The Internet as Playground and Factory

Texto de Trebor Scholz sobre a “financialização” das redes sociais, na lista de discussão do iDC. Já havia postado sobre um outro texto do Scholz anteriormente onde ele mostrava o uso social do MySpace e o trabalho gratuito. Scholz tem mostrado como estamos gerando valor e trabalhando para as grandes empresas que capitalizam em cima da nossa participação em redes sociais como Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, etc. Participamos, mas no fundo estamos trabalhando alimentando banco de dados sofisticados que aumentam o valor desta empresas. No texto (ver trecho abaixo) ele cita o site “Meta-Markets”, que é uma espécie de bolsa de valores das redes sociais, contando aqui com quatro grandes mercados: Facebook, Flickr, Feedburner e De.icio.us.

O sistema pode ser assim descrito:

“Meta-Markets is a non-profit stock market for social web content. In New York Stock Exchange or NASDAQ people trade shares of companies. In Meta-Markets people trade shares of their social web assets from online bookmarking, social networking, photo and video sharing services. The initial version of Meta-Markets contains four stock exchange markets: Facebook, Flickr, Feedburner, and Del.icio.us.

Meta-Markets leverages the affordances of community participation with stock exchange dynamics to reevaluate individual units of social web content as commodities; and it creates a forum for their exchange. Members issue their social web content (e.g. a Flickr photos) to Meta-Markets via aninitial public offering (IPO), which puts a percentage of shares of the asset on sale via a Dutch Auction [1]. Bidders collectively determine the initial trading value of the asset and help the issuer to raise capital to invest back in the markets. During the IPO process, the fair value [2] of each asset is formulated on data originating from content domain (e.g. the total number of views of a Flickr collection). The fair value is an interpretation of the impact the asset creates in its domain. It becomes a reference value for transactions, while each transaction sets the asset’s trading price, itsmarket value. Assets in Meta-Markets are traded in exchange with virtual currency, Buraks.

Meta-Markets puts a premium on user labor, people’s immaterial labor [3] of creating content and meta-content as users in social web services. Assuming the roles of investors, brokers, buyers and sellers in Meta-Markets, people continuously speculate on the value of user labor through transactions and discussions. Many web services today leverage the creative capacity and labor of their users as their core content and capitalize on it through sophisticated advertising networks. (…)” .

No texto do Trebor, ele se pergunta como Diderot e d’Alambert poderiam, nos tempos atuais, atualizarem a sua “Encyclopédie”:

“In the middle of the eighteenth century, Diderot and d’Alembert published Encyclopédie, which celebrated the virtues of labor. Throughout its twenty-seven volumes, articles dealt with everything from baking bread to making nails. What would Diderot include in his revised edition today? A few places to start:

virtual volunteering (i.e., “if handled adeptly, [unpaid Verizon

volunteers] hold considerable promise” http://is.gd/T6Q6)

creating meta data (i.e., Flickr Commons)

uploading and/or watching/looking at photos and videos

socializing (playful acts of reciprocity)

paying attention to advertising

micro-blogging (status updates, Twitter)

co-innovating (i.e., bicycles, mountain bikes, skate boards, cars, etc)

posting blog entries and comments (i.e., the bloggers who work for

Huffington Post)

performing emotional work (presenting a personality that “fits in”)

posting news stories

referring (i.e., Digg.com)

creating virtual objects (i.e., Second Life)

beta testing (i.e, Netscape Navigator 1998)

providing feedback

consuming media (i.e., watching videos)

consuming advertisement

data work (i.e., filling in forms, profiles etc)

viral marketing by super-users

artistic work (i.e., video mashups, DeviantArt, Learning to Love You More)

Most of this about pleasure, play, personal benefit, and profit– all at

the same time. It’s fun, sure, and the price we pay for the “free

services” is complex.”

_______________

Comentei com Trebor, durante o Art.Mov em novembro de 2009, se esta forma de capitalização não seria tão velha quando as mídias de massa e se não poderíamos pensar que quando assistimos TV não estaríamos também “trabalhando” para ela, já que somos nós, a audiência, que mantemos ou não um programa no ar. Ele concordou. E mais ainda, nos meios massivos “trabalhamos” para ter entretenimento e informação, enquanto que nas novas redes sociais e sistemas da Web 2.0 “trabalhamos” para ter entretenimento, informação mas também para poder colocar conteúdo, compartilhar informações (texto, imagem, som), promover nosso próprio trabalho, reforçar laços sociais, etc. Trata-se de uma economia da informação.

Acho interessente a perspectiva crítica de Scholz, mas as vezes me parecer forçar um certo reducionismo econômico.