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Reconsidering Value and Labour in the Digital Age by Christian Fuchs,Eran Fisher Pdf
This volume explores current interventions into the digital labour theory of value, proposing theoretical and empirical work that contributes to our understanding of Marx's labour theory of value, proposes how labour and value are transformed under conditions of virtuality, and employ the theory in order to shed light on specific practices.
Digital Labour and Karl Marx by Christian Fuchs Pdf
How is labour changing in the age of computers, the Internet, and "social media" such as Facebook, Google, YouTube and Twitter? In Digital Labour and Karl Marx, Christian Fuchs attempts to answer that question, crafting a systematic critical theorisation of labour as performed in the capitalist ICT industry. Relying on a range of global case studies--from unpaid social media prosumers or Chinese hardware assemblers at Foxconn to miners in the Democratic Republic of Congo--Fuchs sheds light on the labour costs of digital media, examining the way ICT corporations exploit human labour and the impact of this exploitation on the lives, bodies, and minds of workers.
The Impact of Digitalization in the Workplace by Christian Harteis Pdf
This edited volume brings together researchers from various disciplines (i.e. education, psychology, sociology, economy, information technology, engineering) discussing elementary changes at workplaces occurring through digitalization, and reflecting on educational challenges for individuals, organizations, and society. The latest developments in information and communication technology seem to open new potential, and the crucial question arises which kind of work can be replaced by technology? The contributors to this volume are scholars who have been conducting research on the influence of technological change on work and individuals for a long time. The book addresses researchers as well as practitioners in the field of adult education and human resource development.
Digital Labour, Society and the Politics of Sensibilities by Adrian Scribano,Pedro Lisdero Pdf
This volume provides a multidisciplinary perspective on a set of transformations in social practices that modify the meaning of everyday interactions, and especially those that affect the world of labour. The book is composed of two types of texts: some dedicated to exploring the modifications of labour in the context of the ‘digital age’, and others that point out the consequences of this era and those transformations in the current social structuration processes. The authors examine interwoven possibilities and limitations that act in renewed ways to release/repress the creative energy of human beings, just a few of the potential paths for investigating the connections between work and society that are nowadays involved in the battle of sensibilities.
Digital Labour and Prosumer Capitalism by Mathieu O'Neil,Olivier Frayssé Pdf
In the digital age tasks are increasingly modularised and consumers are increasingly becoming prosumers. Replacing digital labour and prosumption within an American context and the wider political economy, this volume presents a critical account of the forces which shape contemporary subjects, networks, and labour practices.
This book offers a critical account of Karl Marx’s dazzling theory of labour power which is also one of the most influential concepts in the history of contemporary philosophy. Labour power is the dark side of the digital revolution. Working men and women are invisible and treated like human service, flesh and blood automatons or organic extensions of a machine that produces data on its own. Automation is viewed as something magic made possible by algorithms whose life is independent of human beings. Labour power, however, has not disappeared. Without drivers, Uber cannot connect customers on its platform; without searches on its browser, Google grinds to a halt; without us, Facebook or Instagram is desert. Labour power is the dwarf hidden inside the puppet of technology that allows algorithms to be intelligent and make the biggest profits in the history of capitalism. The invisible centrality of labour power is the political enigma of our times. Today a new account of the theory of labour power is needed more than ever in order to understand the political economy of digital capitalism on new grounds. Unlike a long tradition in the history of work, labour power is not only the work or the data it produces, but a potency that does not coincide with its current commodification. The actuality of labour power does not exhaust the virtuality that can be actualised by its faculty. Even when reduced to a commodity, labour power does not exhaust the potency of its being otherwise. Immersed in the constant propaganda that boosts the latest technological inventions, we neglect the fact that this wealth is produced by us and that it could be ours precisely because it is a part of our potential to be other than what we are at present. This book is a vibrant invitation to consider the fact that we are always connected with the potency that is constantly at work in our life. If this were not the case, we would not be alive. If we do not strive to become consciously and collectively active, we will never know.
This third volume in Christian Fuchs’s Media, Communication and Society book series illuminates what it means to live in an age of digital capitalism, analysing its various aspects, and engaging with a variety of critical thinkers whose theories and approaches enable a critical understanding of digital capitalism for media and communication. Each chapter focuses on a particular dimension of digital capitalism or a critical theorist whose work helps us to illuminate how digital capitalism works. Subjects covered include: digital positivism; administrative big data analytics; the role and relations of patriarchy, slavery, and racism in the context of digital labour; digital alienation; the role of social media in the capitalist crisis; the relationship between imperialism and digital labour; alternatives such as trade unions and class struggles in the digital age; platform co-operatives; digital commons; and public service Internet platforms. It also considers specific examples, including the digital labour of Foxconn and Pegatron workers, software engineers at Google, and online freelancers, as well as considering the political economy of targeted-advertising-based Internet platforms such as Facebook, Google, YouTube, and Instagram. Digital Capitalism illuminates how a digital capitalist society’s economy, politics, and culture work and interact, making it essential reading for both students and researchers in media, culture, and communication studies, as well as related disciplines.
