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# Media and New Capitalism in the Digital Age The Spirit of Networks
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C H A P T E R 5
Network Production
The previous chapter looked at the transformations in the world of work in the confines of the workplace. It asked how, according to the digital discourse, the old dynamics of work and structures of power in the industrial workplace have been transformed by their integration into network technology and how this has transformed the social structure in general. The current chapter ventures out of these boundaries and examines the digital discourse at the intersection of network technology and the process of production in general and the completely new dynamics that it brings about. According to the digital discourse, network technology does not simply change how companies do business and how production is carried out within the traditional workplace; it also makes a complete transformation of the very process of production. The chapter asks what, according to the digital discourse, happens to the process of production when it is integrated with network technology. Specifically, how are labor and production reshaped and redefined, and what are the broader social ramifications of these transformations? In short, what is network production?
According to the digital discourse, network technology allows for a more democratic, participatory, and inclusive mode of production. It reinvigorates the process of production, making it more humane and engaging for individuals by welcoming and harnessing human facets, such as authenticity, personal expression, and creativity, that have been excluded from production up to this time. In that context emerges the process of prosumption, a hybrid of production and consumption that renders both practices more engaging, participatory, and fulfilling; here also emerges the “prosumer” as a key social actor. Network production also facilitates the crystallization of emergent, self-governing, and self-regulating collaborative projects, such as open source. The intrinsic flexibility of networks allows for a more sophisticated utilization of resources such as play, joy, and free time that can be harnessed for wealth creation. In that respect, network production allows for a more rational process from a systemic point of view as well. The chapter presents key terms in the discourse on network production (e.g., prosumption, open source, flexibility, democracy, participation, interactivity, and so forth) and uncovers their hegemonic dimensions—that is, their fit into the operation of the new capitalism.
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Power to the People:
Democratization and Individual Empowerment
According to the digital discourse, network production entails more than what managerial discourse calls “streamlining” (i.e., the rendering of preexisting production processes more smooth and efficient). While this quantitative progress no doubt takes place, it is the qualitative and revolutionary leap brought about by network technology that is of greater consequence. Network production is production made not simply better, but different. It entails a new gestalt, the full scope of which could not have been fully materialized and grasped only a few years back, not even through much of the history of digital technology. While the history of the digital discourse, and Wired as its epitome, is relatively short, one can nevertheless delineate a trend whereby networks are increasingly seen as the centerpiece of the digital revolution, displacing both information and communication.
At first, the information revolution was seen in the digital discourse as being anchored in the ability to translate the world into binary code—to informationalize it and hence subject it to computational manipulations. The technological centerpiece of that discourse was therefore the standalone computer—a machine of great autonomous computational ability (exemplified in mainframes, artificial intelligence, robots, etc.)—and applications such as Word and Excel. Then the interconnection of individual computers over communication lines and the ability to transfer information and eradicate time and space was seen as the hallmark of the information revolution. The technological emblem of communication was the infrastructure of the Internet and applications such as e-mail clients and Web browsers. Most recently, the network—not simply as a channel for the transfer of information between nodes, but as a site unto itself—has displaced both information and communication as the central locus of the information revolution. While here, too, the Internet is the centerpiece technology, this latest phase is distinguished in the digital discourse from the previous one with such terms as “second-generation Web” (Anderson 2006), or “Web 2.0” (Levy 2005), referring to network-based applications such as Wiki (which enables Wikipedia), Google, blogs, and MySpace, which are based on activation and production of content by users. Google, for example, can be seen as an application for the accumulation and organization of information regarding users’ choices; MySpace and YouTube are only as vibrant and dynamic as their users. Hence, a recent article in Wired identifies the “death” of the PC as one of the leading trends in digital culture and the digital economy in particular and declares “Desktop R.I.P.” (Tanz 2007). The PC, the article announces, is being replaced by “the cloud” (Tanz 2007)—that is, the network.
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The potential of the network to bring about a new and revolutionary mode of production is explored in an opening article of a special issue of Wired for the tenth anniversary of the Web, a date marked by the initial public offering (IPO) of Netscape (Kelly 2005).1 For Kevin Kelly, the author of the article, the abstract, ideal-typical “network” receives a concrete technological articulation in the form of the Web. Kelly asks two questions: What is the new mode of production brought about by the Web? And what is the major social meaning of that? The title and subtitle of his article make the following statement: “We are the Web. The Netscape IPO wasn’t really about dot-commerce. At its heart was a new cultural force based on mass collaboration. Blogs, Wikipedia, open source, peer-to-peer—behold the power of the people” (Kelly 2005).
