Two Critiques
The first section of this summary considers assessments of the Internet based on of political economy point of view, taken together with cultural theory. This is in reply to theoretical assertions made by Christian Fuchs and his co-defender of the internet counter hype, Jodi Dean. These two skilfully puncture the belief that the internet is an avant-garde technology.
ChristiaFuchs applies a Marxist examination of this revolutionary technology and avers that we are ain n advanced capitalism, a society in which knowledge production is vital to the creation of wealth. This is somewhat in agreement with assertions made in (McChesney, 2013). While the industrious power of knowledge escalates with the growth of society, under capitalism, knowledge is privately owned (Fuchs, 2010). Capitalism treats knowledge as private property, contradicting its social role. Thus, Fuchs avers that the upsurge of informational private enterprise has become crucial to wealth accumulation (Fuchs, 2010).
Knowledge producers include workers, students, researchers, domestic workers, and service personnel whose “immaterial labor” contributes to the production of social goods in the new media through the sharing of knowledge. While the concept is social goods is relatively new according to Hamilton (2011), capitalism exploits and colonises its producers. The working class is not the sole source of information. The multitudes – the majority underclass – are.
According to Fuchs, new media includes Internet platforms where users generate and share new knowledge, thus contributing to the entirety of knowledge. Capitalist web platform providers accrue profit by exploiting the free labor of internet users who are not paid anything for their work. This argument is based on Smythe’s spectators’ product theory in which companies, for instance, Facebook, make profits by accumulating users and selling them as an audience to advertisers. Content produced by capitalists no longer appeals to the user, who instead produces their own knowledge and shares it freely. Thus, such activities are not an expansion of democracy but a commodification of human creativity (Fuchs, 2010).
However, Fuchs’s evaluation of the internet, while commendable, is reductive. He erroneously assumes that profiteering is equal to, and limited to, invention on the Internet. Facebook and Google audience is only bundled and traded, unlike T, which is also rationalized and regulated, a notion that is beyond the linear approach proposed by Bermenjo (2007). Firms indeed discover ways to commoditize the knowledge bases. Thus, the metaphoric equation of factory labour to Internet “labour” breaks down.
Furthermore, Fuchs erroneously assumes that internet audiences self-gathered are commoditized and traded to advertisers. He assumes that, like TV, the internet, still in its influx stage, has attained its ordinary form. Analysing the Internet and television using the free labour model shuts out the future opportunities that technology portends.
The internet for everyday life is real, according to Bakardjieva (2015). Yet, Interaction via the Internet is simply that, despite producing knowledge. Capitalists misuse it just as any other entrepreneurs do. Thus, the internet has an economic function, which Fuch argues is not equal to a democratic function. Posting trivial messages on the World Wide Web is not democracy since the messages are not emancipatory. It only shapes a prejudice that cannot put up with the political truths of capitalist culture. Yet internet testimonies may encourage an avalanche of nonconformist opinion. This is not democracy (Evans, 2013).
The Complex Layering of the Internet Functionality
Fuchs and Dean's criticisms offer little consideration to the fact that internet social sense is inseparably intertwined with its mechanical character, just as ur communal life is inseparable from technology. This is contrary to the popular opinion among internet experts who assert that humans are isolated from technology (Napoli, 2011) and are thus adapted to reason about society in abstraction from the technologies that enable this. Technologies are tangible in Marx’s wisdom because they appreciate in technically to form numerous layers of utility and meaning analogous to the actors who form them. On whether this approach applies to the internet, suffice it to say that the internet is fundamentally a shared instrument regardless of whatever other purposes it may serve. Yet, internet functionality does not form a whole. The idea of increased, also supported by Greengard (2015), is paramount. Regardless, the promise the Internet holds hangs on the actors’ success in defining its technical role between the consumption and the community models. While Lerner (2009) says that the two roles are innately conjoined, Fuchs argues that they strive for regulation of the future. Yet, neither can triumph in what is seen as a struggle to determine the uncertainty by favouring the strata of the technology that support these two interests.
The Internet constitutes several strata that are appropriated by interested parties for various purposes. The first stratum is called na on-hierarchical structure, which shuns business applications while preferring public usages. This reduces the influence of the capitalists. The anonymity layer favours the internet’s political function by protecting the stigmatised broadcasting layer can reach masses since it is open, unrestricted, and prompt. This makes it eye-catching to the public. The fourth layer is the data storage. This has multiple functions that aid advertising, communication, among others. Finally, many-to-many internet layer backian ng online community through social grouping that shares common interests.
As averred by Lievrouw and Livingstone (2006), most activity by online communities is meaningless. Yet, each internet user accrues certain authentic benefits. Such ambiguities explain hothe w internet serves very diverse strategies of diverse actors. As presently constituted, the internet will only remain hospitable to all actors if the free movement of data and network impartiality are conserved. These circumstances, which are unintentional repercussions of the Internet’s military origins, are unsuited to the plans of business users, but they ought to be protected if they are to survive.
Conclusion
The fractured understanding of the internet and the utility nature of its features is nothing unique. Therefore, censure of the Internet is untimely since it is still growing. We are unaware of the ultimate manner in which it will finally develop. Having an open mindset about the Internet is not a naïve stance. However, it makes a political commitment with that future likely.
References
Bakardjieva, M. 2015. Internet Society: The Internet in everyday life. London: Sage.
Bermejo, F. 2007. The Internet audience: constitution & measurement. New York: Peter Lang.Top of Form Evans, E. 2013. Transmedia television: audiences, new media and daily life. New York: Routledge.
Fuchs, C. 2010. Labor in Informational Capitalism and on the Internet. The Information Society: An International Journal 26(3), pp. 179-196.
Greengard, S. (2015). The internet of things.
Hamilton, J. 2011. Internet. Edina, MN.: Abdo Pub.
Lievrouw, L. A., & Livingstone, S. M. 2006. Handbook of new media: social shaping and social consequences of ICTs. New York: Peter Lang
Mcchesney, R. W. 2013. Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism is Turning the Internet Against Democracy. New York: The New Press.
Napoli, P. M. (2011). Audience evolution: new technologies and the transformation of media audiences. New York: Columbia University Press.
