Reading 3
“Free Labor: Producing Culture for the Digital Economy” by Tiziana Terranova
http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/technocapitalism/voluntary
Extra credit reading:
“Access as Advertising: Selling Solutions That Must Never Solve”
by Nathan Martin with Carl D. and Hans M. for the Carbon Defense League
http://www.carbondefense.org/writing_8.html
Reading response question for “Free Labor”:
“In the overdeveloped countries, the end of the factory has spelled out the obsolescence of the old working class, but it has also produced generations of workers who have been repeatedly addressed as active consumers of meaningful commodities. Free labor is the moment where this knowledgeable consumption of culture is translated into productive activities that are pleasurably embraced and at the same time often shamelessly exploited.”
Terranova’s essay was written in 2000. Yet much of what she states about free labor still pertains to the present moment.
Define the following terms used in the essay and give examples of how each term still exists in 2007:
knowledge worker
gift economy
free labor
12 Comments
Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI
Leave a comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Knowledge Worker: An immaterial laborer involved in an activity not normally recognized as work, such as cyber work. Specialized skills held by a knowledge worker are used to develop immaterial commodities found in the public domain (i.e. Internet) like culture or public opinions.
*An example of this would be any one who uses the Internet as a means of business and communications. Web designers, programmers, the ordinary person selling good on e-bay and so on and so on. Anyone whose means of lively production surrounds the use of the Internet as a means of support and existence.
Gift Economy: Cooperative exchange that happens on the Internet through the interactions of participants and their ideas. The exchange is a community based activity that allows people from anywhere in the world to work together to build systems, contribute to news groups, and freely exchange ideas.
*A current but ever changing example of this idea would be groups like second life, where there are open dialogues between people so that the game can develop and grow as a community. Of course this example is flawed because of the simple fact that there is currently an exchange of actual money happening, but in its core set up the idea (according to me) is that there would exist a place and community built by the exchanges of users ideas in a forum that was reflective of the real life world.
Free Labor: Unpaid labor towards the development of cyber communities and spaces defined by the users. A somewhat exploited labor that came about from people actively building the Internet through web pages and so on to create communities that could be shared and grown by other users. It simply means there was no commerce exchange for the produced labor, but that their work may have produced commerce for others.
*An example of this would be something like when people submit photographs to news stations or news publications for free to contribute to their websites. Take National Geographic magazine. They recently opened up a space in their magazine as well as website to amateur photographers to contribute a photo (on a juried basis) to their publication to make their company more accessible to its readers. The contributors do not get paid for their submissions but help contribute to the magazine and website. Call it a labor of love.
A knowledge worker could be classified as someone who does work that others might not consider real work. Such things would fall under the category of free labor much of the time, although free labor is not necessarily limited to knowledge workers. Proper management and providing environments that encourage the growth and development of knowledge workers is sometimes difficult, but critical, as the commodities provided by these workers are invaluable to today’s society. Examples of knowledge workers today are numerous; web developers, people who participate in open-source projects, etc.
Gift economy is an economy based on the free exchange of ideas and goods. The examples of this today are much the same as in 2000, although possibly more prevalent now than back then. The exchange of music, movies, pictures, free games… the list goes on. Sites such as YouTube are a great example of this type of free exchange.
Free labor is “voluntarily given and unwaged, enjoying, and exploited” labor. These things might include web development, mailing lists, open-source work, forums, blogs, and virtual spaces. These things are typically taken for granted, and the people who work hard to provide them don’t always receive the credit (or rewards) that they deserve. Free labor could be considered the backbone of the internet, which is a huge part of our contemporary society.
Russell
knowledge worker: As used in the essay, a knowledge worker is someone who engages in work that is not typically considered “work,” or whose work is primarily immaterial and intangible rather than physical. A knowledge worker’s work is conceptual, based on ideas or social processes. The end results of their work may not come in forms that are ordinarily associated with work, or are not directly quantifiable in the same way other products are. An example of a knowledge worker could be a blogger. While they may not necessarily be compensated for their work, they are contributing to the collective intelligence of the internet.
gift economy: A gift economy is an economy based on the free exchange of information and other assets. Items are exchanged without want for reimbursement or other gain. It is based more on the idea of benefiting the group as a whole rather than the individual. An example of the gift economy could be Wikipedia. Individually, users can contribute and edit entries within the encyclopedia. The efforts of the individuals benefit the encyclopedia as a whole. Other users can then use the articles created and edited by the efforts of the community, and further benefit from the project.
free labor: Free labor is the “muscle” behind the creation and distribution of assets. Free labor is, by definition, unpaid work, which fits into the “gift economy” in the way that it is freely created and shared. Free labor workers do what they do out of a sense of personal duty or fulfillment, and for the good of the community, rather than for monetary gain. An example of a free labor worker could be someone with a personal website. They can use this platform to convey and share any information they choose, which benefits the internet as a whole through the contribution of new information. They are considered “free labor” if they are not compensated for their efforts, which is often the case. They do what they do out of personal interest rather than for personal gain.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=synxFmQJ_0A
Thats a YouTube video about how campanies can incorporate their products into second life. It kinda answeres the question ‘is Second Life liesure or work’. I guess it’s both!
