FLOW

The Internet is a mechanism of late capitalism. In a digital, economic system the standards for labor and value have radically changed. Tiziana Terranova explains that monetary value comes from knowledge rather than labor and workers are valued for their knowledge work. The lines between work and leisure blur in a desire to be continuously producing subjects. On the Internet the desire to produce is linked by reciprocal movements between knowledge, labor, and culture embedded within the larger flows of the late capitalist system. This paper argues that the Internet is a structure that channels flows of information, making subjects possible through the experience of existing within a system that they voluntarily sustain and consume through free labor. One of the possibilities in this relationship is that workers have freedom and agency within such a confining system because of the voluntary nature of free labor. I am going to focus on the aspect of subculture combining Terranova’s argument, in “Free Labor: Producing Culture for the Digital Economy” (2000) with Tara McPherson’s article, “Reload: Liveness, Mobility, and the Web” (2005). The two articles agree with each other that flows of information structure the web and produce subjects, however Terranova’s argument opens up the possibility for freedom and agency within that system. 

The knowledge workers of subcultural movements maintain the Internet through voluntary, immaterial labor. Terranova explains that immaterial labor, or free labor, is work that determines culture, such as artwork, fashions, and tastes. In postindustrial societies, to be productive subjects one must engage in this work, although this work was not previously considered work in industrial societies. The conditions for immaterial labor involve a creative and open environment. The worker for a digital economy, Terranova notes, “achieves fulfillment through work and finds in her brain her own, unalienated means of production” (37). This culture of exchange encourages workers to continually engage with free labor since work flows interchangeably between its inception in an interior subculture and its absorption into exterior cultural trends.

The capitalist privileging of an individual worker’s knowledge plays towards the market desire for creative production. A subject voluntarily works due to the desire to produce. Such a desire is the fundamental well of production within capitalist economies. In capitalist economies, knowledge is considered collective. Terranova writes that workers of subcultural movements collectively produce knowledge that capitalism controversially channels into the system. Channeling of knowledge then becomes subsumed by larger cultural flows and is considered value for capitalism. The knowledge worker does not particularly realize that collective cultural labor produces capital. The productive activities of a collective group, for example a music blog where independent artists post their music, can then be taken up by capitalism. The free labor of posting independent music is exploited and collectively embraced by late capitalism as systems extract as much value as possible from this free flexible and collective labor.

The temporality of the Internet encourages collaboration among knowledge workers due to its specific flow of time that creates the illusion of coherency. While Terranova ignores the dimension of a workers experience of using the web, it becomes central for McPherson’s argument. McPherson terms this actual physical participation, the users’ sense of “volitional mobility” (202). Volitional mobility is the controlled liveness of the web that eludes choice for its users. The Internet, as a dynamic system, is in the realm of uncertainty, however its technological infrastructure produces a feeling of certainty. The fragmented postmodern subject is given the illusion of coherency through the experience and actions of surfing the web. McPherson describes the experience of using the mouse as “an expression of our movement and our will. We are increasingly aware of ourselves as databases, as part and parcel of the flow of information” (203). As part of the flows of information, the presentness, liveness, and mobility of the web become embodied in the user. The freedom and choice felt on the Internet’s “frenetic, scrolling now” (201) incites the user with a passion for agency, and thus creative production. This desire to creatively produce in a capitalist society is intertwined with the Internet’s temporality, forming a subject situated in a specific kind of subjectivity and network of capital.

The Internet is a cultural form sustained and supported by a two-way flow between the Internet and knowledge workers. While flow can be limited through blockages at the level of infrastructure - the limitations in current technology – these challenges inspire flow’s ability to adapt and relocate on new curvatures, infinitely inspiring creative production. The flexibility of the system allows for movement. As it is channeled into capitalism it becomes structured into that system as a form of monetary value. The work behind that subcultural movement, motivated by an individual consumer culture, then becomes part of the flows of capital. The subcultural movement becomes a fashion trend of the masses marked by the illusion of uniqueness and individuality. This transformation towards personalization, that McPherson describes, is like the transformation of oneself that the web promises. Flow on the Internet is crucial to think of in that it produces subjects, as well as, Terranova explains, renews ‘human intelligence’ capacity to reproduce. ‘Human intelligence,’ as a commodity value, is then connected to systems of identification of the consumer.

While Terranova describes the system of flow, McPherson writes about the users’ individual experience. Taking them together, we get a dual flow of identity and participation. The possibility of this system of identification allows for agency and freedom. Terranova explains how free labor both “sustains and exhausts” (51) the flow of capitalism. This sustaining and exhaustion gives the user agency since the knowledge worker is a consumer within the system, as much as a producer. McPherson sees the web as circulating flows of culture that are structured by the rhythm of the machine-like technology of the Internet. The limitations of that system allow for liberty in moving between the institution and autonomy; this experience of mobility inspires workers to feel the illusion of agency and freedom. Capitalism is a dynamic system that is dependent upon the vein-like system of flows that workers simultaneously flow from and support.