[iDC] Hyperemployed or Feminized Labor?

[h w]

I see hyper-employment in a simpler view. We are employed at (something that pays the bills, "X") And X requires a certain amount of our time. This colonisation of our time by the exigencies of capital constitutes a "job". Some jobs are more or less pleasant than others, and they excise a certain amount of our life's time to do them. In a more "traditionally" capitalist mode of exploitation, we might think of it as "40 hours of labour" and the rest of my waking week is mine Mine MINE. What Web 2.0 systems do, thanks to <httpRequest> (the built in hole that permits Web 2.0 to exist) is allow us to move data very quickly and (more or less) elegantly from one computer to another by way of a semi-centralised server architecture. I'm going over these material things for a reason that should be obvious later. 
Now, the affective payment for labour in Web 2.0 is an unequal exchange - I get to contact people from high school (Facebook) monitor teen hipsters (tumblr) etc. and provide endless hours of social amusement for myself and in so doing, prove to the VCs (vector/venture capitalists who fund these systems) that said service is of some value to me, and therefore worthy of investment. As Fuchs notes, the material extraction of this arrangement is asymptotic to infinity - getting paid nothing is still nothing, no matter how good it feels. However, there are things people value more than money, and there are things people will put up with as a stipulated detriment to the medium (viz TV commercials). 
The point is, this hesitance by the user is a point of extraction to the VC. And this point of extraction is predicated on a particular innovation(s) in the codebase of the web thingie, <httpRequest> (in combination with AJAX of course). So, this system advantages human social requirements that are then mediated, and as they can be distributed throughout the day cycle of the human organism, the day cycle itself - as the frame of the attention economy - becomes the object of enclosure, and thus the point of verticalised extraction. (I've written an article on verticalisation - I'm waiting for it to be published soon by a certain worthwhile journal...) This verticalisation of extraction of the diurnal cycle *is* the core of hyperemployment...


At least, that's what I think until the gin wears off...

HW
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