Ashley
Knowledge Worker: Someone who works on more of a cultural basis on the internet rather than for business or work. Both cultural and business work are very important to the internet (“After all, if we do not get on-line soon, the hype suggests, we will become obsolete, unnecessary, disposable. If we do, we are promised, we will become part of the “hive mind”…intelligent subjects in charge of speeding up the rhythms of capital’s “incessant waves of branching innovations.”
I guess a basic idea would be a kid who develops his own website to share his views on the world could eventually one day be a website designer. The way I understand this, knowledge workers could essentially be working under ‘disguised affirmation’.
Gift Economy: What was once a free flowing river of information between users (“they collaborate with each other without the direct mediation of money and politics”), the internet has now built a damn in which you need to pay money or sign up to access what was once, free information. If not information, than business. The essay stated “unconcerned about copyright, [users] give and receive information without thought of payment”. Now people charge money for stock photos, or they sell and buy on e-bay.
Free Labor: Is free labor. Volunteers. Electronic sweat shops. It was established as free labor because no one was compensated for the work they did (i.e. building a community) but it was also free because it was usually done in a leisurely way on leisure time. A great example would be Facebook. People sometimes spend hours posting comments, replying on forums, and chatting with their friends. They are basically keeping the site alive through and information exchange.
So true: “Television and the Web converge in the one thing they have in common: their reliance on their audiences/users as providers of the cultural labor that goes under the label of “real-life stories.” –Wired magazine
Companies are taking what ordinary people post online and using it as their own material. (i.e. Vh1’s Web Junk 20)
Ashley
Knowledge Worker: - A person whose work deals primarily with insubstantial commodities such as the webdesigner whose efforts produce something which ultimately is not tangible in the real world, and whose efforts are not generally considered to be “labor”. In todays society we still see knowledge workers; a good example of which are the numerous people making money selling virtual commodities in virtual worlds or even those people filling out surveys for a few extra pennies. Their efforts are still not really seen as labor, yet the y make money and their product is ultimately non existant.
Gift Economy: - Human intelligneces working within an open organizational structure rooted in collaboration. We see lots of examples of this still today. Countless forums online for everything from home improvement to Computer programming. A good example might be the Open Source Movement as would be communal online games that allow groups of people to come together online and create things together or share knowledge. Second Life and WoW are good example of such
Free Labor: - Unpaid work that is done by people who generally do not consider what they are doing to be “work”, the outcome of which generates money to the recipient of the work. Myspace, is an example of free labor. Here we have one of the world’s largest consumer databases, over 100 million people for advertisers to ply their ware against, and it was all essentially put together by the world at large with no compensation for their work. It might be argued that their compensation was in the services, but that would be another way they hide the fact that it is free labor
Knowledge Worker: Someone who performs work that is not typically recognized as work. These workers use specific skills to develop immaterial commodities.
- an example of a knowledge worker would be gold farmers over different games such as world of warcraft or second life
Gift Economy: A common use of the internet to convey ideas and opinions allowing people from around the world to work together to help better one certain and common idea.
- an example of gift economy is a test realm, or beta testing for a certain game. Using these tools, game developers take the opinions of the users to help better the game as a whole.
Free Labor: In its simplest terms, work that is free, commonly done over the internet. This work often benefits others by producing a product that results in an income for these other people.
- an example of free labor would be youtube videos. Often times people submit videos to show off their work, but if a news station or newspaper find these works to be extraordinary they may use them in a segment or story.
-Scott W.
These three terms are all interconnected and they are all based on the economy that the internet has created.
1. Knowledge Worker: This is someone who has certain skills that do not directly produce a real-life product, but some sort of valuable information. For the internet and computers, the most obvious examples of this type of worker would be the web designer, programmers, system analysts and researchers. However, this type of worker is not limited to the internet. People like teachers, lawyers, students are all part of an economy that is based strictly on knowledge.
2. Gift Economy: It is “a potlatch economy of free exchange”. The flow back and forth of ideas and information is unrestricted. Money and politics have no role in this economy. It seems to be an economy that relies on free labor to get its “work” done. The whole internet is an example of a gift economy because all it is, is the free flow of information. The term used when talking about this free flow is “Network Neutrality” or Net Neutrality. There are companies that want to control this flow of information by giving the sites that pay the most money, the faster speed, while smaller sites will be much slower. This the market economy threatening the gift economy of the internet and I believe it is inevitable in our capitalist economy. There are people out there who are trying to stop this from happening (www.savetheinternet.com).
