Playbor

Description

David Hakken:

"Among terms put forward to characterize the new form of work stimulated by web 2.0 is “playbor,” (an elision of “play” and “labor”; see anon., 2009). On playbor, the boundary between work and play has been breached. For example when one posts content on YouTube or Facebook, one is engaging in a leisure pursuit that also gives free value to a corporation, thereby lessening the need for it to hire workers. One would expect those who highlight this change in the labor process would connect it to the most visible social dynamic, the crisis. One could argue, for example, that playbor displaces paid work, which raises unemployment, which in turn means fewer consumers with income to spend, which leads to crisis. Nonetheless, to the best of my knowledge, none of the “fundamental change at work” advocates has actually attributed the crisis to “playbor.” Instead, they choose to focus on things like the implications of the new form of work for how worker exploitation has changed, or for political/social movement activity. In any case, the work processes in which playbor is arguably a central element remain marginal to work in general and therefore are not significant enough to explain the current crisis." (http://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/161/193)

Source

• Article: Computing and the Current Crisis: The Significant Role of New Information Technologies in Our Socio-Economic Meltdown David Hakken, tripleC, Vol. 8. No. 2, pp 205-220

URL = http://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/161/193

More Information

• Anonymous. (2009) “Digital Playbor?” Caught in the Web 10/22/09, http://caughtintheweb.wordpress.com/2009/10/22/digital-playbor/