Contrary to the commercial-oriented framework by which the Web was understood in the 1990s (testified by such terms as the “dot-com boom,” or the “new economy”), Kelly offers a completely different narrative, one that takes production out of its strictly economic context. Network production, he suggests, is about the empowerment of “the people.” This proposition brings two questions to mind: Who are the people? And what is the new power they are endowed with thanks to network technology? According to Kelly, the most exciting potential of the network is in allowing individuals to come together and unleash a powerful, creative, and democratic force of production; the new mode of production is based on the collaborative work of individuals. The Web allows for “a new kind of participation that has since developed into an emerging culture based on sharing” (Kelly 2005). That means that production—here Kelly focuses mostly on cultural production—has been democratized: “Suddenly it became clear that ordinary people could create material anyone with a connection could view. The burgeoning online audience no longer needed ABC for content.”
This democratization further means that professionals and experts no longer dominate the processes of production; now Web “users” (in Kelly’s terms) do most of the work. In managing auctions, for example, “they photograph, catalog, post, and manage their own auctions.” This collaborative mode empowers individuals and is democratizing in another important way: not only does it allow lay individuals to engage in production;
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such collaborative organization requires nobody to be in charge, thereby flattening out hierarchies and eliminating filters set by power structures. Again, in the case of auction sites, individual nodes in the network mode of production (i.e., individual users) “police themselves . . . The chief method of ensuring fairness is a system of user-generated ratings. These billion feedback comments can work wonders” (Kelly 2005).
The grassroots character afforded by the Web empowers “the people”— the little men, the individuals—rather than (or better yet vis-à-vis) large institutions such as states and corporations. Therefore, this new network production entails, according to Kelly, a radical break from the old economy and even from some of the fundamental tenets of capitalism. First and foremost, the new world of production, brought about by the Web, is “manufactured by users, not corporate interests.” What’s more, users’ behavior does not follow the capitalist rationality of profit maximization. Speaking of blogs, Kelly points out that “these user-created channels make no sense economically.” The “time, energy, and resources” involved in bringing about such products are “coming from . . . the audience” rather than from the traditional wage laborer. In addition, the fruits of such labor are also increasingly noncommercial. All of these examples, says Kelly, crystallize into a “gift economy,” where “all [is] given away for free” (Kelly 2005).
The network mode of production undermines traditional conceptions of production and consumption. It “permits easy modification and reuse, and thus promotes consumers into producers,” transforming many endeavors “from spectator art to participatory democracy.” The Web allows the transformation of passive audiences into content providers and of consumers into producers; it “assumes participation, not mere consumption,” and ushers in a “great shift from audience to participants.” The Web allows the sort of engagement with the world that follows the logic of interaction. It involves “deep enthusiasm for making things, for interacting more deeply than just choosing options . . . This impulse for participation has upended the economy and is steadily turning the sphere of social networking—smart mobs, hive minds, and collaborative action—into the main event” (Kelly 2005).
Network production, according to this, is not only postcapitalist; by breaking the dichotomy of production/consumption and producer/consumer, it is postproletariat and postconsumerist as well. Thanks to the Web, creativity, enthusiasm, cooperation, and personal expression are reintroduced into the spheres of production and consumption from which they have been traditionally excluded and revitalize them. With network production, individuals are no longer simply peons of a consumerist mass society; they regain their agency and independence through production and consumption. Kelly predicts that the Web will bring further democratization by toppling a mass homogenized society and providing greater opportunities for individuals to be creative and self-expressive. “The Web,” he says, “continues to evolve from a world ruled by mass media and mass audiences to one ruled by messy media and messy participation . . . In the near future, everyone alive will (on average) write a song, author a book, make a video, craft a weblog, and code a program” (Kelly 2005).