3. Free Labor: This can be tied into the previous essay about hobbies and disguised work. Free labor on the internet is the work done by users that makes someone, somewhere, some money. However, these users are not making any profit from doing what they do. The workers do not consider what they are doing work because they are doing it under their own will and are enjoying it. An example of this would be YouTube, especially now since it is owned by google. The users of the site produce all this content for the site and while google is making the money, the users make none. However, I have actually heard that google is now paying some of the more popular users on the site.
Terranova’s essay was written in 2000. Yet much of what she states about free labor still pertains to the present moment.
Referring to 2000 in such an obvious past tense makes me feel old.
Define the following terms used in the essay and give examples of how each term still exists in 2007:
knowledge worker
A knowledge worker is one who profits from intangible products. Work in this field does not fall under labor in the traditional sense. An example of this would be an interface designer. The end product really isn’t much on its own, but combined with content, it facilitates the “user experience,” ultimately benefiting the content provider.
gift economy
Any sort of organized free trading of date to create either a source of information or a product falls under a gift economy. This is perhaps best defined in open source software. Software is created with input from anyone who has something to contribute to it. It is distributed without cost to the user, and potentially has an indefinite development cycle.
free labor
Free labor is the most brilliant concept ever conceived by man. The act of creating an environment in which anonymous people will want to work without pay is an inexpressibly pure form of genius that few of us can only hope to experience. Google, for example, recently started up an image tagging game. Here are the instructions:
You’ll be randomly paired with a partner who’s online and using the feature. Over a two-minute period, you and your partner will be shown the same set of images and asked to provide as many labels as possible to describe each image you see. When your label matches your partner’s label, you’ll earn points depending on how specific your label is. You’ll be shown more images until time runs out. After time expires, you can explore the images you’ve seen and the websites where those images were found. And we’ll show you the points you’ve earned throughout the session.
For example, this image can be described by the labels: sky (50 points), bird (60 points), soaring (120 points), or frigate bird (150 points).
http://images.google.com/imagelabeler/
And for what? Points and a potential spot on the leaderboard. And Google gets an in depth database of tagged images at no real cost to them. Brilliant.
Knowledge Worker:
Different from traditional laborers, they have a hard time being managed by management that cannot understand or match their skills. Knowledge workers are specialized intelligent workers of the internet and the digital economy. They have a fragmented hierarchy of social and economic status which includes Multimedia artists, writers, journalists, software programmers, graphic designers, and activists
Gift Economy:
An economy of free exchange of goods and ideas underlies the gift economy. It is seen in the forms of free media, software, and information available on the internet. Gift economies go against the capitalist tradition of property, copyright, and privatization. In this sense the gift economy is linked to communism, where the products produced by free laborers are available to everyone.
Free Labor:
Consists of work produced that may not be material. Free laborers often have skills and knowledge that are not easy to understand. Together, free laborers are said to make up the important collective that invents the selective commodities popularized in the post-industrial digital economy. Often many of the products produced by these free laborers (ie: open-source software, in development, and free software) are important because they lead to development of software used by businesses for profit.
http://beyuu.net/blog/?p=37
“knowledge workers”:
people who use of internet engines like limewire for sharing software, music, video, etc could be an example of “knowledge workers”. Most of these engine sites also have forum where people can exchange knowledge and ideas of, or just plain comments on, on related subjects. for instance, one user could post a comment that a downloaded software did not launch, while another who knows his way around handling cracks, could post a solution and help users with limited knowledge to reap “profit” from his knowledge. Terranova does mention that “knowledge worker” is a “very contested sociological category” to be looked at in terms of “quantifiable parameter” and that a better approach would be to think of the concept of “immaterial labor” that can transgress class and skills of the “workers”
“gift economy”:
in the example above, the digital economy is based on a collaborative network of sharing of digital products and knowledge rather than monetary buy-sell structure that most software companies bank on.
In a way, this makes me think of an attempt to go back to pre-monetary market where people bartered items they produced and acquired with neighbors or visitors rather than through exchange of a in-between medium of money. Gift economy seems to try and attain even freer form of exchange through voluntary contributing to and taking from a collective pool of intelligence and material rather than exchanging A for B. The interesting irony here is the appropriation of this concept of gift economy into “free stuff” employed by capitalist corporations to ensure buyers, turning what probably started out as an idealistic anti-capitalist movement into a device of the capital
“free labor”:
going back to the above example, the knowledge workers engage in “free labor” such as contribution of their knowledge, communication with other users. Other examples could be building websites, blogging, being a part of communication network like MySpace, etc.
Here again, what probably started out as enjoyment and leisure as opposed to labor, is constantly appropriated by larger companies. While rise of cyberpunks’ involvement in cyberspace that started off as an alternative to the capitalist marketplace is eventually taken up and up-scaled for massive profit by the capitalist market resulting in corporations like microsoft and apple. In Terranova’s words:
“Incorporation is not about capital descending on authentic culture but a more immanent process of channeling collective labor (even as cultural labor) into monetary flows and its structuration within capitalist business practices.”