å Sunday, December 20th, 2015

“Free Labor” Tiziana Terranova

How does Terranova characterize the relationship of subcultural movements to capitalism?

Unfortunately I was not able to come for this class. However, the article by Tiziana Terranova, “Free Labor”, starts outlining what is digital economy, which emerged in the late 1990’s, is a “specific mechanism of internal capture of larger pools of social and cultural knowledge”(52). Furthermore, she starts explaining how digital economy has been a form of subculture to have its capital gains. Subculture is a ramification of culture itself, meaning that this one forms a connection between what already producing capital gain.

Terranova explains that monetary value comes from knowledge rather than labor and that the Internet itself is a mechanism of late capitalism meaning that is part of the subculture. As an example, music blog where independents singers post their music and others can use it as a form of capitalism, because system can extract as much value as possible from them. The subculture is composed between the culture, the cultural industry and labor; for example, small designers and as mentioned before independent music labors.

In chapter 6, “Drawing Lines”, Taylor describes how advertising is an important component of digital media. Media has always been advertised driven. Taylor argues about how individuals are bought with the ideal of something being free but in reality it isn’t. The attention economy focuses to sell personal information to others corporations, which labels and categorizes what individuals likes or dislikes. According to Taylor “Native Advertising” function is to adjust to the experiences of the users, specifically designed to satisfy the users, which is done by “creative strategists”. We are attracted with the ideal of things being projected as “free”, and get caught in the process, adding to more economical gain to the big corporations.

In addition, Taylor explains that because of the way that the market has distorted the content and persuading us with the latest technology. The economy has shifted of having new ways of attracting the consumers by being up-to-date and upgrading their gadget devices. Advertisement plays an important on digital media. Unfortunately, we are often unaware of the damages that we as consumers contribute too. E-waste is known as the disposal of electronic devices, gadgets, etc that in our eyes is out of fashion or as Taylor refers “ begin to look démodé” (Taylor, Loc:2841). E-waste is considered to be hazardous waste and difficult to disassemble. These are some of the new forms of economy of the digital era.