The internet has had a myriad of effects on individuals and society as a whole. A few avenues that suggest the internet will precipitate a wider cultural revolution include The Medium is the Massage by Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore, and Learning to Immaterial Labour 2.0: MySpace and Social Networks by Mark Cote and Jennifer Pybus. It is argued here that new encompassing technologies such as the internet and wireless communications constitute a new dominant media form that has and will necessitate change in society and consciousness. The new order and organization of people and labour leads to the production of creative, problem solving individuals who generate biopower that may be harnessed.
The Medium is the Massage asserts the media and it’s technology has grander influence than the contents of the message. This influence extends throughout society infiltrating areas such as entertainment, politics, education and organizations in general. Dominating media acts similar to the way the medium of language influences most aspects of society and consciousness to the extent it becomes an environment that structures and supports institutions and interactions. McLuhan is clear on saying the environment cannot be ignored. Modern wireless communications technologies such as computers and smartphones are ubiquitous in number and network access locations making the internet available everywhere and in a sense, physically all encompassing. A real virtual environment, dominating, ordering, extending, and sculpting users and networks. McLuhen endorses the artist rendered anti-environment meant to bring the environment to the fore and allow people to consider and interact with the structures that shape humanity that may be out of sight. Revolution in the Medium is the Massage sense as related to the internet involves both the physical revolution of the environment of technology and wireless communication and the human generated. Revolutionaries must be aware of and engaging with the frameworks of their interactions whether it be television or web 2.0.
McLuhan also discusses technologies as extensions and amplifications of human abilities such as electricity being an extension of the nervous system. This extension, along with the compressing of space and time that is allowed for by instant communication allows the internet to be a mega tool of communication and network building for those who have access to the system. Throw McLuhan’s idea of revolution based on the craving for, once exposed to, the luxury for sale in the media by have-nots and the pervasiveness of internet as a media source and there is a recipe for large groups of intercommunicating individuals to band together. An extension of unification and un-fragmentation combined with the now heard voices of minorities in the global village toward revolution.
Learning to Immaterial Labour 2.0: MySpace and Social Networks by Mark Cote and Jennifer Pybus discusses notions of power structures that order and organize institutions and individuals toward efficiency in a capitalist network society. Using MySpace and Social networks as an example the authors show how individuals learn through affect and relationships how to produce immaterial labour during leisure time that is beneficial to the system of capitalism. Michel Foucault’s disciplinary and biopower concepts are used. Disciplinary power is related to efficiency of control and the panopticon. The panopticon is a type of prison with a central tower where a guard may or may not be watching the encircling wall of prisoners with cells open to observation by the tower. Being unable to know if one is being watched, everyone internalizes the idea of a behavioural guard and then behaves accordingly to the will of the guard. This type of power is based on segregation and individuation where everyone polices themselves and each other. Institutions throughout society reinforce the rules and ordering of the production of certain types of people, for example schools, the military and hospitals. It is important to note that through the internalization of a guard people produce themselves in certain ways to be beneficial to the dominant ideology. Biopower is exercised through the bodies of people and their relationships and networks. Power is imminent to the system and exists in the most mundane aspects of life. Power is the network between people and the networks they generate.
Immaterial labour is now a common form of labour in society, including intellectual, problem solving, relational and service jobs. Immaterial labour 2.0 is the new lack of distinction between leisure and work time. Websites such as MySpace and the Web 2.0 phenomenon in general have users continually creating identities, interactions, relationships and networks based on user generated content. These continually becoming subjectivities are a goldmine of consumer and population information. This means when a labourer goes home and participates in social leisure activities they continue to provide and generate immaterial work. The networks and relationships generated are the value added product, both for capitalism and perhaps for revolution. To recall McLuhan’s revolution, the environment of web 2.0 where users generate content itself, shapes society and consciousness.
The types of people producing themselves by the network of power in this modern social climate are those that thrive in a network of extension and relationship building, who can sell themselves as a product while also being sold to. These thrivers are creative, sociable, participatory problem solvers who create networks. The power that is extended through them in the network of society could be redirected and routed toward new goals, if the affinity rewards in the current system are not too magnetic. In the aspect of people being active toward producing themselves in the system toward the most efficient beneficial people, perhaps as a growingly interconnected unit of likes and dislikes a sort of utopia will emerge where people produce themselves as helpful, warless and useful.
Recall again McLuhan’s anti-environment and a reminder to look at the framework in which interactions occur. Consider the biopower of Foucault that acts through bodies and relationships, and how people participate in self production. Using the power in numbers, and unity of increasing interconnection, people could interact with the frameworks of their production to produce the most beneficial people to humanity, or whatever is collectively decided, consciously and not blindly, through background environmental forces.
Bibliography
McLuhan, Marshall and Quentin Fiore. The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects. Berkeley, CA: Gingko Press, 1967 (2001).
Coté, Mark and Jennifer Pybus. 'Learning to Immaterial Labour 2.0: MySpace and Social Networks.' Ephemera. 7.1 (2007). 88-106.
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