Nick Dyer-Witheford - Cyber-Proletariat: Global Labour in the Digital Vortex

Cyber-Proletariat

Digital Barricades:
Interventions in Digital Culture and Politics

Series editors:
Professor Jodi Dean, Hobart and William Smith Colleges
Dr Joss Hands, Anglia Ruskin University
Professor Tim Jordan, University of Sussex

Also available

Information Politics:
Liberation and Exploitation in the Digital Society
Tim Jordan

Cyber-Proletariat

Global Labour in the Digital Vortex

Nick Dyer-Witheford

First published 2015 by Pluto Press
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www.plutobooks.com

First published in Canada in 2015 by Between the Lines
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Copyright Nick Dyer-Witheford 2015

The right of Nick Dyer-Witheford to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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ISBN 978 0 7453 3404 2 Hardback

ISBN 978 0 7453 3403 5 Pluto Press paperback

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All rights reserved. In Canada, no part of this publication may be photocopied, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of Between the Lines, or (for photocopying in Canada only) Access Copyright, 1 Yonge Street, Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario, M5E 1E5.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Dyer-Witheford, Nick, 1951-, author

Cyber-proletariat : global labour in the digital vortex / Nick Dyer-Witheford.

Co-published by: Pluto Press, London.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-77113-221-3 (bound).--ISBN 978-1-77113-222-0 (epub).--ISBN 978-1-77113-223-7 (pdf)

1. Information technology--Social aspects. 2. Electronic industry workers--Social conditions. 3. Digital divide. 4. Computers--Social aspects. I. Title.

This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin.

Between the Lines gratefully acknowledges assistance for its publishing activities from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program, and the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund.

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Contents

Crisis and conflict open up opportunities for liberation. In the early twenty-first century, these moments are marked by struggles enacted over and across the boundaries of the virtual, the digital, the actual and the real. Digital cultures and politics connect people even as they simultaneously place them under surveillance and allow their lives to be mined for advertising. This series aims to intervene in such cultural and political conjunctures. It will feature critical explorations of the new terrains and practices of resistance, producing critical and informed explorations of the possibilities for revolt and liberation.

Emerging research on digital cultures and politics investigates the effects of the widespread digitisation of increasing numbers of cultural objects, the new channels of communication swirling around us and the changing means of producing, remixing and distributing digital objects. This research tends to oscillate between agendas of hope, that make remarkable claims for increased participation, and agendas of fear, that assume expanded repression and commodification. To avoid the opposites of hope and fear, the books in this series aggregate around the idea of the barricade. As sources of enclosure as well as defences for liberated space, barricades are erected where struggles are fierce and the stakes are high. They are necessarily partisan divides, different politicisations and deployments of a common surface. In this sense, new media objects, their networked circuits and settings, as well as their material, informational, and biological carriers all act as digital barricades.

Jodi Dean, Joss Hands and Tim Jordan

I thank my wife Anne for her companionship as this book was written, while we were both working on different but related academic projects, which made life together even more complex, interesting and enjoyable.

Cyber-Proletariat owes a special debt to a group of young scholars who are or were recently doctoral students at the University of Western Ontarios Faculty of Information and Media Studies and at the Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism. Their work is reflected in various ways in these pages. Thanks to Svitlana Matviyenko, for insightful editorial assistance and an education in the politics of Ukraine and Lacans cybernetics; to Atle Kjsen and Vincent Manzerolle, for their exciting new materialist analyses of circulation and automation; to Elise Thorburn, for her inspiring analysis of assemblies, assemblages and social reproduction; to Indranil Chakaraborty, for sharing his intrepid fieldwork on service work in Indias IT industry; to Rafael Alarcn, for his visit from Mexico and all the resultant debates and conversations; to Brian Brown, for wonderful talks about unpaid labours on Flickr; to Eric Lohman, for help over offshored office work; and to Emmanuel Leonardi, whose research contributed to the early stages of the book, even though he may not recognize the form it now takes.

Thanks also to Greig de Peuter and Enda Brophy, for allowing me to make extensive use of their work on the circuits of cell phone exploitation; to Tony Weis, for advice on land-grabs, enclosures and primitive accumulation; to Tobias Nagl, for translations of the work of Karl Heinz Roth; to Warren Steele, for conversations on Jnger, Ballard and weather machines; to Kane Faucher, for vortical discussions; to Sarah T. Roberts, for permission to cite her forthcoming work on commercial content moderation; to my friend Gil Warren, for help finding a few bright political glimmers in a generally dark scene; to two long-time comrades and colleagues, Dorothy Kidd and Santiago Valles, for the example of their scholarly work and political engagements; to the editors of the Digital Barricades series, for helpful revision suggestions; to Tim Clark, for incisive copy editing; and to David Castle at Pluto Press, for his great editorial patience.

Thanks, finally, to all who have over the years accused me of being too optimistic; this book is for you.

Proletariat