Facebook as Biopolitical Technology
Here’s an example from today’s NYT of biopower in action: “Facebook to Turn Users Into Endorsers”
Facebook was just bought by Microsoft. Now they are turning their website into a tool for users to internalize corporation’s brands into their personal identities. This is a good example of why Hardt & Negri see “the primary site of struggle on the terrain of the production and regulation of subjectivity” (Empire 321). Facebook users now have the option of choosing to join an “i love Escalades” group or a “protest the RNC” group. Which group gets more members may be determined by which group owner has more capital to buy advertizing space. Thanks to Microsoft for decreasing the democratic character of facebook. A good critical article on how consumers are becoming biopolitical producers of brands is:
Adam Arvidsson’s “Brands: A critical perspective” (2005) -
Abstract. This article proposes a critical perspectives on brands based on recent developments within Marxist thought. It argues that brands build on the immaterial labour of consumers: their ability to create an ethical surplus (a social bond, a shared experience, a common identity) through productive communication. This labour is generally free in the sense that it is both un-paid and more or less autonomous. Contemporary brand management consists in a series of techniques by means of which such free labor is managed so that it comes to produce desirable and valuable outcomes. By thus making productive communication unfold on the plateau of brands, the enhanced ability of the contemporary multitude to produce a common social world is exploited as a source of surplus value.
(also, see his book - _Brands: Meaning and Value in Media Culture_ (2006))
November 8th, 2007 20:19
Quick note, microsoft only bought a small piece of facebook, not the whole thing.
November 8th, 2007 22:10
another quick note, I think you meant “Facebook as Race, Space, and Biopolitical Technology.” Your post fails to consider Race and Space dimensional problems created by the appropriation. Maybe you should spend less time bitching about microsoft, and more time considering what I just wrote. In multiple dimensions.
November 9th, 2007 01:00
On biopolitics, check out this, and Lazzarato on its distinction from biopower.
But seriously, you completely missed my implicit references to race and space… facebook is now going to become a n3tw0rk3d (inter)space tool for Bill Gates’s crusade to create a new miscegenated race of yuppie-nerds called ‘fixed gear bike enthusiasts’.
November 9th, 2007 23:58
Yet another quick note, while Microsoft bought only a small piece of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg, in his dear customers’ perspective, sold all of Facebook and more.
When Zuckerberg’s strongest defense in ConnectU lawsuit was the expiration of statute of limitations, one could not help but wonder whether this guy has already sold his ethical integrity. That is, if he ever had one to begin with.
November 14th, 2007 08:59
Facebook: the new office of information awareness - facebook has been backed by the CIA.
November 19th, 2007 09:46
This can and probably will backfire. I’m giving Facebook 6 months of all of this “branding” BS before it becomes 2007’s Friendster. I mean, who really wants to see an online hangout strangled by billboards? You guys remember ads that ran in the DT inviting students to allow companies to spray-paint their logos onto your car, and they’ll take over the payments? Nobody goes for that stuff…