Consuming the Body examines contemporary consumerism and the commodified construction of ideal gendered bodies, paying particular attention to the new forms of interaction produced by social networking sites. Describing the behaviours of an ideal neoliberal subject, Woolley identifies modes of discipline, forms of pleasure, and opportunities for subversion in an examination of how individuals are addressed and the ways in which they are expected to respond. Key modes of address that compel the consumer to consume are: sadistic commands communicated in adverts, TV programmes and magazine articles; a fetishistic gaze that dissects the body into parts to be improved through commodification; and a hystericized insistent presence that compels the consumer to present their body for critique and appreciation that is exemplified in the selfie. Woolley interprets the visual characteristics of different types of selfies, including #fitspiration, #thinspiration, #fatspiration, and #bodypositivity to understand how they relate to current body ideals. Healthism and culture bound illnesses such as hysteria and eating disorders are examined to demonstrate the impact of commodified body ideals on consumers' bodies. An analysis of thinspiration images (photographs of emaciated bodies shared on pro-eating-disorder blogs and websites) suggests that the anorexic body represents the logical (and fatal) end point for the idealised body in consumer culture. Fat acceptance selfies suggest there is a fourth mode of address, empowering presence that has the potential to liberate consumers from the 'trap of visibleness' produced by the other three modes of address. In conclusion, the book identifies some creative methods for producing selfies that evade commoditisation and discipline.
Peer to Peer by Michel Bauwens,Vasilis Kostakis,Alex Pazaitis Pdf
Not since Marx identified the manufacturing plants of Manchester as the blueprint for the new capitalist society has there been a more profound transformation of the fundamentals of our social life. As capitalism faces a series of structural crises, a new social, political and economic dynamic is emerging: peer to peer. What is peer to peer? Why is it essential for building a commons-centric future? How could this happen? These are the questions this book tries to answer. Peer to peer is a type of social relations in human networks, as well as a technological infrastructure that makes the generalization and scaling up of such relations possible. Thus, peer to peer enables a new mode of production and creates the potential for a transition to a commons-oriented economy.
Feminism, Labour and Digital Media by Kylie Jarrett Pdf
There is a contradiction at the heart of digital media. We use commercial platforms to express our identity, to build community and to engage politically. At the same time, our status updates, tweets, videos, photographs and music files are free content for these sites. We are also generating an almost endless supply of user data that can be mined, re-purposed and sold to advertisers. As users of the commercial web, we are socially and creatively engaged, but also labourers, exploited by the companies that provide our communication platforms. How do we reconcile these contradictions? Feminism, Labour and Digital Media argues for using the work of Marxist feminist theorists about the role of domestic work in capitalism to explore these competing dynamics of consumer labour. It uses the concept of the Digital Housewife to outline the relationship between the work we do online and the unpaid sphere of social reproduction. It demonstrates how feminist perspectives expand our critique of consumer labour in digital media. In doing so, the Digital Housewife returns feminist inquiry from the margins and places it at the heart of critical digital media analysis.
The Spectacle 2.0 by Marco Briziarelli,Emiliana Armano Pdf
Spectacle 2.0 recasts Debord's theory of spectacle within the frame of 21st century digital capitalism. It offers a reassessment of Debord’s original notion of Spectacle from the late 1960s, of its posterior revisitation in the 1990s, and it presents a reinterpretation of the concept within the scenario of contemporary informational capitalism and more specifically of digital and media labour. It is argued that the Spectacle 2.0 form operates as the interactive network that links through one singular (but contradictory) language and various imaginaries, uniting diverse productive contexts such as logistics, finance, new media and urbanism. Spectacle 2.0 thus colonizes most spheres of social life by processes of commodification, exploitation and reification. Diverse contributors consider the topic within the book’s two main sections: Part I conceptualizes and historicizes the Spectacle in the context of informational capitalism; contributions in Part II offer empirical cases that historicise the Spectacle in relation to the present (and recent past) showing how a Spectacle 2.0 approach can illuminate and deconstruct specific aspects of contemporary social reality. All contributions included in this book rework the category of the Spectacle to present a stimulating compendium of theoretical critical literature in the fields of media and labour studies. In the era of the gig-economy, highly mediated content and President Trump, Debord’s concept is arguably more relevant than ever.
