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Affective Labour vs. Digital Environments

"The model of the computer, however, can account for only one face of the communicational and immaterial labor involved in the production of services. The other face of immaterial labor is the affective labor of human contact and interaction." (Hardt & Negri, 7)

The concept of affective labour can be neatly summed up as "in-person services". This doesn't leave much room for the digital environments McLuhan discusses. 

But Affect is not solely associated with direct human contact. It can also be virtually like in the modern music industry. Nothing is physically being sold, but it is real commodity. The music industry is just one example that affect can be a digital environment. 

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Fragmented or Flexible Self?

Both Hardt & Negri and McLuhan make references to technology enabling us to be in several places at once.

Hardt and Negri refer to this concept as "The Fragmented Self" 

While McLuhan uses the term "The Flexible Self"

These are just 2 names for the same concept, written about decades apart. 

When McLuhan was writing, a person could be in two places at once through a phone call or fax.

Hardt and Negri wrote in 2001, when a person could be fragmented by a phone call, text message, email and dozens of social media apps. 

Are we as a culture becoming more fragmented or flexible?

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Artificial Intelligence

Thanks to encoded algorithm, computers and other devices have the ability to continually grow "smarter" with artificial intelligence when the user interacts with it and its environment. (Ideas and concepts pulled from Hardt and Negri's reading)

But just how "smart" can a computer become?

McLuhan writes about a circuit learning to do your job. Now what? Once a computer is capable of human labour, the human will likely be out of work. There is no doubt that to employ a computer would mean more no vacation hours, breaks or monthly paychecks. 

Making the Human equivalent seem almost needy. 

Also hyperbolic.... or is it? hmmmm

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"Today we increasing think like computers" Hardt & Negri

This quote from Postmodernization or the Informatization of Production flips McLuhan's idea on its head.

Now we are become an extension of the computer. 

What is most frightening is that this statement is not so far fetched. Just taking a moment to reflect on our everyday lives can reveal this statements validity. McLuhan writes, "when ratios change, men change." 

Our technology impact us in ways we can't even begin to comprehend, and many of us don't care to take the time to think about it.

Devices like Google Glass make human and technology linked in a way we have never seen before. When worn, the user is not only present in the physical world, but is also connect to dozens of media environments. What is worrisome is that few care to think of the way these digital environments will take away from the physical world we exist in. The consequences of these technologies have not been properly assessed and I wonder if the damage will be irreversible once inflicted.

Clearly a hyperbolic photo... but how far fetch is it truly?

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OLIVER (Online Interactive Expeditor and Responder)

Named after Oliver Selfridge, "Father of Machine Perception", Licklider and Taylor introduce this concept that would know your friends, acquaintances, value structure and who you believe to be important. This concept would essentially be an extension of ourselves, it becomes a second brain. 

This directly relates to McLuhan's ideas on how all media works us over completely. 

"All media are extensions of some human."

"The book is an extension of the eye. Clothing, an extension of the skin. Electrical Circuitry, an extension of the central nervous system."

And OLIVER, an extension of the brain. 

It thinks for you.

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Marshall McLuhan.

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Marshall McLuhan - Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, 1964

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BOTH...

McLuhan and Licklider & Taylor make references to a community connected through these digital technologies.

Marshall McLuhan refers to it as Global Village, where time has ceased and spacehasvanished. 

Licklider and Taylor describe it as a "Super Community".

"The hope is that interconnection will make available to all the members of all the communities the programs and data resources of the entire supercommunity." (Licklider & Taylor, 32)

These two terms are synonymous and immediately brought the idea of a Rhizome to mind. The communities or villages are a collection of people, or in rhizomic terms, a collection of many trees. The assemblage causes a single body to be formed, which we can see now online with Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr. 

From an early age, many people are introduced to these online communities, villages or environments.

Neopets is an example of a media environment targeted directly towards the young. The age from which we are exposed to these environments is reducing and the number of communities is increasing rapidly.  

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"In a few years, men will be able to communicate more effectively through a machine than face to face."

This quote from JCR Licklider and Robert Taylor's "The Computer as a Communication Device", captures McLuhan's ideas of ever increasing digital environments for people to interact. It presents the terrifying fact that these environments could one day replace human interaction in sake of efficiency and effectiveness.

It should be noted that rather than handing this assignment in for grading, you have been provided with the URL to an environment that is yours tp discover.