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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><div><div><div><div><div><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>My apologies for the delay as well. I didn’t realize until lately that the Thing posts were going into an alternate folder, meaning I hadn’t seen any of them.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>This is what I would like to propose:<br></span><span style='font-size:9.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:black'>The Neoliberal Internet Dream 2.0 – Beyond Working for Facebook.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:9.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:black'>In the Beginning, there was user-generated content, or Web 2.0, and the Stacks thought it was good. From Myspace to Friendster to Facebook, and now any myriad of user-generated sites, like Instagram, Twitter, et al, the concept of leisure productivity, or “playbour” was fully realized. While users shared and created the content for the Stacks to use as their intellectual property and leverage through advertising revenue, the user was, in essence, “sold” their labor back to them through those sites’ monetization of the user content. Even with Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, there was still an element of a volunteer “ghost” workforce who complicity agreed with the work-for-service model.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:9.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:9.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:black'>Recently, apps like Lyft, AirBnB, and other “connective” entrepreneurial sites have created a number of key shifts within the conception of labor as we know it, perhaps to the point of being a harbinger of a Web Labor 3.0. These sites “casualize” labor, by allowing the user to pick up a dollar or two in their free time by giving a lift or renting their apartment when the user’s use of the asset is idle. However, this has several effects. First, to paraphrase Guattari, it “molecularizes” labor by eliminating the idea of a coherent workforce by creating a worker-by-volition. This has an added effect of shifting physical plant maintenance off of the company, and placing it (car maintenance, housekeeping) in the place of the casual laborer. And, since the services offered are on-demand to a molecularized cloud of casual workers, those workers are now placed in a struggle of Neoliberal competition to get to the customer first, much like fish to the food a the top of an aquarium. From this, solidarity is rendered impossible, leverage is made moot, and the sole locus of infopower lies with the apps’ operators. In this author’s opinion, this is the Randian dream write large in the mobile network.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:9.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:9.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:black'>But are there mechanisms for resistance? Recently, news has broken regarding research linking Facebook and the US Department of Defense in manipulating the psychology of the community through algorithmically altering mood statuses. Furthermore, related to this research, a DoD initiative codenamed Minerva has been revealed to be investigating pattern recognition in social networks that could signal threats or unrest in those communities. While one could easily write this off as using electronic countermeasures to project unrest in the 3<sup>rd</sup> world, it could just as easily be used to sense </span><span style='font-size:9.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#3E454C;background:#F7F7F7'>pre-emptive displacements of resistance</span><span style='font-size:9.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:black'> or dissatisfaction from streams of consumption, voluntary workforces, or even the possibility of resistances channeled domestically through social media. The worst-case scenario is a sealed cybernetic system that isolates and casualizes workers saddled with displaced liabilities, unwittingly monitored for any form of unrest, or patterns resembling them, much like the world of George Lucas’ THX-1138. My presentation seeks to connect these dots to propose the emergence of a system of control through displacement of assets, liability, and even regularity of work onto the laborer that paints again, a Neoliberal model of total competition, free from responsibility to the other, for diminishing gains.<br><br>Bio<br></span><span style='font-size:9.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#333333;letter-spacing:.2pt;background:white'>Patrick is a media “reality” artist, curator, and theorist of over two decades who explores how media and mediation affect our perception of reality. He is best known for his work as an Artistic Director of the virtual reality performance art group Second Front, and the animator of the activist group, The Yes Men. He is a CalArts/Herb Alpert Fellow and Whitney Biennial exhibitor as part of the collective RTMark. He has presented and exhibited internationally at numerous biennials and triennials (Yokohama, Venice, Performa, Maribor, Turin, Sundance), and conferences (ISEA, SIGGRAPH, Popular Culture Association, SLSA, SxSW). He is also Editor-in-Chief of Intelligent Agent Magazine, and a writer for the RealityAugmented blog. His recent book, “Variant Analyses: Interrogations of New Media Culture” was released by the Institute for Networked Culture, and is included in the Oxford Handbook of Virtuality. He is a Lecturer of Digital Studio Practice at the Peck School of the Arts in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.</span><span style='font-size:9.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:9.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div></div></div></div></div></div></body></html>