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Interesting article on the impact of a like.

http://www.wired.com/2014/08/i-liked-everything-i-saw-on-facebook-for-two-days-heres-what-it-did-to-me

In considering what circulates in an attention economy, many of you pointed to the new forms of waste and notoriety that have come with the rise of digital media. Along with this understanding of what digital media generates (more celebrities and e-waste), Taylor suggests, albeit indirectly, that we ourselves are changing.

A pivotal moment in American media history that is mostly forgotten today, Taylor (2014:192) explains how the quiz show affair helped pave the way for public service broadcasting as well as for the principle that there should be clear boundaries that separate programming from marketing and editorial from advertising. But, she argues, digital media is allowing marketers to finally break through the wall that separates art and editorial information from product information. Advertisers no longer have to rely on publications to purchase audiences. The “content industry” has not been abandoned. But content “about the world” is no longer understood as divisible from “what is for sale.”

The Internet appears to be shattering an older, more established form of order that made self-promotion unnecessary and unsavory. But all of this has happened before. Technology commentators invoke Max Weber’s explanation of the Protestant Reformation to celebrate this transformation while Taylor notes a transformation of long-held views about the accumulation of capital in and for itself facilitated by the Reformation (Taylor, 2014:208-9). Accumulation of wealth became attached to a moral vision: a life viewed as both efficient and productive. The accumulation wealth was evidence, therefore, of an individual’s spiritual significance.

Perhaps we should ask whether these two realms (the “existing” world and what is “made for sale”) were ever as clearly distinguishable as we imagine them to be? Are we in the midst of another Reformation today where, with the rise of an “attention economy,” ourselves and our relationships are available for sale?

Hi – this is not an assigned response but I just learned about Peeple earlier today via an email from Diami. Included are two news links about this new app that allows users to rate other human beings.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/oct/01/peeple-review-people-the-user-review-app-you-didnt-dare-ask-for

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/09/30/everyone-you-know-will-be-able-to-rate-you-on-the-terrifying-yelp-for-people-whether-you-want-them-to-or-not/?postshare=6751443650043445

Additionally, there is a study out that confirms what I thought was common sense but essentially that staring into your phone and ignoring your significant other is bad for your relationship (shocker!)

http://www.baylor.edu/mediacommunications/news.php?action=story&story=161554

I’d also like to point out that the above study was conducted by a business school.

Last week we reflected on Taylor’s (2014) discussion of the “value” of creativity in the digital era. As many of you asked, both in class and on our website, does the Internet lower the value of creative work? I noted in response that we should consider as well a value for creativity that is not mediated by the labor contract. We find ourselves returning to this topic in chapter five with Taylor’s discussion of copyright.

As many of you note, Taylor notes the fundamental ambiguity of the word “free,” as it refers to what is considered inherently “public” as well as to commodities that are given away. Quoting Richard Stallman, she (144) explains “[t]here’s ‘free’ as in speech and ‘free’ as in beer.” Relative to this ambiguity, Taylor discusses the two sides of the “Copyright Wars.” On one side, we have those who argue that all art and culture should be free and open to the public and, on the other, those who believe culture and art are inherently forms of property that should be vigorously protected.

Relative to this divide Taylor notes a fundamental challenge to cultural ownership presented by the Internet as works of culture and art are “decontextualized, remixed, and mashed up.” She (2015: 145) writes:

“Artists who share their work with the world (or find it leaked) see it repurposed in ways they didn’t anticipate. The minute a film is released or an essay is published, it begins to race around the Internet, passed through peer-to-peer networks, posted on personal Web sites, quoted in social media streams. In one sense, therefore, any ownership claim is essentially fanciful, since, in practice, people’s creations circulate in ways they cannot control.”

On this point, Taylor (144) emphasizes a capacity of the Internet to decrease the value of creativity. She describes the Internet as a kind of copy-making machine, noting how we have moved from a creative economy of scarcity to one of abundance. The point underlined here is that the availability of culture and art online is diminishing our understanding of what these things are worth.

There is another question I would like to raise connected to the value of creativity as voluntary or leisure-based rather than resulting from contractual labor. Keeping in mind that Marx’s theory of value is focused on the social dimension of value production, his theory of value is quite different from Adam Smith’s “paradox of value” wherein diamonds are more valuable than water because they are less abundant. The value of a commodity for Marx is the amount of the socially necessary labor time crystallized in the commodity through the labor process. If value fluctuates, it does so because the social conditions of production change, not because a commodity is scarce or plentiful.

The reason why it is interesting to raise this point is because Taylor seems to be indirectly pointing to a more fundamental change that has come with the emergence of digital media. This is a change in how we conceptualize a commodity that is produced by labor that is not or not always contractual. More still, consumption now comes with forms of adoption and reconfiguration that suggests we, as users, are altered by the process of commodification.

