Network Culture: Politics for the Information Age

Free Labour

Terranova defines free labour, here, as, “excessive activity that makes the Internet a thriving and hyperactive medium” (Terranova, 73). The social factory or society-factory is defined as, “work processes have shifted from the factory to society thereby setting in motion a truly complex machine” (Terranova, 74). Today, the Internet acts as this multifarious organism producing a network milieu. “Simultaneously voluntarily given and unwaged, enjoyed and exploited, free labor on the Net includes the activity of building websites, modifying software packages, reading and participating in mailing lists and building virtual spaces” (Terranova, 74).

Much criticism of Marx’s conception of labor persists in discourse today.
Donna Haraway identifies ‘informatics of domination’ as reflecting relationships between technology, labor and capital. Rejecting humanist positions, Gilroy, explains, “If labor is the humanizing activity that makes [white] man, then surely, this ‘humanising’ labor does not really belong in the age of the networked, posthuman intelligence” (Terranova, 74). Despite discussion, Terranova states that “the Internet does not automatically turn every user into an active producer and every worker into a creative subject” (Terranova 75).

Terranova defines the digital economy as a “specific mechanism of internal ‘capture’ of larger pools of social and cultural knowledge…. [and] an important area for experimentation with value and free cultural/affective labour” (Terranova, 76). With the digital economy came the New Economy. The New Economy marks “a historical period marker [that] acknowledges its conventional association with Internet companies, and the digital economy—a less transient phenomenon based on key features of digitized information” (Terranova 76).

Richard Barbrook posits that the digital economy is a mixed economy including a “public element, a market-driven element and a gift economy” (Terranova, 76).
Don Tapscott defines the digital economy as, ‘a new economy based on the networking of human intelligence.’ He furthers, “Human intelligence, however, also poses a problem: it cannot be managed in quite the same way as more traditional types of labour” (Terranova, 78).

Resistance pursues due to the unquantifiable nature of ‘knowledge.’ Terranova refers to the Internet as a “consensus-creating machine, which socializes mass of proliferated knowledge workers into the economy of continuous innovation” (Terranova, 81). The knowledge worker remains confined to class formations and are not necessarily given elite status despite their contribution to capital. However, it remains unclear why some individuals qualify as knowledge workers while others do not.

Italian autonomist, Maurizio Lazzarato describes immaterial labour as referencing two distinct realms of labor. First immaterial labour refers to the informational content within the commodity. In this sense, labour is seen through direct action where skills typically involve cybernetics and computer control. (Terranova, 82). Second, Lazzarato identified immaterial labour as that which produces cultural, rather than informational, content. This type of labour is not work in its typical sense but may represent a range of activities that aide in fixing popular cultural preferences. (Terranova, 82). According to Lazzarato all citizens have a change to contribute immaterial labour as it is not fixed by class. “This means labour is a virtually (an undermined capacity) which belongs to the post industrial productive subjectivity as a whole” (Terranova, 83). Therefore, postmodern governments encourage the potentialities of work to the unemployed.

Terranova notes that the unemployed, “must undergo continuous training in order to be both monitored and kept alive as some kind of postindustrial reserve force” (Terranova, 83). The postmodern agenda, however, did not happen overnight. Lazzarato states, “The virtuality of this capacity is neither empty nor ahistoric; it is rather an opening and a potentiality, that have as their historical origins and antecedents the ‘struggle against work’…and in more recent times, the process of socialization, educational formation and cultural self-valorization” (Terranova, 83). This agenda represents capitalist motivations of optimizing its citizens within the labor force.

Levy asserts that networks “enable the emergence of a collective intelligence” (Terranova, 85). We no longer think according to the Cartesian model of thought based on singularity (I think), but to a collectivity of thought (We think). Levy defines collective intelligence as “a form of universally distributed intelligence, constantly enhanced, coordinated in real time, and resulting in the effective mobilization of skills” (Terranova, 85). This proposes a flexible and constantly changing epistemology. Levy continues explaining the means and the ends to collective intelligence. “The basis and goal of collectivize intelligence is the mutual recognition and enrichment of individuals rather than the cult of fetishized or hypostatized communities” (Terranova, 85). Computers, particularly accentuate the inherent value of human intelligence as man’s productivity reveals hidden creative potentials.

