In part III Social Media’s Cultural Political Economy of Global
Space by Christian Fuchs in his Culture and Economy in the Age of Social Media
book, he explains how social media has helped develop productive forces from
industrial to informational. Because of this our activity online is monitored
and our browsing habits are sold as commodities.
The internet is very difficult to be completely anonymous or
untraceable. The guy who sent the threat to Laurier’s Science Building through
an “anonymous website” was tracked down in England. Do you believe people
should have the right to be completely anonymous and untraceable online or
would this be dangerous?
For this week's readings, the article titled, Circuits of Labour: A Labour Theory of iPhone Era struck me as quite interesting. The authors propose the circuit of labour model that connects different facets of labour and the study of ICT (information and communication technology). In order to highlight all elements of ICT labour, the authors look at the immersion of the Apple iPhone. This example helps to illustrate how contemporary circuits of labour work and exist. The authors break down the processes of labour, and how contemporary body's work under capital. The model helps to debunk the different types of labour, for example "wage labour vs. free/volunteer labour". Particularly, it looks across countries and institutions by addressing the concept of "sweat shops", and the discriminatory and illegal behaviour that is practised - all due to material production caused by capital gain. Which brings me to my next point.
The article addresses the counter cultural movement against the Foxconn events of the twenty-first century - titled The Phone Story.The Phone Story is a satirical video game that was released in order to highlight "the dark side of your Smartphone". The users would be able to follow their phone around the world, and witness the complex illegal process of labour and extreme working conditions for labourers. The game was available for both iPhone and Android users, yet was quickly banned from the App Store due to it not complying to Apple's terms and conditions of Apps. Creators: Molleindustria, planned to revamp the game, and sure enough making it available for Android users in 2011.
I decided to look a little deeper into this video game as it was really interesting to me. Here is a YouTube video to give you an idea of the game and its content:
This counter-culture movement, reminded me of an article I read a while back by the NY Times titled The Price of Nails. The Price of Nails, NY Times
The article discusses the exploited work of manicurists, particularly in NYC, yet it is a persisting issue within North America. The article looks at the "Manicure Capital" and how it is primarily evident in NYC among Asian and Hispanic women. The article is very similar to the arguments as it touches on the circuit of labour that exists within this realm of beauty and how workers are persistently exploited due to capital means in the United States. One thing that really stood out is when they compare the abundance of nail salons to the ubiquitous amount of Starbucks (which is understood as a coffee shop nearly on every corner). Yet to my surprise, nail salons nearly triple the amount of Starbucks in a ten block radius. Even though this article does not consider ICT it connects to the concepts of a network of labour, and how a specific demographic shares a relationship, especially a "disadvantaged" group of works, like these Asian and Hispanic women.
In yesterday's lecture we watched a video of Kevin O'Leary explaining that the main object of business is to make money and please the shareholder. When we watched this video a theory from a business ethics class that I have taken came to mind. This is the shareholder vs. stakeholder theory.
The shareholder theory was created by Milton Friedman and he explains that the main responsibility of a business is to increase its profits. Essentially it does not matter how or why, but that profits are created and capital is increased. This theory is now usually seen as the 'historic' way of doing business, however, as we see in the Kevin O'Leary interview, this is still the mindset of many successful business people.
The stakeholder theory, introduced by Edward Freeman, is the opposite; it maintains that a company owes responsibility to a number of different stakeholders. These include employees, managers, customers, suppliers and the business community itself. We see that many corporations today take this approach, by having large employee benefits, customer rewards, open information and many other attributes.
This video briefly explains the two different approaches, their benefits and downfalls.
The 2013 film The Wolf of Wall Street is a representation of capitalism at its finest within the stock market world. This film came to mind when the clip of Kevin O'Leary was shown in class in regards to what is important to businesses; returning money to shareholders. This mentality does ignore labour value and the production aspect of generating profits from businesses back to shareholders of a company. In the case of Jordan Belfort who is the main character and who in real life excucuted the operations portrayed in this film, the whole point of business is to earn profit... primarily for yourself. The shareholders or stockholders are merely pawns in the game, they are to be used to your advantage. This mentality is very problematic as it promotes unequal wealth distribution and insecure investments of high volumes of money. The question is however, if given the opportunities Jordan Belfort was offered to earn millions upon millions of dollars, in our current societal structure, would you lose all morals and use shareholders to earn extremely high levels of commision?
As Kevin O'Leary stated, it's all about making money and generating cash...
Brophy
and de Peuter’s article, “Labors of Mobility,” explains that the design of
smartphone applications has been the most celebrated form of work along the
circuit of wireless production. Additionally, application production has become
a desirable career and people in this industry are capable of producing six
figure incomes depending on the popularity of their app. It is evident below
that they are capable of producing much more than this!
An
article by Fortune was published that listed the top downloaded and top
grossing iPhone apps of 2015. The article named Candy Crush Saga and Clash of Clans as
the top downloaded and grossing games respectively. Additionally, Facebook and
Pandora Radio were the apps with the most downloads and revenue respectively. I
find it interesting that the top grossing apps are also free to download,
although I also realize that tons of ads are included in the apps. According to
another article, Candy Crush has been downloaded more than 500 million times –
that’s 1 in every 23 people on Facebook worldwide. Clash of Clans earns about
$1.2 million in revenue every day, according to Think Gaming. Seeing
that Candy Crush Saga was introduced in 2012, it has become very popular very
quickly, and it is evident that app development is becoming a growing industry,
with the potential to earn a lot of money.
When
Candy Crush Saga was first introduced for download, I thought the game was a
fad that people would download and play constantly for a short period of time.
I refused to download it initially. But after three years in the market, it is
evident that the app is going strong (of course I eventually downloaded it
too!). However, I cannot foresee the length of time that the game will dominate
the popularity charts.
Why
do you think that the application has remained so popular for such a long time?
Do you believe that Candy Crush Saga will remain a popular application for a
long time, or do you believe it will soon be replaced by a new, better app? Would
you want to be an application developer if you had the opportunity?
Over the past few weeks, we have spent some time discussing the work of Alice Marwick. She explains the different types of self-branding and image building techniques that are prominent today. I felt that our debate on the social networking website LinkedIn was an interesting learning point. We identified the issue that social networking sites related to business create a physical bias, as now people are being judged not only on their work skills, but also their physical appearance. An article in the Business Insider written by Jhaneel Lockhart explains that regardless if you post a photo on your LinkedIn profile, potential employers have several different ways of finding out your physical appearance. Lockhart explains that not posting a photo on your LinkedIn account can actually hurt your chances in a job search.
Do you feel that we should make our physical appearance unidentifiable, through privacy settings and being cautious, or, do you feel that we should embrace the fact that physical appearance has become a part of self-branding?
I would like you to consider the contemporary business organization and the role that social media plays.
We see these icons on almost every single website. Dr. Herman has written about how Facebook sets the dynamic of communication and sociality into motion. There are many small actors who have relied on social media to expand their craft. Examples can be those tattoo artists whom I mentioned. They post their work and communicate with clients via social media outside of the shop they work at. When they travel, they can make this known and they will most likely have clients in the location they are headed too. Another example can be those fancy little bakeries which are popping up everywhere that have like $10 cupcakes (we have one in Uptown).
Social media allows for these small actors to showcase their art in ways which would not be possible in the past. Corporations are also aboard the social media train. I was not totally surprised when I saw Walmart had a Pintrest.
Do you think not having an active social media presence hinders a corporations or small business way forward?
