[iDC] The Internet as Playground and Factory - ACT I

[Trebor Scholz]

Dear Brian,

Kindly forgive my slow response and please all note that the following
conversation, based on our discussions of the past two weeks, is entirely
fabricated. 

What would you add?

===================================

ACT I

Brian Holmes:
Our experience of the Internet itself may in some way actually hide what's
going on. 
http://is.gd/12Plv

Christian Fuchs:
[T]he social relation between Internet companies and users is one of
fundamental inequality that is structured by class power.
http://is.gd/13pKB

Trebor Scholz:
Class? 

BH:
Why do we _tolerate_ being included in this networked society?
http://is.gd/12Plv

Jodi Dean:
We are captured because we enjoy.
http://is.gd/12ReH

TS:
Only the rich and powerful can escape the participation imperative; refusal
is futile and irresponsible. Education!

Jonathan Beller:
The only way out, short of complete expropriation of the expropriators, a
radical redistribution of wealth and complete overhaul of the human network
(whatever that would look like), is to drop out completely, that is, for all
practical purposes, to cease to exist, to cease to speak, write or be
written as the discourse of the spectacle. (Beller 295)

JB:
In other words, the fight is also here and now. We are being called by the
o/re-pressed that lies both within and without "us."
http://is.gd/11AMO

Michel Bauwens:
Beyond what a radical minority may wish, there are constraints of 'realism'
in what can be achieved and expected http://is.gd/12UJa

BH:
Those of us who like dancing in the face of cops and speaking pie to power
are not exactly averse to a little humor!
http://is.gd/12Plv

Gabriella Coleman:
Piracy! 
http://is.gd/16kB6

Pat Kane:
Play!
http://is.gd/16lpU

Ellen Goodman:
Discussions about ... noncommercial production and amateur/citizen
participation ... are central to ... public media reform.
http://is.gd/16lbv 

Mark Zuckerberg (not on the iDC List yet):
The next hundred years will be different for advertising, and it starts
today.
http://is.gd/16jHZ

BH:
[MTURKŠ] isn't this just the everyday experience of the consumer in the
networked economy of neoliberal globalization?
http://is.gd/12Plv

TS:
The heart of digital economy is not about waged micro-labor; the future of
value is unpaid and invisible social participation.

Tiziana Terranova:
If the users' activity [in the] web economy is misrepresented as labor, what
would be a better way to describe it?
http://is.gd/12tMl 

Howard Rheingold:
I agree with much of what you say, Trebor, but I would only add that I'm
entirely delighted to let Yahoo stockholders benefit from flickr.
http://is.gd/16jR3

Frank Pasquale:
Some say that platforms like Google and Facebook were always inevitable, and
those companies just happened to be in the right place at the right time.
http://is.gd/12qgw

BH:
Obviously I'm not convinced by the emancipatory possibilities of
really-existing corporate social media.
http://is.gd/12Plv

HR:
How many times a day were YOU exploited by searching for something without
paying a charge for the service?
http://is.gd/16jR3

BH:
Some of us look only at the web itself, while others look at the whole
tissue of networked society.

Not only exploitation is an issue, but also an ideology that promotes
conformity, that makes dis-identification and dissent extremely rare.
http://is.gd/12Plv 

Ulises Mejias:
We need to question how network processes normalize monocultures.
http://is.gd/12ukg

Martin Lucas:
It is, and it will continue to be, difficult to make overriding judgments of
internet-based communications technologies as either "machines for
generating inequality" or as "tools for empowerment."
http://is.gd/16kx7

--to be continued