Social Media’s International Division of Labour

"Social Media's International Division of Labour" by Fuchs explains the physical process of developing technologies like our laptops and smartphones. He details the work lifestyle for those who work for corporations that produce Apple products, like Foxconn. He introduces the reading by expressing the feelings of a Chinese iPhone engineer, as being "overworked and exhausted" (Fuchs, 206,) next a Cambodian ICT worker as being "exposed to toxic chemicals" (Fuchs, 206) and finally, an Indian software project manager as having to prioritize work over family. Each of these workers from different parts of the world are all struggling with issues in the workplace. However, they will not report them out of fear of losing their job. He explains an "unsaid rule" that is central in huge corporations that with a stressful job, employees are basically expected to work more than 12 hours so they can get the work done. Many people don't see a problem with this because of the demand for products like this in our society! 

There's a huge difference between workers in China and India, and in Silicon Valley. It is very evident. Employees in the USA are able to manage the demand for longer working hours because of their positive, safe, and healthy working conditions. They only evident problem that these workers complained about was trying to balance their social life with their work. This is very insignificant, in comparison to the demands of international workers. 

This makes me question Apple's authenticity, and I question a company more because they exploit their workers. However, it has not stopped me from buying their products. I own a Macbook and iPhone, and I probably will continue buying their products in the future. After reading about the treatment and exploitation of workers who produce products like Macbook's and iPhones, will you reconsider your next purchase? Do you think it is important to do research about the company labour standards before making a big purchase? Do you think it is society's fault for creating such a demand and overall hype for these products? 

Standardizing Social Media: MySpace vs Facebook

Gehl's reading, "Standardizing Social Media" focuses on the political, economic, and social structures that construct social media platforms. He explains platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube because they are "template driven" (Gehl, 93.) This means that they are standardized, which does not allow the reader to alter then. This makes them user friendly, and anyone from any educational background is able to use them. You do not have to be experienced in coding or software to navigate around these sites. This is also beneficial to these websites, because they are more attractive a more diverse audience. 

The most significant example is the downfall of MySpace, one of the most popular social media platforms of the time. People believed this to be "user frightening" (Gehl, 93) because it was not standardized and people had the ability to alter their profiles any way they wanted. Users feeling confident using sites like this will allow the sites to gain popularity because they're self regulated, and friendlier to everyone. He instills a positive connotation to standardized digital media platforms. 

Here is an article written by the former CEO of MySpace and why he believes Facebook became more successful: http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/former-myspace-ceo-reveals-what-facebook-did-right-to-dominate-social-media/

For those who used MySpace, and now use Facebook, which one do you prefer? Did you like that on MySpace, you had the freedom to customize your profile? Or was it too much work to constantly maintain? How does it compare to Facebook, where you just get to personalize a standardized template? 

Idealizing a Social Media System

In Robert Gehl's reading Reverse Engineering for Social Media, the author explains four interesting arguments related to idealizing social media system. Gehl explains that the most obvious required feature is the equal capacity to receive and transmit for networked computers. Next, he explains an idealized social media system must be platform independent, that it must run anywhere, whether on rebuilt computers, or jailbroken phones. Socialized media not only should be platform independent and open source but also should run on free hardware. The last point he mentions is having an "Decentralized architecture". We all know that a dominant social media like Facebook is a centralized architecture system, but what do you think Gehl means by social media system having a "decentralized architecture"?

E-Commerece and Businesses Operating from the Cloud

Throughout our studies on we examine the reading All the World’s a Shopping Cart; Theorizing the political economy of ubiquitous media and markets written by Vincent Manzerolle and Lee McGuigan. The reading focuses on the idea of U-commerce being the new medium of exchange. U-commerce describes the use of computing networks to support communication and exchange of information, products, and services between buyers and sellers in a marketplace. What I thought to be the most interesting part of the article was when Manzerolle and McGuigan shed light on the idea of businesses being run completely through “the cloud”, refered to as the “mobile barn”. The convenient idea behind the mobile barn is that it is a business model whereby the traditional barriers to commerce—access, geographic borders, time differences, currency exchange—simply go away.

Today we see tons of businesses comepletly run on the cloud using online as their primary showroom.

