[ICTs-and-Society] Plenary 7: “The Internet and Critical Theory Today” (Mark Andrejevic, Andrew Feenberg)

[g.v. wilkes iv]

Sharecropping is a form of rent, in this case contract rent only I would
argue what is at issue is a novel form of economic rent, as the activity of
users to develop a site like e.g. FB or generate the data that FB sells is
a factor of production.

g.

... to negate is to indicate an alternative, a neglected complement; it is
to delineate a determination and to fix a definitive character.--Errol
Harris.


On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 07:33, Jan Nolin <Jan.Nolin at hb.se> wrote:

>  Mark,
> This is a very important discussion. For some of the reasons you
> mentioned, I find "exploitation" to be a bit misleading for these
> phenomena. I think we need to develop new and more specific concepts for
> the things that we analyze. One concept that has some promise is "digital
> sharecropping", suggested by Nicholas Carr. This creates a parallel to the
> traditional forms of sharecropping where the farmers worked the land while
> the land owners reaped the profits.
>
> /Jan
>
>
>  ..........................................
> Jan Nolin, PhD
> Professor
> Bibliotekshögskolan/Institutionen för biblioteks- och informationsvetenskap
> Högskolan i Borås
> 501 90 Borås
>
> http://www.hb.se/wps/portal/forskning/forskare/jan-nolin
>
> Telefon: + 46 (0)33 435 43 36
> Fax: +46 (0)33 435 40 05
> >>> Mark Andrejevic <markbandrejevic at gmail.com> 2012-04-11 03:11 >>>
> Thanks Christian,
> I'm looking forward to the conference -- and have greatly appreciated the
> pre-conference discussions. I'm very interested to see that there are at
> least a couple of talks that focus on the question of exploitation. The
> term has become an important one for me because I'm trying to come up with
> a formulation other than privacy to explore areas of concern about the
> collection and use of personal information in the digital era. Recent
> events in Europe and the US related to Google and Facebook's handling of
> personal information demonstrate how powerful the privacy "frame" is for
> talking about the wholesale capture of personal data for commercial
> purposes is -- and yet, in many cases we are talking about processes of
> information capture that do not violate conventional expectations of
> privacy (such as looking at aggregate patterns without attempting to drill
> down and identify individuals) and in other cases we are talking about
> forms of privatization (the capture and proprietary use of particular types
> of data) that rely on conventional understandings of the relationship
> between privacy and property.
>
> The notion of exploitation looks like a useful one to me because it points
> to the underlying patterns of commercial ownership and control of
> communication infrastructures that are coming to colonize an increasing
> range of social interactions and behavior. The seemingly "free" and
> ubiquitous character of services provided by Google and Facebook has led to
> our treating them as if they are public utilities, when of course they are
> private, for-profit, commercially driven companies whose decisions play an
> important role in shaping the information environment upon which we are
> becoming increasingly reliant. When I started studying the mass media --
> then considered to be primarily TV, newspapers (magazines), and radio (with
> some cinema and sound recording thrown in) -- there was a strong critical
> emphasis on "media monopoly" and the political economy of those industries
> that shape our information environment. The advent of the World Wide Web
> and attendant forms of techno-enthusiasm seems to have had the perhaps
> temporary effect of sidelining such questions as core elements of media
> studies, and one of the reasons I am looking forward to this conference is
> that it brings together people who have been challenging this tendency from
> the start.
>
> I have been taken to task on occasion for enlisting a term traditionally
> associated with critical approaches to the analysis of human suffering and
> immiseration in the realm of production to critique apparently voluntary
> forms of behavior that take place outside the realm of production "proper"
> -- intriguingly such challenges have, on occasion, come from people who
> have otherwise worked to destabilize these oppositions (by highlighting the
> convergence of consumption and production, etc.). I am sensitive to the
> observation that providing data for Facebook is qualitatively different
> from laboring under sweatshop conditions, and yet, I continue to think that
> the notion of exploitation usefully points to the structured relations of
> power that allow for the capture and use of personal information -- often
> as a tool that can be turned back upon those who generate it. I also think
> that it is important to note the ways in which the online economy is not
> isolated from the broader economy that continues to rely on more brutal
> conditions of exploitation, shored up by the very same relations of
> ownership and control.
>
> As part of the lead up to the conference I'd be interested in hearing
> people's thoughts about the potential and limitations of the critique of
> exploitation as a way of thinking about the forms of value production that
> take place in the context of social media.
>
> As a side note, Facebook's reframing of its privacy policy as a "data use
> policy" is perhaps a suggestive one -- privacy advocates I know saw it as a
> move by Facebook to attempt to distance itself from privacy concerns. To
> me, this looked to like an opportunity to focus on the question of data use
> and perhaps sidestep the way in which the commercial sector has been
> working to exploit the ambivalence of the notion of privacy.
>
> I'd be interested in people's thoughts.
> best,
> Mark
>
>
>
