Difference between revisions of "Glossary:Playground as Factory"

Revision as of 19:24, 24 January 2011

Definition

The idea that one gives up information though play, and that game mechanics get people to give away information or provide information to a system. This playground becomes a hidden factory. Underneath is real work, but on top rides the feeling of play.

The Internet is both Playground and Factory. It is also the name of a recent conference on digital labor. The conference abstract is thus: "Today we are arguably in the midst of massive transformations in economy, labor, and life related to digital media. The purpose of this conference is to interrogate these dramatic shifts restructuring leisure, consumption, and production since the mid-century. In the 1950s television began to establish commonalities between suburbanites across the United States. Currently, communities that were previously sustained through national newspapers now started to bond over sitcoms. Increasingly people are leaving behind televisions sets in favor of communing with -- and through-- their computers. They blog, comment, procrastinate, refer, network, tease, tag, detag, remix, and upload and from all of this attention and all of their labor, corporations expropriate value. Guests in the virtual world Second Life even co-create the products and experiences, which they then consume. What is the nature of this interactive ‘labor’ and the new forms of digital sociality that it brings into being? What are we doing to ourselves?" http://digitallabor.org/