LogFAQs > #986457894

ReturnOfDevsman posted...

Yeah I always assumed millions of people spend trijibidillions of dollars making the Internet just so we could look at silly photos of cats for free.

Yet that's the image a lot of people have of the early Internet. Because they were too young to notice.

it is fashionable to suggest that cyberspace is some kind of _island of the blessed_ where people are free to indulge and express their Individuality. some people write about cyberspace as though it were a 60's utopia. in reality, this is not true. major online services, like compuserv and america online, regular guide and censor discourse.

. . .

i have seen many people spill their guts online, and i did so myself until, at last, i began to see that i had commodified myself. commodification means that you turn something into a product which has a moneyvalue. in the nineteenth century, commodities were made in factories, which karl marx called 'the means of production.' capitalists were people who owned the means of production, and the commodities were made by workers who were mostly exploited. i created my interior thoughts as a means of production for the corporation that owned the board i was posting to, and that commodity was being sold to other commodity/consumer entities as entertainment. that means that i sold my soul like a tennis shoe and i derived no profit from the sale of my soul. people who post frequently on boards appear to know that they are factory equipment and tennis shoes, and sometimes trade sends and email about how their contributions are not appreciated by management.

Carmen Hermosillo, Pandora's Vox Redux (1994)