In Karl Marx’s, Fragment on Machines, knowledge becomes’ incarnate in the automatic system of machines’ where labor is only a link within a mechanical organism. However, Terranova points out that the Italian autonomists ‘eschew the modernist imagery of the general intellect as a hellish machine.’ (Terranova, 87). Instead they find general intellect to be a principal productive force which was manifesting before them. No longer was the intellect a hellish machine but rather an ensemble of knowledge…which constitute the epicenter of social production.

Humanists believe that the Italian autonomists neglected the idea of mass intellectuality of living labor as it articulates general intellect. Precisely, mass intellectuality is, “ an ensemble, as a social body—is the repository of the indivisible knowledges of living subjects and of their linguistic cooperation…an important part of knowledge cannot be deposited in machines, but…it must come in to being as the direct interaction of the labor force’ (Terranova,87-88).

Neither knowledge labor nor unemployment acts as collective knowledge.
Knowledge labor is inherently collective; it is always the result of a collective and social production of knowledge. Capital’s problem is how to extract as much value as possible. Terranova notes both continuity and a break exists between, older media and new media as they relate to cultural and affective labor.

Continuity assumes the “common reliance on their public/ users as productive subjects” (Terranova, 88). However a split exists between the mode of production and in how power/knowledge acts in the two forms. The internet is highly decentralized and dispersed compared to television. Although old media also tapped into free labour, television and print media did so in a more structured way than seen in new media.Commercialization of the Internet is attributed as one of the key reasons for Barbrook’s gift economy. That is, increasing privatization and e-commerce create an economy of exchange.

The capitalistic logic of production becomes accelerated by ‘immaterial’ products
Humanistic concerns remain as the real seems to disappear as the Internet grew. Specifically, hyperreality represents the humanist nightmare. Hyperreality is, “a society without humanity, the culmination of a progressive taking over the realm to representation.” (Terranova, 90).While the commodity seems to disappear, it does so not in the material sense but the quality of labor put into the commodity a subsidiary. Commodities become ephemeral works in progress. That is, no finished product likely exists but only those that are indefinitely in the process of becoming. Therefore, the quality of the commodity depends on the quality of the labor.

Sustainability of the Internet is intrinsically dependent on massive amounts of labor. The Internet then, is sustainable only so far as it is: ephemeral, updatable and possesses a mass collective labor. “The notion of users’ labour maintains an ideological and material centrality which runs consistently throughout the turbulent succession of internet fads” (Terranova, 91).

Open-source movement demonstrates the overreliance of the digital economy as such on free labour, both in the sense of ‘not financially rewarded and of ‘willingly given.' (Terranova, 93).Terranova asserts that digital work is “not created outside capital then reappropiated by capital, but are the results of a complex history where the relation between labour and capital is mutually constitutive, entangled and crucially forged during the crisis of Fordism” (Terranova, 94). “Free labour is a desire of labour immanent to late capitalism and late capitalism is the field which both sustains free labour and exhausts it” (Terranova, 94). Therefore, the Internet acts as both a gift economy and advanced capitalist society

Here, Terranova explores what is known as the ‘Old web v. New web’ debate. Television shows, which are increasingly becoming ‘people shows’ or ‘reality television’ rely primarily on the audience just as the Internet relies on user activity. Terranova notes that these programs, “manage the impossible, create monetary value out of the most reluctant members of the postmodern cultural economy: those who do not produce marketable style, who are not qualified enough to enter the fast world of the knowledge economy, are converted into monetary value through their capacity to affectively perform their misery” (Terranova, 95).

“The digital economy cares only tangentially about morality. What is really cares about is an abundance of production, an immediate interface with cultural and technical labour whose result is a diffuse, non-dialectical antagonism and a crisis in the capitalist modes of valorization as such"

(Terranova,96).

