The Amateur Class, or, The Reserve Army of the Web
Our collaborator Vasilis Kostakis published an article in Rethinking Marxism.
Here’s the editor’s note:
“Web 2.0 is exploiting a reserve army of amateurs. That’s the evocative argument advanced by Vasilis Kostakis concerning the transformation of the computer industry inaugurated by the new version of the Internet. The netarchists and netocrats who now own the platforms promote the participation of amateurs who produce value for the administrators on a wide variety of sites, including Flickr, MySpace, Facebook, del.icio.us, and YouTube. The amateur enjoys the pleasures of creation, communication, and socialization while the corporations make huge profits. The alternative, according to Kostakis, might be called Social Contract 2.0, which encompasses new meanings and ways of production (peer production) and ownership (peer ownership) and constitutes “an abstract act of commitment towards the creation of a real sphere of the Commons.”
July 2nd, 2009 at 2:42 pm
afraid that link is dead