FIRST IN A SERIES OF BIENNIAL CONFERENCES ABOUT THE POLITICS OF DIGITAL MEDIA THE INTERNET AS PLAYGROUND AND FACTORY NOVEMBER 12–14, 2009 AT THE NEW SCHOOL, NEW YORK CITY www.digitallabor.org The conference is sponsored by Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts and presented in cooperation with the Center for Transformative Media at Parsons The New School for Design, Yale Information Society Project, 16 Beaver Group, The New School for Social Research, The Change You Want To See, The Vera List Center for Art and Politics, New York University’s Council for Media and Culture, and n+1 Magazine. Acknowledgements General Event Support Lula Brown, Alison Campbell, Alex Cline, Conference Director Patrick Fannon, Keith Higgons, Geoff Trebor Scholz Kim, Ellen-Maria Leijonhufvud, Stephanie Lotshaw, Brie Manakul, Lindsey Medeiros, Executive Conference Production Farah Momin, Heather Potts, Katharine Trebor Scholz, Larry Jackson Relth, Jesse Ricke, Joumana Seikaly, Ndelea Simama, Andre Singleton, Lisa Conference Production Taber, Yamberlie Tavarez, Brandon Tonner- Deepthie Welaratna, Farah Momin, Connolly, Jolita Valakaite, Cynthia Wang, Julia P. Carrillo Deepthi Welaratna, Tatiana Zwerling Production of Video Series Voices from Registration Staff The Internet as Playground and Factory Alison Campbell, Alex Cline, Keith Higgons, Assal Ghawami Geoff Kim, Stephanie Lotshaw, Brie Manakul, Overture Video Lindsey Medeiros, Heather Potts, Jesse Assal Ghawami Ricke, Joumana Seikaly, Andre Singleton, Deepthi Welaratna, Tatiana Zwerling Video Mashup James Blake Video Documentation Matt Sussman (CEA), Alex Cline, Jean Claire Web Design Dy, Stephanie Lotshaw, Lindsey Medeiros, Chris Barr Heather Potts, Jesse Ricke, Joumana Seikaly, Ndelea Simama, Brandon Tonner-Connolly, Conference Discussion Jolita Valakaite, Tatiana Zwerling, 99 all members of the iDC mailing list Advice and Encouragement Mailing List Moderator Neil Gordon, Ken Wark, Arien Mack, Trebor Scholz Roberta Sutton, Colleen Macklin, Victoria iDC Twitter Stream Vesna, Katie Salen, Michael Schober, Trebor Scholz Gabriella Coleman, Jenny Perlin, Kathleen Breidenbach, Sven Travis, Alexander Event PR, Marketing, Poster Design Drai!nger, Rachel Sherman, Orit Halpern, Communications and External Affairs, Karl Mendoca, Jeffrey Goldfarb, Verna de The New School LaMothe, Dawnja Burris, Robin Mookerjee, Photo Documentation Julia Foulkes, Stefania deKenessey, Timothy Conway Liao Quigley, Caveh Zahedi, Ely Kaplan, Shannon Mattern, Jonah Bossewitch, Dmitri Nikulin, Collaboration Prelude Events Ella Turenne, Scott Rosenberg, Laura Beka Economopoulos (November 11), DeNardis at the Yale Information Society Carin Kuoni, Alyssa Phoebus (September 29) Project, Dorothy Kidd, Leah Belsky at Kaltura, Ted Magder at New York University’s Live Streaming Council for Media and Culture, Mark Greif Victoria Vesna, Simeon Poulin at n+1 Magazine and Ayreen Anastas and Rene Gabri at 16 Beaver Group, and all our colleagues at The New School who enthusiastically and generously support this conference series. XX% Cert no. XXX-XXX-000 Text stock: Rolland Enviro 100 Print, 60 lb.,100% post- consumer waste, certi!ed Ecologo, Processed Chlorine Free, FSC recycled and manufactured using biogas energy. Dear all, Welcome to Eugene Lang College The New Labor: Digital Democracy or Centralized School for Liberal Arts for the !rst event in Sweatshop?” took place at The Change You a series of biennial conferences about the Want To See Gallery. politics of digital media. Moving forward, the next conference in the This inaugural conference, The Internet as Politics of Digital Media series, The Internet Playground and Factory, alerts us to the as Playground and University, will be held fact that hundreds of millions of people at Eugene Lang College in the fall of 2011. continuously make the totality of their life It will focus on a novel kind of participatory energy available to a handful of businesses. media literacy that underwrites students for the commons. A preparatory event in April At this international event about 100 2010 will focus on the death of !lm school activists, lawyers, media scholars, and the rebirth of screen education. anthropologists, artists, activists, students, programmers, historians, and social media In 2013, the third conference in the series, experts come together to reevaluate free The Internet as Barricade and Soap Box, labor, play, and pleasure in an economy that will focus on media activism outside is increasingly driven by the expropriation of the United States and Europe. Internet online sociality. cultures have radically internationalized over the past !ve years. English-language One aspiration of this conference is to content no longer dominates the Web. offer an accessible analysis of the ways in The digital