> On Sun, Apr 8, 2012 at 5:18 PM, Christian Fuchs <christian.fuchs at uti.at>wrote:
>
>> Friday, May 4th, 2012
>> * Mark Andrejevic (University of Queensland, Australia): Social Media:
>> Surveillance and Exploitation 2.0
>> * Andrew Feenberg (Simon Fraser University, Canada): Great Refusal and
>> Long March: How to Use Critical Theory to Think About the Internet.
>> Chair: Christian Fuchs
>>
>> Mark's and Andrew's talks will bring up questions like the following
>> ones: How do corporations use social networking sites? What is exploitation
>> 2.0 and how does the exploitation of labour work on social media? How is
>> online life commercialized, branded, and monetized? What is the role of
>> surveillance in online exploitation? How can critical theory adequately
>> reflect and criticize these developments?
>> How relevant is Herbert Marcuse's thinking and critical theory today?
>> What is an adequate strategy for transforming the Internet? Does it require
>> a "Great Refusal" (Marcuse) or a "Long March through the Institutions"
>> (Dutschke, Marcuse)? Does Critical Theory require a blanket condemnation of
>> the Internet? Does Critical Theory need a long march strategy that assesses
>> the Internet's reality against its potentials? What is the essence of the
>> Internet? What is the existence of the Internet? Is there a difference
>> between essence and existence of the Internet? What is a true Internet?
>> What a false Internet?
>>
>> Pre-conference discussions on these and related questions are welcome
>> over the mailing list.
>>
>> ***
>>
>> MARK ANDREJEVIC
>> University of Queensland, Australia
>>
>> Social Media: Surveillance and Exploitation 2.0
>>
>> ABSTRACT: This presentation explores the ways in which social networking
>> technologies are being taken up by the commercial sector as ways for
>> integrating social and work life. Thanks to the popularity and ubiquity of
>> social network technologies in some sectors of the population, companies
>> are finding ways to exploit the social connections of their employees,
>> customers, and clients, leading to start-up companies that seek to monetize
>> social network data by linking it with consumer relations databases and
>> other technologies for target marketing. When important aspects of people’s
>> social lives migrate onto commercial platforms these become subject to
>> marketing imperatives, self-branding becomes a new (or updated) form of
>> employee asset. The goal of the presentation is to develop a theoretical
>> approach to the commercialization and monetization of online social life.
>> To what extent might the critique of exploitation be updated and brought to
>> bear upon the productivity of social networks? What aspects of this
>> critique help illuminate the wholesale commodification of social
>> relationships, and what are the implications of relying upon a privately
>> owned commercial infrastructure for their development? The critique of
>> exploitation directs us back to these questions. It urges us to consider
>> the ways in which the commercialization of the platform turns our own
>> activity back upon ourselves in the service of priorities that are not our
>> own, and it reminds us of the double duty done by the privately controlled
>> interactive infrastructure. This infrastructure might serve as a platform
>> for new forms of creativity, deliberation, communication, interaction, and
>> consumption. At the same time, though, it works to assemble the most
>> comprehensive system for mass monitoring in human history. The accusation
>> associated with the critique of exploitation reminds us of the ways in
>> which new forms of marketing driven surveillance help turn our own
>> productive activity back upon ourselves in the service of ends that are not
>> our own.
>>
>> SPEAKER INFO: Mark Andrejevic is a media scholar at The University of
>> Queensland, Australia. He writes about surveillance, new media, and popular
>> culture. In broad terms, he is interested in the ways in which forms of
>> surveillance and monitoring enabled by the development of new media
>> technologies impact the realms of economics, politics, and culture.
>>
>> ***
>>
>> ANDREW FEENBERG
>> Simon Fraser University, Canada
>> Great Refusal and Long March: How to Use Critical Theory to Think About
>> the Internet
>>
>> ABSTRACT: Herbert Marcuse suggested two different strategies at different
>> points in his career. The Great Refusal implied a strategy of non-cooptable
>> demands. This notion stemmed from a dystopian sense of the total
>> systematization of society and was in harmony with the uncompromising
>> opposition of the early New Left. But in the later period of what Marcuse
>> called the “preventive counter-revolution”, he adopted Rudi Dutschke’s
>> slogan of “the long march through the institutions”. The choice at this
>> time was between withdrawal, terrorism and participating critically.
>> Marcuse advocated the latter.
>> I want to think about our critical stance toward the Internet in terms of
>> these two strategies. Does Critical Theory require a blanket condemnation
>> of the Internet? This seems to be the conclusion drawn by many observers.
>> Hypothetically, this could lead one to a Great Refusal of the Internet and
>> all its works, withdrawal to an Internet-free zone of some sort. I will
>> argue that we need a long march strategy based on a much more nuanced
>> critique. We need to measure the Internet against its real potentials and
>> defend it against real dangers rather than condemning it unqualifiedly.
>>
>> SPEAKER INFO: Andrew Feenberg holds the Canada Research Chair in
>> Philosophy of Technology in the School of Communication, Simon Fraser
>> University, where he directs the Applied Communication and Technology Lab.
>> His main areas of research are Critical Theory and philosophy of technology.
>>
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