Jonathan Last

Capitalism’s Brave New World
July 9th, 2012

Nedward July 9, 2012 at 2:12 pm

To quote Richard Lewis from CYE, “And I thought I had dark secrets”

Nedward July 9, 2012 at 2:43 pm

— “Maybe, too, the ability to switch employers on an hourly or daily basis will be a type of liberation for workers” —
Appreciate the gesture to open-minded argument but the story is inherently driven by unfocused anxiety which is not even partially located on the Man’s side. In pieces linked around here it was explained how the network’s margin vanishes once it sells Game of Thrones a la carte. I think you can sub out “HBO” for the various phyla of desk jockey. (Oh well, back to real-life Farmville, as Walter Russell Mead warned)

Also there’s no reason the (allegedly) now-unleashed HAL-9000ish Korporation/rootless citizen/”virtual state” would only behave in the traditional stereotyped pre-postmodern way; just look at Google’s “Legalize Love” ad blitz. Wait, I guess that goes your point actually…

Galley Friend J.E. July 9, 2012 at 4:39 pm

Though the microtasks may seem disparate, every Mechanical Turk contractor is actually working to program Skynet for George Soros.

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