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In such mass popularization and democratization of production on the Web, no one, says Kelly, would be a consumer. Such passive categories as consumers and audiences would simply vanish, because what matters on the Web is not audience; “what matters is the network of social creation, the community of collaborative interaction that futurist Alvin Toffler called prosumption . . . Prosumers produce and consume at once” (Kelly 2005). Power is delivered to “the people” by the democratization and decentralization afforded by network technology, which in turn allows participation and collaboration. As the means of production are democratized, so is the mode of production and social relations in general.2
But the collaborative nature of network production not only empowers individuals, enabling a more democratic participation and a more engaged and satisfying experience in production. Kelly’s insistence that “the sphere of social networking . . . [is] the main event” of the network society is backed by another set of arguments. The end result of these collaborative efforts—the what that is being produced (i.e., the network as a product) also turns out to be superior to anything we have experienced in the past. The network as an end result functions as a depository of knowledge, furnishing humans with a newfound and a quasi-transcendental view of the world: “This view is spookily godlike. You can switch your gaze of a spot in the world from map to satellite to 3-D just by clicking. Recall the past? It’s there. Or listen to the daily complaints and travails of almost anyone who blogs (and doesn’t everyone?) I doubt angels have a better view of humanity” (Kelly 2005).
The Web with a “scope . . . [that] is hard to fathom” (Kelly 2005), expands our ability to know the world and ourselves like never before. But more than merely a passive archive of knowledge, the network becomes an active living brain, a “collective intelligence,” in the terms of Pierre Levy (1997). According to Kelly, “The ways of participation unleashed by hyperlinks are creating a new type of thinking—part human and part machine—found nowhere else on the planet or in history” (2005).
Such intelligence can only come about as a result of the collaborative efforts of individuals, since it is based precisely on the democratic and decentralized process of network production that allows individual users to collaborate and work together as a hive. In network production, the seemingly consumerist action of each individual also alters the nature of the product, making it better. For example, Kelly explains that “Google turns traffic and link patterns generated by 2 billion searches a month into the organizing intelligence for a new economy” (Kelly 2005). Another example is Wikipedia, the online collaborative encyclopedia: “Each time we forge a link between words [by clicking a hyperlink] we teach it an idea . . . Wikipedia encourages its citizen authors to link each fact in an article to a reference citation. Over time, a Wikipedia article becomes totally underlined as ideas are cross-referenced” (Kelly 2005).
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Kelly’s enthusiasm is predicated on the network as both a process of production and as its end result. On both accounts, the network is superior to previous forms of the organization of production. As a process, it is more democratic, more engaging and satisfying to individuals, and more empowering to them. As an end result, or product—either as collective intelligence or simply “culture”—it is able to deliver a superior product compared with previous modes of production. In short, Kelly is able to connect an ethics of democracy, individual autonomy and empowerment, and ungovernability, together with the traditional ethics of capitalism, focused on productivity and the quality of the end product.
Let us now return to Kelly’s proclamation at the top of his article— “behold the power of the people”—and to the questions I have posed about it: Who are “the people,” and what is the kind of power that network technology gives them? And, what does it tell us about the spirit of networks? The double-spread image that precedes Kelly’s article encapsulates some revealing answers.3
The image is comprised of sixty-three portraits of individuals. What can we tell about these people? They seem to differ in almost every respect: age, habitus, class, race, and lifestyle. In fact, their common denominator could only be inferred in the context of the article: they are all connected to the Web. They are the Web, as the article’s title maintains—truly the “family of Web users.” As the image reveals, “the people” of the digital discourse are not a monolithic group; the image is decidedly not a group photograph. “The people” of Kelly’s Web are not copresent in the same place at the same time; they most likely do not know each other. They are facing us (or outward) rather than each other (or inward), and each is surrounded by a clear boundary from the others, leaving each in his or her own “bubble.” “The people” are autonomous units, the interrelatedness of which is only possible through their interconnection by network technology, or the Web. “The people” are individuals who are able to come together while retaining their individuality, a loosely connected network of individuals who assemble ad hoc; they are minimally related, but their relation is dependent upon the glue of network technology. “The people” are the new army of network production.