The Internet channels and adjudicates responsibilities, duties and rights. Open and distributed modes of production represent, “the field of experimentation of new strategies of organization that starts from the open potentiality of the many in order to develop new sets of constraints able to modulate appropriately the relation between value and surplus value” (Terranova, 96) Therefore, productivity is critical as it creates value for capitalism. Terranova refers to this relation of value and surplus value as the ‘entanglement of emergence and control’ (Terranova, 97).

Soft Control

Terranova defines biological computing as, “a cluster of subdisciplines within computer science—such as, artificial life, mobotics and neural networks” (Terranova, 99). Biological computing is essentially a bottom up organization through the stimulation of, ‘the conditions of their emergence in an artificial medium—the digital computer.” (Terranova, 99).

Lewis Mumford, writing in 1934, argued against the prevailing industrial technological ontology, hoping it would be replaced by a new technological age. Mumford viewed this transition as a return to the organic. “Human technicity does not so much construct increasingly elaborate extension of man but rather intensifies at specific points its engagement with different levels of the organization of nature” (Terranova,98). However, the artificial played a key role in Mumford’s predictive analysis. While nature materializes out of these interactions, the relationship is also artificial, that is, it is both inventive and productive. The network becomes a topological production machine if understood as a ‘spatial diagram’ for the age of computing.

Once biological computing possesses the ability to outperform the programmer and his instructions emergent phenomena arises. That is, because biological computing possesses no material center, leaderless numbers of elements that are only bound by their own protocols, therefore making the Internet an explicit instance and product. The self-organizing nature of the network represents a mode of production illustrated by an excess of value. Abstract machines of soft control surface acting as a, “diagram of power that takes as its operational field the productive capacities of the hyperconnected many.” (Terranova, 99). reconceptualization of life occurred as a biological turn in computing arose, focusing on natural and artificial bottom-up organization.

Artificial life theorists, Charles Taylor and David Jefferson support this form of organization. “The living organism is no longer mainly one single and complicated biochemical machine, but is now essentially the aggregate result of the interaction of a large population of relatively simple machines. These populations of interacting simple machines are working at all levels of the biophysical organization of matter” (Terranova, 101). Terranova summarizes the consequences of the aggregation of the simple as it organizes matter. “As a consequence, ‘to animate machines….is not to ‘bring’ life to a machine; rather it is to organize a population of machines in such a way that their interactive dynamics is ‘alive’” (Terranova, 101).

Artificial intelligence now seeks to study the activity of neural cells in the central nervous system (CNS). Artificial life theorists seek to reproduce the mind’s complex features such as being able to hold an indefinite memory. Gregory Bateson explains the current scientific conceptualization of the brain. (Terranova, 102)

“We may say that the mind is imminent in those circuits of the brain that are completely within the brain. Or that mind is immanent in circuits which are complete within the system brain plus body. Or finally, that mind is immanent in the larger system—man plus environment.” (Terranova,102).

Biological computation must concern itself with the power of the minute, that is, theorists’ measure biological computation as it is exterior and relational in nature. No finite determination or central control is possible due to the multitude of variables; therefore, systems are eternally dynamic. The ‘open system’ does not die or reproduce in a self-creational sense but “they are always becoming something else” (Terranova, 102). These systems are therefore highly unpredictable and are thereby difficult to control. The lack of centrism in an open system also disallows the dissection of the creature because, “once the connection and mutual affection with other elements is removed, the individual element becomes passive and inert” (Terranova, 104). Therefore, despite mass collection of data regarding individuals, the true dynamic of the network proves unattainable. However, despite uncertainty regarding control, these open systems do provide the potential of enormous productivity generated by the collective nature of the open systems within the network.

