Digital Labor

Digital Labor calls on the reader to examine the shifting sites of labor markets to the Internet through the lens of their political, technological, and historical making. Internet users currently create most of the content that makes up the web: they search, link, tweet, and post updates-leaving their "deep" data exposed. Meanwhile, governments listen in, and big corporations track, analyze, and predict users' interests and habits. This unique collection of essays provides a wide-ranging account of the dark side of the Internet. It claims that the divide between leisure time and work has vanished so that every aspect of life drives the digital economy. The book reveals the anatomy of playbor (play/labor), the lure of exploitation and the potential for empowerment. Ultimately, the 14 thought-provoking chapters in this volume ask how users can politicize their troubled complicity, create public alternatives to the centralized social web, and thrive online. Contributors: Mark Andrejevic, Ayhan Aytes, Michel Bauwens, Jonathan Beller, Patricia Ticineto Clough, Sean Cubitt, Jodi Dean, Abigail De Kosnik, Julian Dibbell, Christian Fuchs, Lisa Nakamura, Andrew Ross, Ned Rossiter, Trebor Scholz, Tizania Terranova, McKenzie Wark, and Soenke Zehle

Trebor Scholz is Associate Professor of Culture and Media at The New School.

Introduction: Trebor Scholz Why Does Digital Labor Matter Now? I. The Shifting Sites of Labor Markets 1. Andrew Ross On the Digital Labor Question 2. Tiziana Terranova Free Labor 3. Sean Cubitt The Political Economy of Cosmopolis 4. McKenzie Wark Considerations on A Hacker Manifesto II. Interrogating Modes of Digital Labor 5. Ayhan Aytes Return of The Crowds: Mechanical Turk and Neoliberal States of Exception 6. Abigail De Kosnik Fandom as Free Labor 7. Patricia Clough The Digital, Labor and Measure Beyond Biopolitics 8. Jodi Dean Whatever Blogging III. The Violence of Participation 9. Mark Andrejevic Estranged Free Labor 10. Jonathan Beller Digitality and The Media of Dispossession 11. Lisa Nakamura Don't Hate the Player, Hate the Game: The Racialization of Labor in World of Warcraft IV. Organizing Networks in an Age of Vulnerable Publics 12. Michel Bauwens Thesis on Digital Labor in an Emerging P2P Economy 13. Christian Fuchs Class and Exploitation on the Internet 14. Ned Rossitter and Soenke Zehle Acts of Translation: Organizing Networks as Algorithmic Technologies of the Common Bibliography