[-empyre-] Narrativity and Reading Regimes

[Nicholas Knouf]

Good points all; and here is the Obligatory Autonomist Post in light of
what Julian wrote:

Maurizio Lazzaratto's text on "Immaterial Labor"
(http://www.generation-online.org/c/fcimmateriallabour3.htm ) goes into
detail regarding the dynamics of what Julian and others mentioned.

Also see Tiziana Terranova's "Free Labor: Producing Culture for the
Digital Economy"
(http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/technocapitalism/voluntary )
that goes into these issues and more, reminding us (if we needed it)
that this question of online labor is not new to social networking
sites, but was there with respect to AOL and other "Web 1.0" companies.

And finally, for now, see Matteo Pasquinelli's recent works, especially
 "Google's PageRank Algorithm"
(http://matteopasquinelli.com/docs/Pasquineli_PageRank.pdf ), which is
especially relevant when we consider how Google will make a return off
its investments in book scanning.

nick




Julian Oliver wrote:
> ..on Fri, Jun 11, 2010 at 02:42:56PM +1000, Michael Dieter wrote:
>>> As a literary critic, I highly value immersive reading and desire it to
>>> continue. I suspect, however, that the enemy here is not the internet, but
>>> rather the neo-liberal economic rationalism that results in
>>> ever-increasing
>>> work hours, and diminishes the free time required for people to engage in
>>> sustained reading practices.
>> Great post!
>>
>> I wonder whether there might be something more to add from a media
>> specific perspective also: the devices associated and deliberately
>> engineered for informational 'hypertext' scanning are increasingly
>> imbricated throughout our everyday lives as constant companions.
>> Neoliberal economic rationalism cannot itself be sustained without
>> rallying a material infrastructure in support of the logic of increasing
>> work hours, competition and value-added knowledge work. The blurring of
>> work and leisure that underpins attempts to increase productivity is
>> actually facilitated by mobile networked devices, such as the iPad. I fear
>> is that the problem is additionally encoded into these technical objects
>> themselves, things that are privileged as central to these economic
>> systems and regimes of labour.
> 
> Also a great post! And it's here that the 'gift' of social networking is an
> ideal capital model; managing ourselves and our data across so many devices and
> networks becomes a kind of labour regime in itself, requiring increasing hours
> of attention to maintain social exposure. The hidden fruits of our
> self-and-social interests are then sold on to data miners and marketeers, or
> simply repurposed as a canvas for ad revenue directly.
> 
> Here's a timely remedy:
> 
> 	http://suicidemachine.org/
> 
> Cheers,
>