I don't know if this might be another example to think about along the lines of the Disney walkway one; imagine a cancer clinic which, as well as gaining money from treating the patients, they also collect blood and body tissues which are 'produced', bi-products, from operations. They then sell what was once the natural product of one's body without remunerating you. Is that not analogous to data harvesting?
I think the key lies precisely in analysing the social relations under which this phenomenon arises, as you said. Let's start with the easy part: there's no such thing as "raw data". Information implies that actual life processes have been already undergone a procedure of abstraction and symbolic representation that clearly entails a series of deliberate actions. As such, "data" only arises as the result of a process of recording and measuring elements of our interactions with physical objects (which of course were created through labor) which clearly falls entirely within the given definition of labor.
The next step is deciding whether these interactions constitute labor. Imo they do and the answer is twofold:
Firstly, there's the intercourse of the activity itself with the nexus of the social-productive relations under which it comes into being. when capitalism seeks to harness the productive potential of a certain activity or aspect of human life, it molds the way the activity is carried out. In the piezoelectric walkway example, we would find that the activity of walking towards the attractions in the theme park would not be left to chance, to occur"organically"; we would se guardrails on either side of the walkways, deliberately longer, winding routes to reach the attractions etc. When the process is subjected to the logic of capital, those performing it are being trained to perform it in a certain way. It BECOMES a series of calculated, deliberate actions, i.e. labor. The algorithm trains us to generate data in much the same way.
Secondly, and this is a philosophically crucial and potentially contentious assertion, although it does follow from the first, it is labor because EVERYTHING IS LABOR. Besides perhaps sleeping or looking at the sunset, there is no state of being in which man passively "exists" in the world, even in leisure. To act, to create, to change our surroundings even if it is just stacking pebbles on a beach, is to be human. When we tell stories around a campfire, we're working to actualise our social existence, to build bonds e.t.c. In short, we're performing the crucial task of social reproduction, which is work. It just so happens that in this work we can stillrecognise those elements of our work that return to us less mediated by the social relation of capital. (On a sidenote: Much of the discourse in pseudo leftist circles about "fully automated luxury gay space communism" is reactionary petty bourgeois fancy; If you're not working, it's because someone else is. AS A CLASS, we are always working)
In this sense, capital doesn't just alienate us from the product of the part of our labor that is carried out in the formalized context of the wage system. It certainly does that because the "official" working day, the performing of labor in the context of organised industry is the part of our labor that creates surplus value. But the rest of the Day, the part of it dedicated to social reproduction, which is very much spent working, is also being colonised.
I don't know if this might be another example to think about along the lines of the Disney walkway one; imagine a cancer clinic which, as well as gaining money from treating the patients, they also collect blood and body tissues which are 'produced', bi-products, from operations. They then sell what was once the natural product of one's body without remunerating you. Is that not analogous to data harvesting?
Great questions. I’ll address it in an upcoming substack post, comrade.
I think the key lies precisely in analysing the social relations under which this phenomenon arises, as you said. Let's start with the easy part: there's no such thing as "raw data". Information implies that actual life processes have been already undergone a procedure of abstraction and symbolic representation that clearly entails a series of deliberate actions. As such, "data" only arises as the result of a process of recording and measuring elements of our interactions with physical objects (which of course were created through labor) which clearly falls entirely within the given definition of labor.
The next step is deciding whether these interactions constitute labor. Imo they do and the answer is twofold:
Firstly, there's the intercourse of the activity itself with the nexus of the social-productive relations under which it comes into being. when capitalism seeks to harness the productive potential of a certain activity or aspect of human life, it molds the way the activity is carried out. In the piezoelectric walkway example, we would find that the activity of walking towards the attractions in the theme park would not be left to chance, to occur"organically"; we would se guardrails on either side of the walkways, deliberately longer, winding routes to reach the attractions etc. When the process is subjected to the logic of capital, those performing it are being trained to perform it in a certain way. It BECOMES a series of calculated, deliberate actions, i.e. labor. The algorithm trains us to generate data in much the same way.
Secondly, and this is a philosophically crucial and potentially contentious assertion, although it does follow from the first, it is labor because EVERYTHING IS LABOR. Besides perhaps sleeping or looking at the sunset, there is no state of being in which man passively "exists" in the world, even in leisure. To act, to create, to change our surroundings even if it is just stacking pebbles on a beach, is to be human. When we tell stories around a campfire, we're working to actualise our social existence, to build bonds e.t.c. In short, we're performing the crucial task of social reproduction, which is work. It just so happens that in this work we can stillrecognise those elements of our work that return to us less mediated by the social relation of capital. (On a sidenote: Much of the discourse in pseudo leftist circles about "fully automated luxury gay space communism" is reactionary petty bourgeois fancy; If you're not working, it's because someone else is. AS A CLASS, we are always working)
In this sense, capital doesn't just alienate us from the product of the part of our labor that is carried out in the formalized context of the wage system. It certainly does that because the "official" working day, the performing of labor in the context of organised industry is the part of our labor that creates surplus value. But the rest of the Day, the part of it dedicated to social reproduction, which is very much spent working, is also being colonised.