Chat 3 Discussion Starter
Working and Shopping On-Line
by Kitty Vigo
Cyberspace is the last (latest?) frontier on which the battle between culture and capital is being fought. For many the debate is limited to the familiar terrain of the ideological versus the political-economic perspective, for others the issues centre on questions of access and marginality. Political economists argue that the potential of cyberspace is the expansion of global capitalism, conveniently ignoring the fundamentally ideological nature of globalisation. Cultural theorists argue that the debate about cyberspace can only occur within ideological contexts and downplay the increasingly economic rationalist perspectives that underpin it. Others – feminists - argue that cyberspace addresses new and old issues which extend well beyond narrow interpretations of political economy and ideology. The issues they refer to are "…to do with the allocation of resources for the poor and the marginalised, the experience of time and space, of what is public and private, of the body, the community and global economics. And where issues overlap, cyberspace gives them a new twist." (Introduction, Cyberfeminism: Connectivity, Critique, Creativity. Spinifex Press: Melbourne, 1999. p9.)
The new twist that cyberspace confronts us with is its potential to fold life experiences such as work and play and to transform them into new economic and cultural realities. Increasingly, the arena for this transformation is the home and the vehicles for the transformation are the convergent technologies of television and the internet – cyberspace. In cyberspace work becomes play and play is transformed into new forms of work. The distinction between the workplace and the home is disappearing. Cyberspace allows us to work at home – virtually connected to our employers. This opportunity is couched in terms of individual choices about how we organise our lives but inevitably implicates us in a process of economic rationalism which espouses the virtues of cutting the cost of real estate from production and manufacture - let the worker carry the cost of maintaining the workplace. Virtual shopping is presented to us as the opportunity to search and locate products at the best price, but implicates us in a process which challenges national sovereignty over consumer standards and protections – caveat emptor.
It is no accident that some of the leading players in virtual shopping are global media conglomerates such as Time-Warner, News Corporation and, in Australia, PBL which has the Australasian franchise for MSN, and Fairfax, which operates Australia’s largest e-commerce site, CitySearch. They offer us new forms of entertainment such as interactive television, virtual worlds and access to downloadable games and music – all at a competitive price and with painless virtual payment. Virtual shopping is presented to us as an entertaining opportunity to become members of a global community where "good citizens" are rewarded with personal profiles as "shopper of the month". In these kinds of ways the entertainments offered by the media giants become ideological tools confirming our status as consumers who work to buy our new cyber-identities.
Issues for Discussion:
Is that what we really want? What strategies can be put into place to challenge the domination of capitalism over cyberspace? How do we want to define our roles and status in cyberspace?