sociocultural environment. However, crowdsourcing unsettles this relationship because of its effect of deterritorialization.\n\nConsequently, we need to consider the production of subjectivity in the context of the global system of cognitive labor practices. Despite its similarity to the industrial commodity consumption/production cycles, the information production cycles are different in terms of their effects on subjectivity, since their immediate domain of effect is in the information and communication industry that forms the cultural fabric of the society by simultaneously constructing active consumer/communicator subjects. As a result, “[t]he productionofsubjectivity ceases to be only an instrument of social control (for the reproduction of mercantile relationships) and becomes directly productive\" (Lazzarato 1996: 1).But how wouldthis process still be valid when the communicator is no longer a consumer as a result of both the fragmentation of intellectual work and the global income gaps between the producers and the consumers of information commodities, or between the multitude and the crowd?\n\nReturn of the Crowds\n\n89","previous_page":88,"next_page":90}