#andrejevic

Cote and Pybus used a term that struck me as particularly vibrant; cognitive capital. Discussions about the import and export of expertise and innovation, as opposed to physical products, have been used in the past, and this new phrase, to me at least, does a better job encompassing not only corporate innovations and scientific theories, but cultural creative products as well. Digital art, poetry, fan works, as well random repurposed items that show up in life hacks list, all fall outside of the old definitions of ‘labor’-- some sort of physical activity, and ‘product’-- some sort of tangible touchable item. The way that the capital is traded, tagging, sharing, re-blogging, etc., makes it much more cooperative than it has been in the past. The type of community effort to create is so widespread due to the connections we can make through social media is reminiscent of the commune movement from the Sixties. Adding corporate entities to the mix is where it gets messy, though. The interactivity that’s touted as something fun and unique is extremely appealing to our tendency towards self-branding, as well as giving us a way for our efforts to be recognized, and fuel that desire for acknowledgement. Advertising companies are taking the ‘fun’ part of being involved with creating, and the fulfilling part of creating with a community and coopting it. Doing that strips, at least some, the value away from the individual’s creative production. It’s very glossy and fun, and it’s doing a good job of turning the spending part of these interactions into a secondary component. Until people see that the business practice of ‘cutting through the clutter’ (Andrejevic, 2007) isn’t used to make a better product but to increase the bottom line the creations we are making won’t be truly ours.

Andrejevic discusses how reality TV denaturalized the production process, demonstrating "the constructed nature of media truths." Importantly, reality TV shows how this denaturalization has been absorbed, the result of which is (1) following Couldry, to legitimate television as a ritual form of public surveillance, and (2) providing a limited access yet without ceding control. (see, i.e., Reality TV, p. 122)

How this relates to my project:

"The Work of Watching One Another": lateral surveillance, and the watching of one another is becoming an important component of the surveillance society, "...individuals are increasingly adopting practices associated with marketing and law enforcement to gain information about friends, family members, and prospective love interests... the adoption of such technologies corresponds with an ideology of ‘responsibilization’ associated with the risk society: that consumers need training in the consumption of services and the development of expertise to monitor one another. Rather than displacing ‘top-down’ forms of monitoring, such practices emulate and amplify them, fostering the internalization of government strategies and their deployment in the private sphere. In an age in which everyone is to be considered potentially suspect, all are simultaneously urged to become spies." p. 479

iSpy: the new interactivity is asymmetric, and "“is inimical to democracy insofar as it inhibits collective action, meaningful participation, and shared control"

Surveillance in the Digital Enclosure: in addition to privacy related concerns should be the concern with digital enclosures, "which restrict access to the means of interaction to those who 'freely' submit to the detailed forms of monitoring that take place within them." He considers "questions about the ownership and control of such data and the implications of this control for networked communication" (p. 295). Digital enclosure "refers to a variety of strategies for privatizing, controlling, and commodifying information and intellectual property. As Yochai Benkler (2006) and Dan Schiller (2007) have argued, this process relies not just on expropriation of previously nonproprietary information, but on the construction of an increasingly restrictive legal regime for the enforcement and extension of property rights over a growing range of information" (p. 301).