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Open Source:
Fusing Rationalization and Emancipation
One of the technological emblems of network production as contributing to the power of “the people” is the open source architecture. The term “open source” referred originally to software products but came in the digital discourse to epitomize and indeed stand for the revolutionary potentialities entailed by the broader phenomenon of network production. Its broader political and social ramifications are frequently referred to in the context of the “open source movement,” or “open source culture” (see, for example, the entry “open source” in Wikipedia). Let me start with a brief explanation of what open source is. Computer programs, such as Web browsers, word processors, or games, are written in a specialized programming language as lines of code. Once written, this collection of command lines, or source code, is habitually sealed (both technically and legally) so that users can run the program and use it as an application but have no access to its source code, its underlying programming text. From the point of view of software companies, this helps protect their proprietary rights, ensuring that their investment in writing the source code yields profit. From the point of view of users—specifically hackers and other tinkerers—the implication is that the program is a sealed product that cannot be altered and modified to their individual needs, nor can parts of it be copied and used as a basis for further development of software products. The open source movement reverses this situation by making the source code of the software technically and legally open; users have free access to it and can modify it to their needs or use parts of the code in order to build new software products. This, of course, has far-reaching implications for the process of production, as well as for the legal status of the end product.
One of the original open source projects, as well as arguably one of the most famous and successful ones, is Linux. Linux is an open source operating system inaugurated in 1994 by Linus Torvalds as an alternative to the existing proprietary operating systems of Microsoft and Apple. Torvalds wrote the kernel of the operating system, posted its source code on the Web, and invited other programmers to tinker with it and improve on it. It has since sprawled to become a viable (though still weak) competitor to the mainstream, proprietary operating systems and is now used by more than 18 million people around the world and in varied machines, from cell phones to servers (Rivlin 2003).
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Wired’s cover story of Linus Torvalds and Linux demarcates the two issues around which the discourse on open source revolves: collaboration (the subtitle of the article hails Linux as “the biggest collaborative project in history”) and property rights (the title hails Torvalds as “leader of the free world”; Rivlin 2003). These two concerns correspond to the more general template of discussion I identified previously: networks as a production process and networks as a product. On both concerns, the digital discourse suggests open source resolves and transcends the problematics of the old capitalism. It offers a more democratized and decentralized production process and a product that empowers individuals and individualism by being nonproprietary. Linux, and open source in general, epitomizes the new mode of network production based on collaboration, a template for the transformation of the whole mode of production in contemporary society, and with it the transformation of society as a whole. The article on Linux in fact ends with a prediction that the open source model will be exported from software to other human activities and in turn “catalyze stagnant sectors of the economy—or, better yet, create new economic sectors” (Rivlin 2003).
This prediction is explored in another article, in which the author finds “open source everywhere” (Goetz 2003). The article discusses open source as a generalized template for social production. The revolutionary crux of open source as an epitome of network production is anchored, according to the digital discourse, in the new and improved mechanism for the division of labor that it facilitates: “Open source harnesses the distributive powers of the Internet, parcels the work out of thousands, and uses their piecework to build a better whole . . . It works like an ant colony, where the collective intelligence of the network supersedes any single contributor . . . In 2003, the method is proving to be as broadly effective—and, yes, as revolutionary—a means of production as the assembly line was a century ago” (Goetz 2003).
This framework locates network production on the continuum of the process of the rationalization of production. What Adam Smith’s division of labor and Friedrich Taylor’s scientific management are for the wake and the zenith of the industrial era, respectively, so is the digital discourse’s open source for the emerging network revolution: all allow for the creation of a superior product, or “a better whole,” by implementing ever more sophisticated means of coordination between fragmented and differentiated parts of the labor process.