“More is different”

Fluidity is a critical concept in New Economy capitalism as fluidity relates bottom up organizations and speed. Moreness is “explicitly linked to the need for a different immanent logic of organization that demands new strategies of control to take advantage of its potentially infinite productivity while controlling its catastrophic potential” (Terranova, 106). Maintaining such dynamic fluid environments requires the identification of a certain ‘phase space,’ recognizable at a certain level of speed.
John von Neumann linked evolutionary biology and computation when he devised a computational experiment named, cellular automata (CAs). CAs represented a “relatively new field that appeared in the midst of the intellectual dust that accompanied the development of the first digital computers” (Terranova, 109).

“CAs form dynamic milieus, space-time blocks, that have no real territorial qualities but do have rich topographies and challenging dynamics” (Terranova, 112). This occurs not because no central control exists, but because these cells are capable of spontaneous self-regulation.

Researcher, Stephen Wolfram, empirically classified CA dynamics using one-hundred runs of ‘the game of life.’ He subsequently catalogued four classes in which CAs fit. Class I CAs are those programs, which reached their computational limit or end point. Class II CAs, however, represent ‘limit cycles’ through self-replication of structures that glide across the ‘computational space’ by self-replication. Class III CAs produce fractured structures capable of self-replication like Class II CAs, but also possess the capability to scale and therefore progressively structure the CA. Finally, Class IV systems are highly chaotic, unstable and random. The random nature of this class results in no predictable time limits which make Class IV CAs highly unpredictable. Chris Langton subsequently reproduced Wolfram’s study but ran repeated runs of Ca systems thousands of time. As a result, Langton produced a new classification order but also a critical metric of measurement (the lambda). Lambda measures “the fluctuation of different CA systems with their relation to their computational abilities” (Terranova, 114). The lambda ranged from zero to one representing the most random systems incapable of computation (0) and the highly structured CA system also incapable of computation due to its inflexibility. Langton found that the key area of computation is identified with a border zone fluctuating between highly ordered and highly random CAs” (Terranova, 114).

Terranova first notes that fact that the CA run is ‘out of control,’ this does not make it ‘beyond control.’ “The fluidity of populations, their susceptibility to epidemics and contagion, is consider an asset: at a certain value or informational speed, the movement of cells turns liquid and it is this state that is identified as the most productive, engendering vertical structures that are both stable and propagating” (Terranova, 114). CAs depend on algorithms to survive.Genetic algorithms illustrate both “a mode on control and its limits” (Terranova, 115).

“Biological computation expresses a socio-technical diagram of control that is concerned with producing effects of emergence by a manipulation of the rules and configurations within a given milieu” (Terranova, 116).

Critics of the biological turn, posit that the Internet is too life-like. “To say that the Internet might be lifelike was the equivalent if sanctioning the ravages brought by rampant free-market capitalism on the ‘excluded masses’” (Terranova, 121).
Terranova furthers, “These systems are not unstructured or formless, but they are minimally structured or semi-ordered” (Terranova, 121). Terranova defines this new biopolitical plane explaining it as that which, “can be organized through the deployment of an immanent control, which operates directly within the productive power of the multitude and the clinamaen” (Terranova, 122).

Critics argue that Richard Dawkins use of ‘selfish’ acts as an “apparatus of subjectification” (Terranova, 126). Franco Berardi introduces what he deems the “unhappiness factory” that results from the unhappy gene. The CBS television program, Big Brother is an example of Berardi’s ‘unhappiness factory’ as unlikely ‘contestants’ are secluded and forced to compete and relate.

Hardt and Negri define a multitude political mode of engagement that is located outside the majoritarian and representative model of modern democracies in their relation with the recomposition of class experience” (Terranova, 129).
Multitude Franco Berardi “tendency to dissolution, the entropy that is diffused in every social system and which renders impossible the labour of power but also the labour of political organization” (130) Therefore it is critical to reconsider the exploit. That is, “hacking the multitude is still an open game.”

Discussion Questions:

In light of our ongoing discussion of control and power, how does 'free labour' work in capitalist societies? Terranova notes that free labor is not exploited labor. Do you agree with her position? How do you view free labor regarding the Internet?

Programs such as, Big Brother, offer an example of the theoretical 'unhappiness factory.' How does the video clip from Big Brother prove or disprove this theory?