In recent years "leaderless" social movements have proliferated around the globe, from North Africa and the Middle East to Europe, the Americas, and East Asia. Some of these movements have led to impressive gains: the toppling of authoritarian leaders, the furthering of progressive policy, and checks on repressive state forces. They have also been, at times, derided by journalists and political analysts as disorganized and ineffectual, or suppressed by disoriented and perplexed police forces and governments who fail to effectively engage them. Activists, too, struggle to harness the potential of these horizontal movements. Why have the movements, which address the needs and desires of so many, not been able to achieve lasting change and create a new, more democratic and just society? Some people assume that if only social movements could find new leaders they would return to their earlier glory. Where, they ask, are the new Martin Luther Kings, Rudi Dutschkes, and Stephen Bikos? With the rise of right-wing political parties in many countries, the question of how to organize democratically and effectively has become increasingly urgent. Although today's leaderless political organizations are not sufficient, a return to traditional, centralized forms of political leadership is neither desirable nor possible. Instead, as Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri argue, familiar roles must be reversed: leaders should be responsible for short-term, tactical action, but it is the multitude that must drive strategy. In other words, if these new social movements are to achieve meaningful revolution, they must invent effective modes of assembly and decision-making structures that rely on the broadest democratic base. Drawing on ideas developed through their well-known Empire trilogy, Hardt and Negri have produced, in Assembly, a timely proposal for how current large-scale horizontal movements can develop the capacities for political strategy and decision-making to effect lasting and democratic change. We have not yet seen what is possible when the multitude assembles.
Human Freedom in the Age of AI by Filippo Santoni de Sio Pdf
This book claims that artificial intelligence (AI) may affect our freedom at work, in our daily life, and in the political sphere. The author provides a philosophical framework to help make sense of and govern the ethical and political impact of AI in these domains. AI presents great opportunities and risks, raising the question of how to reap its potential benefits without endangering basic human and societal values. The author identifies three major risks for human freedom. First, AI offers employers new forms of control of the workforce, opening the door to new forms of domination and exploitation. Second, it may reduce our capacity to remain in control of and responsible for our decisions and actions, thereby affecting our free will and moral responsibility. Third, it may increase the power of governments and tech companies to steer the political debate, thereby affecting the possibility of a free and inclusive political participation. The author claims that it is still possible to promote human freedom in our interactions with AI. This requires designing AI systems that help promote workers’ freedom, strengthen human control and responsibility, and foster a free, active, and inclusive democratic participation. Human Freedom in the Age of AI will be of interest to scholars and graduate students working on the ethics of technology, philosophy of technology, political philosophy, design, and artificial intelligence.
The Digital Age and Its Discontents by Matteo Stocchetti Pdf
Three decades into the ‘digital age’, the promises of emancipation of the digital ‘revolution’ in education are still unfulfilled. Furthermore, digitalization seems to generate new and unexpected challenges – for example, the unwarranted influence of digital monopolies, the radicalization of political communication, and the facilitation of mass surveillance, to name a few. This volume is a study of the downsides of digitalization and the re-organization of the social world that seems to be associated with it. In a critical perspective, technological development is not a natural but a social process: not autonomous from but very much dependent upon the interplay of forces and institutions in society. While influential forces seek to establish the idea that the practices of formal education should conform to technological change, here we support the view that education can challenge the capitalist appropriation of digital technology and, therefore, the nature and direction of change associated with it. This volume offers its readers intellectual prerequisites for critical engagement. It addresses themes such as Facebook’s response to its democratic discontents, the pedagogical implications of algorithmic knowledge and quantified self, as well as the impact of digitalization on academic profession. Finally, the book offers some elements to develop a vision of the role of education: what should be done in education to address the concerns that new communication technologies seem to pose more risks than opportunities for freedom and democracy.
The Audience Commodity in a Digital Age by Lee McGuigan,Vincent Manzerolle Pdf
This edited collection comprises foundational texts and new contributions that revisit the theory of the «audience commodity» as first articulated by Dallas Smythe. Contributors focus on the historical and theoretical importance of this theory to critical studies of media/communication, culture, society, economics, and technology - a theory that has underpinned critical media studies for more than three decades, but has yet to be compiled in a single edited collection. The primary objective is to appraise its relevance in relation to changes in media and communication since the time of Smythe's writing, principally addressing the rise of digital, online, and mobile media. In addition to updating this perspective, contributors confront the topic critically in order to test its limits. Contextualizing theories of the audience commodity within an intellectual history, they consider their enduring relationship to the field of media/communication studies as well as the important legacy of Dallas Smythe.