Net Critics and the Word-of-Mouse Economy

On his blog Geert Lovink writes: "Indeed, we have left the post-dotcom era, a relatively quiet period that gave people time to catch up with other aspects of life and develop ideas. Let’s get to the core of the Web 2.0 question: should we welcome the next round of nonsense investments? No. The problem is really not the Internet and the next generation of exciting applications. We should carefully listen to those closest to the fire, like Ed Phillips in San Francisco, who at the nettime list on March 23 2006 observed that surplus stock market money is, once again, roaming around the Bay area, looking for victims. Venture capitalists are Draculas, demolishing interesting Internet initiatives, forcing them into hyper-growth and takeovers.

It’s the opposite of distributed and networked activities and their involvement only benefits the further concentration of power in the hands of Yahoo, Google and Microsoft. What is wrong is not Web 2.0 with its tagging, blogging and collaborative writing tools but the way business is done. Technology firms are a pray for those with “funny money”. You may look at it differently from the perspective of the individual firm but it is a fact that VC culture does not allow businesses to grow organically and develop sustainable business models. The heightened excitement only further fuels ’swarm’ locust behavior of users, leaving behind one ghost town after the other. The big difference, however, with 1998-1999 is that many more people now understand such underlying mechanisms. There are very knowledgeable critics these days, such as Nicholas Carr and of course The Register. And for cynics there is the good old Fucked Company. And do not forget individual investors, who have not forgotten all the money they lost."

In response to Lovink, I propose that the current state of the tech economy is in fact tightly linked to the many applications and web-based sociomedia because they trigger an online economy of participation. The commons-based production that Yochai Benkler describes in "The Wealth of Networks" is a significant factor for the economy. And the sociable web applications of today's young, fragile startups would perhaps not exist without the endless millions poured into the tech economy in1998/99. Lovink's crisp, word-inventive language frames the economies of the post-dot bomb era. Pushy investors, he argues, rush things too much.

Another unexpected consequence of the dotcom era was described by Andrew Ross in 'Jobs in Candyland.' Ross describes how tech laborers got a sense of a different, more casual work environment in which they were, however temporarily, empowered. The bubble generation was looking for job situations similar to the ones that they had experienced before. What corporate 'futureneer' O'Reilly calls Web 2.0, a novel architecture of participation that pervades much of the WWW today. It matters a great deal. 

The online flaneur turns user/consumer/customizer/producer. The Googles and eBays of this world dream of calling their online sirens to lure the swarms of online wanderers into their commodity web of online content production. Participants online donate themselves. Corporate pockets are filled from your clicks, your every move, your mere presence. Your attention becomes the asset of the imperial global network economy.

The heads at IBM and trendwatching.com are steaming, thinking about ways in which to further commodify the word-of-mouse economy. They want to turn the enthusiastic web-drifting “crowds” into corporate work horses. Recent studies by the Pew Institute have shown that 73% of all Americans identify themselves as Internet users out of which 51 million are involved in online content production (i.e. blog entries, Wikipedia entries, file swaps). Discourse related to social networks frequently, and often exclusively, revolves around business and the future. Net critics of all kinds concern themselves with the next move of the “vulture capitalists.” Now, that most net critics think in the service of business, where are those who think about sustainable autonomous, economic models? Or, is that attempt done with and we all surrender to big business? Is social networking immediately and inextricably linked to business? Is every group in the first place a consumer unit? Will the few online social spaces that foster social change soon turn corporate anyway- online and off? Is there no future for an autonomous enquiry that stays clear of entrepreneurial endorsement? I'm not talking about ICT4D initiatives but about social network theory that stays clear of entrepreneurial aspirations.