However, as this framework suggests, open source is not simply a continuation of the rationalization of production. It also constitutes a radical break in that, for the first time since the industrial revolution, the rationalization of the work process through technology helps workers realize their freedom rather than contribute to their alienation. For the first time, this rationalization process is not only harmless to its practitioners, but, quite the contrary, it benefits them. Put differently, in contrast to previous advances in the mode of production, open source responds not only to the rationalization demands of production but also to the emancipatory demands of workers. Reiterating Kelly’s discourse on the Web, the discourse on open source also fuses democracy and capitalism together, heralding the emergence of a more democratic and emancipatory form of rationality:
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Open source embodies an ethos as fruitful and resilient as the closed capitalism Bill Gates represents: the spirit of democratic solutions to daunting problems. It’s the creed of Emerson, who preached independent initiative and advocated a “creative economy.” It’s the philosophy of William James, whose pragmatism dictated that “ideals ought to aim at the transformation of reality.” It’s the science of Frederick Taylor, who proved that distributing work could exponentially boost productivity and replace “suspicious watchfulness” with “mutual confidence.” It’s the logic of Adam Smith, whose notion of “enlightened self-interest” among workers neatly presages the primary motivation for many open source collaborators. (Goetz 2003)
Open source represents a new kind of capitalism, characterized as open (as opposed to “the closed capitalism Bill Gates represents”), democratic, conducive to individual independence and creativity, pragmatic, decentralized, collaborative, and distributive. The brilliance of open source, according to this narrative, lies neither in just being “for the people” nor in just being a new and powerful source of wealth creation for corporations; rather, its revolutionary potential lies precisely in being both—in bridging and even transcending contradictory interests. That is set in contrast to the old capitalism, which responded only to its systemic demands and neglected to respond to the lifeworld demands of freedom and creativity.
The digital discourse sees open source not as “anticommercial or anticorporate” (Goetz 2003), as some commentators suggest, but rather as a new and improved form of capitalism that is more democratic and emancipatory. As the next passage (which could easily pass as a quote from The Communist Manifesto) exclaims, open source offers a superior capitalist tool and also holds the promise of workers’ emancipation, a truly universal instrument benefiting both capitalists and workers: “While the assembly line accelerated the pace of production, it also embedded workers more deeply into the corporate manufacturing machine. Indeed, that was the big innovation of the 20th-century factory: The machines, rather than the workers, drove production. With open source, the people are back in charge. Through distributed collaboration, a multitude of workers can tackle a problem, all at once. The speed is even greater—but so is the freedom. It’s a cottage industry on Internet time” (Goetz 2003).
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The network mode of production offers a way of responding to two demands that are at the heart of modernity: economic rationality and human emancipation. Not only were the two demands historically thought to be at odds with each other; moreover, the zenith of industrial society, with its centralized, mechanical technology and its organizational corollaries, came to epitomize the suppression of the demands for emancipation through work and technology. But now network technology is construed as the means by which the two demands can be met. Moreover, it is met not by a political, externally imposed compromise between contrasting interests (which was ultimately what the welfare state and Fordism was all about) but rather by their complete fusion or enmeshment through the internal rationale of network technology and its corollary, network production: “With open source, you’ve got the first real industrial model that stems from the technology itself, rather than simply incorporating it” (Goetz 2003). Network production absorbs both rationalization and emancipation and resolves their hitherto contradictory (and crisis-laden) tendencies.
According to the digital discourse, network technology changes the balance of power between managers and capitalists on the one hand and worker and innovators on the other. In contrast with the assembly line, network technology puts the premium on workers—their skills, creativity, satisfaction, and their ability to control the process of production. In sociological terms, it allows for a process of reskilling after two-and-a-half centuries of deskilling (which many of the critics of technology—from the Luddites to Braverman, Noble, and Aronowitz—have been lamenting). And—echoing the language of Kelly—it puts “the people” back in charge (Goetz 2003).
Crowdsourcing: Redrawing the Labor Line
The narratives of the digital discourse presented thus far assert the emancipatory effect that network production has on individuals, how it improves the rationalization of the process of production, and perhaps most important, how both emancipation and rationalization come to complement each other through network technology. The historically contradictory demands of capital, industry, efficiency, competition, and productivity on the one hand and the demands of labor, satisfaction, creativity, cooperation, and personal fulfillment and authenticity on the other hand come into alignment with the introduction of network production and, as a result, persistent tensions that characterized industrial production are resolved. But what are the terms of this resolution? If capital and labor align along a shared line, what is the shape of this line, and what is the topography of the terrain it traverses? To uncover some of those terms of truce between the demands for accumulation on the one hand and emancipation on the other hand, I will examine a key innovative technique of network production: crowdsourcing. The practice is relatively new and marginal in quantitative terms (i.e., it is not a dominant mode of production in contemporary capitalism). But because it is such an exemplary case of network production, the discourse on crowdsourcing helps uncover the hegemonic dimensions of the digital discourse in general. I will focus on two articles in Wired that report on crowdsourcing.
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