Trebor Scholz' presentation at a panel Discussion with danah boyd and Ethan Zuckerman Friday, April 13, 2007, 6:30 – 8:30 p.m. The New School, Theresa Lang Community and Student Center 55 West 13th Street, 2nd floor New York City

1. We are outsourcing our
memory
Kevin Kelly says, "What will most surprise us is how dependent we will be
on what the Machine knows - about us and about what we want to know.
We already find it easier to Google something a second or third time
rather than remember it ourselves."
"The more we teach this mega computer, the more it will assume
responsibility for our knowing. It will become our memory. Then it will
become our identity. In 2015 many people, when divorced from the
Machine, won't feel like themselves - as if they'd had a lobotomy."
<http://wired.com/wired/archive/13.08/tech.html>

2. The Paradox of Labor,
Privacy & Property on the Core
Sites of the Sociable Web
Trebor Scholz, Institute for Distributed Creativity
trebor@thing.net | www.collectivate.net
Content protected by Creative Commons non-commercial, share-alike license

3. Labor?
Core sites of the sociable web (not the mom and pop stores)

5. With Paolo Virno, labor longer
happens solely when an object is
produced. It takes on the form of a
virtuosic performance with the laborer
taking on the role of a speaker.

7. The Social Factory
If in its beginning the factory came out of
the social body and tended to separate itself
from it in order to elaborate its own rules of
operation, it must now reincorporate this
social body in order more than ever to
dominate it.
--de Gaudemar
http://libcom.org/library/deleuze-marx-politics-nicholas-thoburn-4

9. Top 10 -- 40%
The sociable web makes people easier to
use. The popularity of the core sites is
owed to the wealth of content generated
by visiting net publics. Community is the
product.
www.sina.com.cn, www.baidu.com, www.yahoo.com, www.msn.com, www.google.com,
www.youtube.com, www.myspace.com, www.live.com, www.orkut.com, and www.qq.com
http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2006/12/sharecropping_t.php
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/long_tail_shrinking.php

10. Internet in China
100 mio net users in China
huge difference between city and rural areas
400 million mobile phone users
emphasis on mobile Internet
4 out of the top ten sites online are Chinese

11. 50.000 visitors a day, 700.000 pages

12. What the MySpace Generation
Should Know About Working for Free
Very few context-providers get rich on the
backs of the very very many.

13. Naturalized capitalism

15. Affect

16. Contemporary capitalist production
mobilizes to its advantage all the
attitudes characterizing our species,
putting to work life as such.
--Paolo Virno

18. Comment, tag, rank, forward, read,
subscribe, re-post, link, moderate, remix,
share, collaborate, favorite, write; flirt,
work, play, chat, gossip, discuss, learn

21. Time
11.9%
http://blog.compete.com/2007/02/05/compete-attention-200/

22. 51
18
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myspace
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook#Statistics

23. $583m
1.65 billion
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4695495.stm
http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2006/10/crazy_crazy_crazygoogle_spends.html

24. ... they gain friendships, share their life
experience, archive their memories, they
are getting jobs, find dates, fame, and can
“egocast,” as well as contribute to the
greater good, social enjoyment, pleasure
of creation ...

25. Value: attention, ads, content (blog posts, video),
profiles, consumption, transaction commissions,
spam, spam, and spam (and spam)

26. http://www.flickr.com/photos/gimble/429797365/

27. Privacy on MySpace
MySpace.com also logs non-personally-identifiable information including IP address,
profile information, ... this data is used to ... improve the website services.
This non-personally-identifiable information may be shared with third-parties to provide
more relevant services and advertisements to members.
http://collect.myspace.com/misc/privacy.html

28. http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2006/03/70501

29. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6305957.stm

31. <http://www.yaadz.com/>

32. http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/AFVQZQ8PW0L/ref=cm_pdp_about_see_review/
104-3003194-7485555?ie=UTF8&sort%5Fby=MostRecentReview

33. http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/AFVQZQ8PW0L/ref=cm_pdp_about_see_review/
104-3003194-7485555?ie=UTF8&sort%5Fby=MostRecentReview

34. Facebook Profiles
Favorite music, books, movies, address
(home town), phone number, email,
clubs, jobs, educational history, birth date,
sexual orientation, interests, daily
schedules, relation to friends, pictures

35. Property and Privacy in Facebook
By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant ...
to the Company an irrevocable, fully paid, worldwide license to use ... and
distribute such User Content for any purpose
Facebook may also collect information about you from other sources, such
as newspapers, blogs, instant messaging services ...
http://www.facebook.com/terms.php
http://www.facebook.com/policy.php

36. Rupert Murdoch (FOX and FOX News right-wing propaganda media monopoly)

37. Fox Interactive and MySpace HQ

42. The Rights and Wrongs of Labor
and the Core Sites of the Sociable Web
The Amorality of the Sociable Web

43. http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2005/10/the_amorality_o.php

44. http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/003570.shtml

46. Facebook & MySpace Mobile
Mobile content-contribution will increase centralization of the web

49. Uganda

50. Which politics are we supporting by
contributing to a particular platform?

51. “Communal Unshackling”
Give net publics control over their content
Transparency (privacy, property, ownership)
Really share the created monetary value

52. Thanks.

53. We are outsourcing our
memory
Kevin Kelly says, "What will most surprise us is how dependent we will be
on what the Machine knows - about us and about what we want to know.
Trebor Scholz.
We already find it easier to Google something a second or third time
rather than remember it ourselves."
Institute for Distributed Creativity
"The more we teach this mega computer, the more it will assume
responsibility for our knowing. It will become our memory. Then it will
become our identity. In 2015 many people, when divorced from the
Machine, won't feel like themselves - as if they'd had a lobotomy."
trebor@thing.net
<http://wired.com/wired/archive/13.08/tech.html>
http://collectivate.net/journalisms

54. We are outsourcing our
memory
Kevin Kelly says, "What will most surprise us is how dependent we will be
on what the Machine knows - about us and about what we want to know.
We already find it easier to Google something a second or third time
rather than remember it ourselves."
"The more we teach this mega computer, the more it will assume
responsibility for our knowing. It will become our memory. Then it will
become our identity. In 2015 many people, when divorced from the
Machine, won't feel like themselves - as if they'd had a lobotomy."
<http://wired.com/wired/archive/13.08/tech.html>