“Maurizo Lazzarato (1996) introduced the term 'immaterial labour', which means "labour that produces the informational and cultural content of the commodity" (1996, 133). This term was popularized by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri who said that immaterial labour is labour "that creates immaterial products, such as knowledge, information, communication, a relationship, or an emotional response" (Hardt and Negri 2004, 108). For them the main purpose of immaterial labour is to create communication, social relations and cooperation. Knowledge produced in this way would be exploited by capital. "The common […] has become the locus of surplus value. Exploitation is the private appropriation of part or all of the value that has been produced as common" (Fuchs 2011, 299). As Fuchs explains the Internet is part of the commons because all humans need to communicate in order to exist. But, as he continues, "the actual reality of the Internet is that large parts of it are controlled by corporations and 'immaterial' online labour is exploited and turned into surplus value in the form of the advertising-based Internet prosumer commodity" (Fuchs 2011, 299).”
“In the age of informational capitalism where work shifted even more into production of knowledge, which involves constant creation of ideas, and often outside working time, according to Hardt and Negri, as a result, people end up working all the time. “When production is aimed at solving a problem, however, or creating an idea or a relationship, work time tends to expand to the entire time of life” (Hardt and Negri 2004, 111).”
“Marx and Engels (1845/46) distinguished between work and labour. Work is a necessary productive activity which serves to provide the means of subsistence. Humans need to work in order to create food for their survival, for self-fulfilment and as a community building. Labour, on the other hand “is a necessary alienated form of work, in which humans do not control and own means and results of production” (Marx and Engels 1845/46, 4). Work is more general definition. Work is necessary in order to create goods and services. However, under capitalism work is organised in such a way that products of labour belong to the dominant class and therefore, work becomes an alienated labour.”
“George Herbert Mead said that the self is established through communication. The individual for Mead was a product of society, of social interaction. For Mead, we could only see ourselves in relation to other people. We are first an object of others, and then we conceive the perspective of other people through language and communication we become an object to ourselves. In the case of Facebook, we can look at our profiles as objects of our friends, but through communication on Facebook via pictures, status updates, profile updating, we take the perspective of others on us to communicate to the audience. On Facebook we often project what others might think of us through statuses updates, comments, etc. Mead saw social interaction and identity through 'Me' and 'I'. 'Me' related to the social self, while 'I' is the response to 'Me'. When people update their status on Facebook or communicate what is on their mind, they present the 'me', based on socialization they have already 1 http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/affect tripleC 12(1): 1-13, 2014 7 CC: Creative Commons License, 2014. experienced. The 'I' maintains
the Facebook profile by selecting 'me' to project to the world and ourselves.”
“As Walter Benjamin argued, the flâneur became someone who is turned into profit. He became the badaud, the gawker – someone who stares at the objects without reflection and takes part in the society of consumption without wondering about its substance.”
“The sensationalisation on Facebook reflects in general a culture that "privileges the momentary, the visual and the sensational over the enduring, the written, and the rational" (Turner 2004, 4).”
(The Flâneur, the Badaud and Empathetic Worker, Ekaterina Netchitailova)