divide is not what it used to which people are used—from traditional be. The Internet is not accessible to the labor markets to the Internet. Most people vast majority of people in economically who are active users of social networking developing countries, these populations services are not aware of the ways in which have a larger density of mobile phones than their attention is captured and their data those in the overdeveloped world. tracks are collected, analyzed, and sold. Enjoy the presentations and discussions, Many speakers will investigate the changing make new friends, tweet, blog, catch up with sites of speculative and actual !nancial colleagues, start a collaboration, have a value creation. In response to the awareness glass of wine, dance, walk through New York of patterns of expropriation, they will point to City at night, and stay in touch with us here a few starting points where we can tangibly at Eugene Lang College. politicize our lives. Trebor Scholz Beyond dreams of refusal of Internet cultures we propose support for data portability, decentralization, Free and Open Source Software, peer-created and owned public media, and alternative business models that do not merely strive for the biggest pro!t. If we better understand the granularities of today’s labor we will be able to discuss the lives we may lead tomorrow with more con!dence. Two prelude events have set the stage for The Internet as Playground and Factory conference. “Changing Labor Value” at the Vera List Center for Art Politics discussed the changing meaning of labor in the digital era. The second event, “Crowdsourced 1 Play the BackChatter THE INTERNET Conference Game! AS PLAYGROUND BackChatter is a game about predicting Twitter trends designed to be played AND FACTORY at conferences like this one. Beating BackChatter means sharpening your First in a series of biennial conferences sociolinguistic smarts. The game is divided about the politics of digital media into rounds that correspond to sessions at event where BackChatter is taking place. November 12–14, 2009 at Each round, you pick three words that you The New School, New York City think will be popular in tweets about the conference during the next game round. You Live Stream send in your votes with a direct message to Sections of this conference will be live streamed the game consisting of the three words you at www.streamingculture.parsons.edu want to pick. During the next round, you get points whenever anyone uses your words Twitter in a tweet about the event (tweets marked The hash tag for this event is #IPF09. with #IPF09). The value of a word is based Add this to the end of each tweet. on how many people voted on it: the MORE people that picked a word, the LESS valuable it is. So the most valuable words are the words that no one else selected. A website keeps track of player scores from round to round, and has other useful info, like a dynamic word cloud formed from tweets about the event. If you do visit the game site, just remember that a game might not be in session so there might not be any game data showing. BackChatter is a project by Mike Edwards, Colleen Macklin, John Sharp and Eric Zimmerman. www.backchatter.org Play Rooms You did not come to this conference just to get inspired, learn, dance, and network. You’ll want to catch up with friends, compare notes, and start collaborations. This is not always easy at an urban campus and in the context of a conference. The play rooms are empty rooms reserved for you to use as you see !t. Thursday: 6 East 16th Street, 8 to 10 p.m. Rooms 910 and 1009 Friday: 6 East 16th Street, 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Rooms 734, 906, 913, 1002, 1132 Saturday: 6 East 16th Street, 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Rooms 704, 705, 901, 902, 903, 904, 908, 911, 912, 1004, 1008 2 AGENDA Friday, November 13 Thursday, November 12 10:30 a.m.–1:15 p.m. SESSION A: VIRTUAL WORLDS, 5:00 p.m. CIVIL RIGHTS, AND SLAUGHTER Location Sheila Johnson Design Center, Kick-off film screening: Sleep Dealer 66 Fifth Avenue, Kellen Auditorium Location: Alvin Johnson Building, Digital Labor, Digital Immigration, and 66 West 12th Street, room 404 Transnationality or Why Virtual Worlds Need a Q&A with director Alex Rivera Civil Rights Movement, Lisa Nakamura; The 7:15–10:00 p.m. Absolute and the Virtual, Alexander Galloway; Digital Slaughter, Timothy Pachirat; Whatever Registration and Reception Blogging, Jodi Dean. Moderator Ferentz Location: Eugene Lang College Café, LaFargue. 65 West 11th Street (across the courtyard from the SESSION B: PERFORM OR ELSE: Alvin Johnson Building) AMAZON.COM’S MECHANICAL TURK Location: Alvin Johnson Building, Friday, November 13 66 West 12th Street, room 404 Exploitation and Agency in Amazon’s 8:00–9:30 a.m. Registration Mechanical