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Lazzarato, Maurizio (1996) 'Immaterial Labor' in Virno, Paolo and Hardt, Michael. (eds.) Radical Thought In Italy: A Potential Politics

A Short Summary

In his essay , published in 1996, Maurizio Lazzarato describes the concept of labor, and the resulting hierarchies, in Post-Fordism. Central to the article is the conclusion that under (##in?##) Post-Fordism, immaterial labor makes social communication part of the cycle of the reproduction of capital.

While Taylorism propagated a rigid division between mental and manual labor, the immaterial worker as an "active subject" needs to be able to make decisions, to organizes processes, and to act as a communicative connector. Lazaratto describes the immaterial workers as entrepreneurs that, when necessary, form units that dissolve back into their networks once the job is done.

He calls this independence a "silent revolution" (p.139), and, at the end of his essay, points to Mikhail Bakhtin who claims that creativity is a social process. However, Lazzarato also writes that these new forms of cooperation don't lead to flattened hierarchies as the command over the subject is installed in the subject itself in the form of a demand for permanent communication.

In an economy where only that is produced which has been bought, enterprises concentrate on activating communication, and on gathering the information being generated.

By means of immaterial labor, an actively communicating, and thus producing consumer is constructed. However, "immaterial labor isn't destroyed in the act of consumption, but rather it enlarges, transforms, and creates the 'ideological' and cultural environment of the consumer" (p.137). Through communication, the consumer gives live to the commodity, and helps to further its development.

The capitalist no longer is the innovator, he can only appropriate the products. What is left for him to do is creating, managing, and regulating the consumer, through processes, and through devices.

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Campanelli, Vito (2010) 'Web Aesthetics: How Digital Media Affect Culture and Society'

(currently reading this, therefore this "random" position in the book)

In the chapter Digital Cameras and the Will of Technology, part of his book Web Aesthetics. How Digital Media Affect Culture and Society, Vito Campanelli (VC) writes about the possible reasons and consequences associated with the widespread use of mobile digital devices.

He describes how we more and more consider only that to be real and authentic, which is mediated, thus being compelled to re-represent our experiences. Whereas the media industry tries to offer an authentic experience by concealing the mediation, we as individuals need to be able to look at a moment that we have experienced again and again in order for it to become real.

This need, however, isn't necessarily a human desire only, but is just as well driven by what VC calls the will of technology. Initially man would have a goal and the machine or tool (for example an individual and discrete one as the hammer) would provide the means to achieve it. Referring to italian philosopher Emanuele Severino, VC describes the reversal of this relationship. According to Severino, the contemporary subject approaches technology in the same way as s/he previously approached god (→ "save me", "be the means through which my will is made"), to then more realistically realize that the s/he needs to take a step back in order not to interfere (→ "may your will be done").

VC calls the act of sharing (e.g. photos) a "simulacrum of purpose" that gives us the illusion that we act deliberately instead of fulfilling the will of technology. As technology provides both aim and means at the same time, humans lack a real "telos" and are reduced to the operation of machines.