[iDC] Critique (?) of "immaterial labour"

[trebor at thing.net]

Thanks for the reference to this annonymous (?) blogger, Chris. I`m in
transit, writing on a keyboard that barely works, so, I can`t really
engage properly but a brief response is probably useful.

What can I (or we) learn from this post? The blogger suggests that my
argument reduces everything that happens on social networking sites to
immaterial labor. That`s not correct.

However, people do work two jobs today. First, there is their day job and
then they spend much time on the network, caring for their virtual gardens
and friends on various platforms. Networked publics, drawn in by the
promise of free services, benefit, congregate on a few centralized social
platforms, and produce large monetary value for their owners without being
very irritated by that (yet).

If the blogger, and I find it uncomfortable to address somebody who does
not provide his or her name on her blog, wants to understand production on
social networking sites, I`d recommend to read Benkler`s Wealth of
Networks against Tapscott`s Wikinomics... and see what happens.

In any case, I wrote a more detailed version of the MySpace essay, which
will be available soon.

Best,
Trebor S.

PS: Baudrillard?