Reading through your responses to Taylor this week, I found myself thinking about the relationship to labor that Karl Marx (1887) describes in Capital Vol 1. Many of you lamented the low value placed on creative work today. Some said the economy vacuums our creativity away while others argued it is the internet that alters creativity, making it less meaningful. I think it is helpful to review Marx’s concept of labor when thinking about the relationship of digital media to the new economy that Taylor describes. I’ve provided a short excerpt below. As illustrated in this passage, Marx wants us to remember that it is the act of buying and selling of human labor, its commodification, that differentiates “the worst architect from the best of bees” (345). This process of abstraction, of labor power from the human body, trains the efforts of the laborer (even a “creative” laborer) quite consciously on a preconceived structure–what the product of labor will be. Marx writes:

“Labour is, in the first place, a process in which both man and Nature participate, and in which man of his own accord starts, regulates, and controls the material re-actions between himself and Nature. He opposes himself to Nature as one of her own forces, setting in motion arms and legs, head and hands, the natural forces of his body, in order to appropriate Nature’s productions in a form adapted to his own wants. By thus acting on the external world and changing it, he at the same time changes his own nature. He develops his slumbering powers and compels them to act in obedience to his sway. We are not now dealing with those primitive instinctive forms of labour that remind us of the mere animal. An immeasurable interval of time separates the state of things in which a man brings his labour-power to market for sale as a commodity, from that state in which human labour was still in its first instinctive stage. We pre-suppose labour in a form that stamps it as exclusively human. A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labour-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement. He not only effects a change of form in the material on which he works, but he also realises a purpose of his own that gives the law to his modus operandi, and to which he must subordinate his will. And this subordination is no mere momentary act. Besides the exertion of the bodily organs, the process demands that, during the whole operation, the workman’s will be steadily in consonance with his purpose. This means close attention. The less he is attracted by the nature of the work, and the mode in which ‘it is carried on, and the less, therefore, he enjoys it as something which gives play to his bodily and mental powers, the more close his attention is forced to be” (345).

Marx’s understanding of the labor process involves a subordination of attraction to “the nature of the work,” a process he relates to imagining a product in reality. But Taylor wants us to differentiate the costs and risks of production inside the a web-based economy versus outside of it. As she writes, “[w]hile the economics of the Web might apply to remixing memes or posting in online forums, the costs and risks associated with creative acts that require leaving one’s computer behind have hardly collapsed” (2014:49). In this way, she seems to agree with those of you who argue that the internet makes creative work less meaningful.

But when we think about the relationship of the internet to creativity, it is interesting to return to Marx’s definition of the labor process. Because when we reflect on the examples that Taylor provides, that 85 percent of volunteer Linux developers are employed by large corporations or that publishing companies have learned to profit from fan fiction, it suggests a more fundamental transformation in the way we conceptualize politics and economy. In these cases, there is capacity for innovation that is being harnessed before the laborer enters the marketplace as a commodity (i.e., Linux developers and fan fiction writers are not engaged in a labor contract at the moment they are being creative, but wealth is being generated from this work regardless).

Hi Everyone,

I am new to WordPress and I am navigating around the system, hoping that I am in the right location and posting the right information.  I am familiar with Blackboard, and never worked on WordPress before, so forgive me for the late post and if it appears that I am in areas that I may not belong! LOL

In any event, I would appreciate it, if you can give me some pointers on the do’s and don’ts to this system.  I will take all constructive criticism and if I am in an area that I don’t belong, please tell me!  I’m learning slowly but surely, but this is a strange looking site, especially with those digital faces, and the dashboard is throwing me off!

Thanks!

Simone

Really nice job, all of you, thinking through some of the questions Astra Taylor (2014), Fred Turner (2006), and Trebor Scholz (2013) raise. Reading your responses prompted me to think more too. I’d like to highlight a few issues that cut across these works, about the connection of technology to operations of governance and economy. As many of you noted, the emergence of digital media alters assumptions about what divides labor and leisure, a change that has implications for the way we conceptualize the self. We will revisit this issue in the weeks ahead.

As we begin to question how digital media alters “the playing field,” it is helpful to note who the players are. With social media platforms like YouTube, WordPress, and Instagram, people with access can easily become self-publishing authors and artists. But, as Astra Taylor (2014:33) reminds us, we should not be quick to assume that “access” means the playing field is more level. The old-media model (legacy media) has not disappeared. Instead, many of these players (Conde Nast, Reddit, and Fox) have joined forces with new upstarts (Reddit, Vice Media, and Maker Studios). And though it is far easier to find an audience for your message, it is difficult for artists, musicians, and writers to make a living from this work.

In this age of oversharing, Trebor Scholz (2013) argues, we should not overlook that our preferences are being sold as user data by Facebook to advertisers. Scholz encourages us to consider how this alters the way labor is conceptualized. Questions about privacy rights are complicated by a blurring of the distinction between leisure and work. Some of you asked whether we are actively participating in our own exploitation. To this I would add whether we are now caught up in a boundless process of self-promotion?

Finally, Fred Turner (2006) notes how differently digital media is viewed in the 1990s in comparison with attitudes about computing in the 1960s. How did the association of computing with centralized bureaucracy become displaced with the utopic visions attributed to online communities today?

Hi everyone,

Welcome to Digital Media and Society. This class is an exploration of the connection of digital media to various social and institutional changes that have altered the nature of government, education, health, the news, and labor today.

A little bit about me:  I received my PhD in Sociology from the CUNY Graduate Center in May 2015.  My work addresses the influence of technology on the way social problems are conceptualized in the social sciences.  I study the history of information in connection to digital information technology.  When we study the connection of digital media to the way social problems are conceptualized, we begin to see how our behavior is changing. I am interested in exploring the implications of this shift.

Open whatever e-mail account you prefer to use to conduct class business.  In an e-mail addressed to me (@ ebullock@ccny.cuny.edu), please take a few moments to write down the username you would like to be associated with our course website as well as your first and last name.  Now spend a few minutes writing something about yourself and your relationship to digital media. In addition to telling us how you use the Internet (i.e., for shopping, news, to keep in touch with family) you can reflect on where and when you access the Internet or if there are times and places when you restrict your access.