digital digs

notes on immaterial/free labor

In my reading, one of the primary critiques of social media lies in its exploitation/monetization of "immaterial/free labor." What is that? Simply put, it is any activity that you do without getting paid (most likely for fun) that makes money for someone else. Many activities related to social networking fit into this category. In my last post I wrote about Trebor Scholz's article in First Monday that discusses these matters.

There are some really interesting issues here, though I have to say that I am generally turned off by Marxists for one particular reason. They tend to state that anyone who doesn't agree with them is either an ideological dupe or a willing servant of capitalist masters. I'm sorry, but just because I'm not a True Believer or because I don't think that Marxism or someone's interpretation/application of Marxism is a Revelation of Truth does not mean that I am a dupe or an "enemy of the people" or whatever.

Anyway, now that I got that off my chest, let me get back to the issue at hand. There are several larger forces at work here, and technological change is one of them.

First Monday's critical perspectives on Web 2.0

The latest issue of First Monday offers critiques of the Web 2.0 concept, including this article by Trebor Scholz. I hope to get to the other articles but wanted to write some about this one. I agree fundamentally with Scholz's observations about Web 2.0, including

• Most of the qualities associated with Web 2.0 existed in some form as part of the Internet in the 90s.
• The whole Web 2.0 thing is largely a kind of media-business hype.
• There is a concerted effort to monetize every possible activity associated with online activity, including mining a variety of personal preferences.
• Discourses on Web 2.0 are largely managed by social elites.

All of these things are true about Web 2.0. You could probably say that the last three are true of nearly any cultural activity. Certainly they are true of any other media-related activity from television to movies to music to books. However there are some important ways in which the web is different from these other media. It allows for many-to-many communication. In turn, the way in which the web is monetized is somewhat different from other one-to-many, broadcast models.

public circulation

My sabbatical project has been thinking and writing about public networked pedagogy, meaning specifically the practice of teaching writing/rhetoric in publicly-accessible, online spaces from blogs and wikis to YouTube and Second Life. In part clearly one would have to say that each networked space has its own characteristics and thus must be dealt with separately. However that doesn't mean that some interesting things might not be explored on a higher level of generality.

So I begin with three starting points: one non-academic, one generally academic, and one specific to our discipline.

1. Fairly obvious... media networks have reduced the cost of collaboration (a point in Clay Shirky's new book) and thus have made it easier to share media, information, thoughts, purposes, etc. in a market-like environment beyond the direct management of institutions, state or corporate.
2. Media networks have given rise to a new kind of public intellectual-academic. Beyond the traditional academic star variety, it is now broadly possible for academics to be public with their work from having their own blogs to publishing in open access online journals to making their course and/or course materials public. It is now also possible for academics to hold public discussions without the taint of seeming to push things down people's throats with some "we know better" attitude.
3. In rhetoric and composition, particularly computers and writing, there is a growing recognition of the study of circulation and networks (two concepts I see as linked) and examining the materiality of these conditions. How do media and information circulate in/from/through/about/out (student) compositions? How might we study the networks along which this circulation transpires?

iPhone University?

As reported on AppleInsider and elsewhere, Apple has launched a new program, much like the existing iTunes U with pilots at Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Yale, and Abilene Christian University (yes, I know, cue the one of these things is not like the others music). One of the primary differences of the iPhone and iPod Touch is the wifi capacity to share files directly. I'm sure there are a variety of technical/security issues that might be associated with this process, but I want to point to two other issues.