Forbes wrote a rather interesting article on this idea of companies being operated complexly online, and how simple it has really become. Today we associate the online e-commerce world just like one big mall.

My question for you is: Are you content with the fact of how large the e-commerce world has become? Do you prefer ordering your goods from online retailers, appose to the traditional form of retail that has always been in existence? Let me know what you think.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/joemckendrick/2012/04/19/run-100-of-a-business-in-the-cloud-its-happening-now/#10b821a91c33

Social Media and the New Evaluation

Throughout our studies on the subject of Material. Imaginaries, and Informational Capitalism we seemed to resort back to the common theme of social media. We root back to this notion of social media in relation to our core subjects of this course for the obvious reason of how valuable it has become in our society, and new frontier of capitalism. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, the list goes on a and on, and so do their users. These outlets of media comprise and are in possession of enormous amounts of data that, we as the consumer consent to let these outlets capitalize on. This data is has become the new frontier of capitalism. Why?
Because this data is so valuable, it hard to fathom to amount of information that these companies have on their prosumers, and the amount of data it adds to their interface. Take the prime example of Snapchat for instance.  The Wall Street Journal reported that Facebook offered Snapchat $3 Billion, but CEO Spiegal declined. He also declined a $4 Billion dollar offer from Goggle which was also declined. These billion dollar assessments comes strictly from the vast amount of users that Snapchat is home too. The data base is so valuable even though they do not even sell a single good. My question to you is, do you think that these evaluations are far to hight, even though the data bases are large? If yes, do you think the massive companies that are trying to acquire these outlets will realize and make more moderate offers for these data bases?

https://www.cnet.com/news/snapchat-said-to-rebuff-3-billion-offer-from-facebook/

Ubiquitous Connection in our New World of Capitalism

Throughout our studies on informational capitalism we come across the notion of ubiquitous connectivity. This idea of ubiquitous connectivity is the concept of being everywhere at once, in the case of the mobile phone for instance it’s the idea of “always on, always connected”. Yet what I want to shed light on for this blogpost is how the idea of always staying connected has opened so many opportunities to capitalize on for different corporations, and industries, etc. For instance the Blackberry as we talk about in Dr. Herman’s reading. The Blackberry was able to become the world leader in the PDA, or in today’s term “smartphone” world. More than just products the idea of the mobile market place is able to become the billion-dollar industry it is today thanks to the idea of ubiquitous connectivity. This can be seen not just thorough the outlets described in class readings. We can see it in all the websites, etc. that we use on a regular bases, to connect users and producers, as well as accumulate meta data that is used as a tool for the wellness of the company.

Moving forward in our predominantly digital world, it seems to me that the future of capitalism is in the hands of digitalization. Taking advantage of ubiquitous connectivity for capital gain. Everyone everywhere is also connected to social media, and other outlets that are continuously gathering countless data to be capitalized on. Seemingly this is the new norm, and this is what makes digital capitalism the mammoth of an industry that it has come to be, and will continue to be, and undoubtedly continue to increase.

The question I would like to raise is are you okay with being used as informational capital through your use of continuous ubiquitous connection?

Informal Circuits in Feminist Ezines

Gregg, Qin and Crawford's article, "Circuits of Labour" notes the representation of women in the workforce in relation to networks. They explain formal circuits as hierarchical and capitalistic while informal circuits connect communication and creativity. The coexistence of these two circuits are called short circuits, which then branches off into survival labour. Survival labour refers to when the unrepresented population of workers come together to create their own alternative space. This alternative space is counterculture in its own right, and can exist in the form of feminist ezines. For example, the Broken Pencil is an independent feminist ezine that tackles various issues such as race, science, history and indy culture. The creators of the Broken Pencil allow submissions to be sent in, however the guidelines state that they are strictly trying to promote independent and alternative culture. This is a strong example of a group that felt excluded from formal circuits and mainstream media, and created an alternative that represented their interests.

http://www.brokenpencilarchive.tuesdayafternoon.net/view.php?id=4058

By setting guidelines that state that submissions should be about independent/alternative culture, could The Broken Pencil be closing itself off from being an informal circuit?