[iDC] some thoughts on digital labor and populations

[Michael Bauwens]

Hi Jeremy,

my responses are inline


----- Original Message ----
> From: jeremy hunsinger <jhuns at vt.edu>
> To: Michael Bauwens <michelsub2003 at yahoo.com>
> Cc: idc at mailman.thing.net
> Sent: Monday, June 15, 2009 6:02:02 PM
> Subject: Re: [iDC] some thoughts on digital labor and populations
> 
> 
> On Jun 15, 2009, at 12:44 AM, Michael Bauwens wrote:
> 
> > 
> > Hi Jeremy,
> > 
> >> 
> ahh, i'd say they just as well limit autonomy. 

sure, others always limit individual autonomy, which doesn't really exist in any case, but do you think that peer producing communities are more limiting than the wage relationship?

 as for the global small teams,  
> there has to the best of my knowledge been a transnational elite class capable 
> of the actions you indicate for a very long time.

before the internet, only members of multinationals had this capability, through private networks, but that possibility has now been widely extended, though you could argue that it is still an elite .., but that isn't necessarily pejorative



 > > 
> > How do we increase and protect that autonomy in the face of the integration of 
> those practices in new adapted forms of capitalism, or even use them to go 
> beyond those limits.
> 
> Why do we want to?  perhaps autonomy is just an ideological construct developed 
> from the individualism of modernity.  I'd suspect that 'autonomous workers' are 
> ideal for capital, and we can see this in recent debates about mobility of 
> workforces.  Why is it that governments want to create mobile autonomous 
> workforces?  It would seem in the digital age that people could on the other 
> hand work from where they want to live and telecommute to where there labor is 
> needed?

I'm interested only in the autonomy which attempts to go beyond capital

> 
> > Alternatively, we focus on the recuperation practices and decide that the 
> 'adversary' has already won, and can return to our comfortable jobs of being 
> paid to be critical, or just leave all those capabilities to others.
> 
> I'm not paid to be critical.

sorry, I assumed you were an academic from your edu address <g>


> > 
> yes, but change for what.  Andrew Carnegie funded hundreds of libraries, what 
> was his goal in that?  It was to benefit mankind, much along the way that a 
> mobile workforce benefits mankind.  Education does help, but here we have the 
> issue of... 'what education','whose education'. 

absolutely

  orally transmitted culture.
> 
> in any case, there is usually a bit of bias in the historical ideas of literacy 
> and education....  They are not usually found to be tools that serve autonomy in 
> any necessary way...  The usually do benefit people though (at least to my 
> enlightenment ideals mindset). They could..., but here i find the story of the 
> term 'literacy' to be somewhat informative, but that i think is a huge debate.


would you prefer then to restrict literacy to an elite?

> 
> 
> > Michel