Web 2.0: The Content Generation Immaterial Labour:
Features of Fordist/Taylorist Material, Industrial Labour:

• Geographically Centralized Production
• Standardized Raw Materials & End Products
• Fragmented, Subdivided, Compartmentalized, & Repetitive Piece Work
• Division between Head & Hand (Managers & Labourers)
• Rational Efficiency was a priority
• Time and Motion Studies
• The Production Line Controls Labour Time
• Hourly Wage with Job Security
Maurizio Lazzarato: Immaterial Labour

Immaterial Labour – Definition:

“immaterial labour (…) is (…) the labor that produces the informational and cultural content of the commodity. The concept of immaterial labor refers to two different aspects of labor. On the one hand, as regards the ‘informational content’ of the commodity, it refers directly to the changes taking place in workers’ labor processes in big companies in the industrial and tertiary sectors, where the skills involved in direct labor are increasingly skills involving cybernetics and computer control (…). On the other hand, as regards the activity that produces the cultural content of the commodity, immaterial labour involves a series of activities that are not normally recognized as ‘work’ – in other words, the kinds of activities involved in defining and fixing cultural and artistic standards, fashions, tastes, consumer norms, and, more strategically, public opinion.” (Lazzarato, 1996, ¶ 2)

Features of Post-Fordist Immaterial Labour:

• “not defined by the four walls of the factory.” (Lazzarato, 1996)
• “Small and sometimes very small ‘productive units’ (often consisting of only one individual) are organized for specific ad hoc projects, and may exist only for the duration of those particular jobs.” (Lazzarato, 1996).
• Precariousness
• Hyper-exploitation
• Mobility
• Hierarchy
• “Increasingly difficult to distinguish leisure time from work time. In a sense, life becomes inseparable from work.”
• “Immaterial labor produces first and foremost a ‘social relationship’ (a relationship of innovation, production, and consumption).” (Lazzarato, 1996)
• “The cycle of production comes into operation only when it is required by the capitalist; once the job has been done, the cycle dissolves back into the network and flows that make possible the reproduction and enrichment of its own productive capacities.” (Lazzarato, 1996)
“What modern management techniques are looking for is ‘the worker’s soul to become part of the factory.’ The worker’s personality and subjectivity have to be made susceptible to organization and command.” (Lazzarato, 1996).
“one has to express oneself, one has to speak, communicate, cooperate and so forth. The ‘tone’ is that of the people who were in executive command under Taylorization; all that has changed is the content.” (Lazzarato, 1996).
“The concept of immaterial labor presupposes and results in an enlargement of productive cooperation that even includes the production and reproduction of communication and hence of its most important contents: subjectivity. If Fordism integrated consumption into the cycle of the reproduction of capital, post-Fordism integrates communication into it.” (Lazzarato, 1996).
Free Labour (2000): Tiziana Terranova:

The gift economy can be described as the actions of those who are…

“Unrestricted by physical distance, they collaborate with each other without the direct mediation of money and politics. Unconcerned about copyright, they give and receive information without thought of payment. IN the absence of states or markets to mediate social bonds, network communities are instead formed through mutual obligations created by gifts of time and ideas.” (Terranova, 2000. p. 36)
“The provision of ‘free labor,’ as we will see later, is a fundamental moment in the creation of value in the digital economies.” (Terranova, 2000, p. 36)
“However, they have developed in relation to the expansion of the cultural industries and are part of a process of economic experimentation with the creation of monetary value out of knowledge/culture/affect.” (Terranova, 2000. p. 38)
“Incorporation is not about capital descending on authentic culture but a more immanent process of channeling collective labor (even cultural labor) into monetary flows and its structuration within capitalist business practices.” (Terranova, 2000, p. 39)
“Capital wants to retain control over the unfolding of these virtualities and the processes of valorization. The relative abundance of cultural/technical/affective production on the Net, then, does not exist as a free-floating post-industrial utopia but in full, mutually constituting interaction with late capitalism, especially in its manifestation as global venture-capital.” (Terranova, p. 43).
“the best way to stay visible and thriving on the Web, is to turn your site into a space that is not only accessed, but somehow built by its users. Users keep a site alive through their labour, the cumulative hours of accessing the site (thus generating advertising), writing messages, participating in conversations, and sometimes making the jump to collaborators.” (Terranova 49).
The central preoccupation of this article is “an attempt to understand whether the Internet embodies a continuation of capital or a break with it. As I have argued in this essay, it does neither. It is rather a mutation that is totally immanent to late capitalism, not so much a break as an intensification, and therefore a mutation, of a widespread cultural and economic logic.” (Terranova, 2000, p. 54).