FYI Begin forwarded message:
From: "Trebor Scholz" <scholzt@newschool.edu> Date: October 8, 2009 6:57:27 PM EDT To: "<Laura Forlano" <lef45@columbia.edu> Subject: Please distribute on your list etc?
NEWS RELEASE
Media Contacts: Bridget Fisher, 212.229.5667 x3094; fisherb@newschool.edu Sandra Ordonez, 212.229.5667 x3994; sandratordonez@hotmail.com
EUGENE LANG COLLEGE PRESENTS:
“THE INTERNET AS PLAYGROUND AND FACTORY” A CONFERENCE ON THE CHANGING FACE OF LABOR IN THE DIGITAL AGE
First-of-its-Kind Conference Examines How Social Media is Transforming the Economy, Labor and Society November 12—14, The New School, New York
New York, October 12, 2009—On November 12 to 14, Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts will host an international conference, "The Internet as Playground and Factory," which will explore the meaning and changing face of labor in the digital era. For three days, 90 theorists, artists, legal scholars, activists, students, programmers, historians, and social media experts will join to re-evaluate what constitutes unpaid labor, value, leisure, play, fun, and exploitation in an economy that is increasingly driven by the expropriation of all our blogging, data entries in online profiles, and submitted photos and videos. This event will commence a biennial series of conferences titled, “The Politics of Digital Media.”
"Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook are changing the way citizens can speak truth to power,” said Neil Gordon, dean of Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts. “Social networking services and mobile phone technologies allow activists and the millions of people who generate financial value online to re-think unionization, resistance, and even ways of making a living. Eugene Lang College is proud to begin an ambitious series of biennial conferences on digital media with an event drawing attention to labor, an issue that affects us all. With a focus on interdisciplinary education and an emphasis on civic engagement, Lang is the perfect platform to analyze social media and emerging forms of labor from the perspectives of the social sciences, arts, and Internet studies.”
The conference will be comprised of discussions, panels, presentations, a film screening, a playroom, a conference game, and a re-enactment of Facebook by a performance artist. The event seeks to advance the conversation about digital media beyond technological advances and commercial applications to touch upon vital issues facing the future of Internet users. Topics include motivations for social participation, exploitation of online play, data-lock, access across race and class, the precariousness of working conditions and unionization, political consciousness, and the social costs of government and corporate surveillance. Beyond critical analysis, the conference will seek to offer potential responses to the commercial culture of the global network of networks. It will address the dangers of yielding our pleasure, data, and friends to profit-oriented, mainstream platforms and discuss current alternatives and possible near-future scenarios.
"This conference alerts us to the fact that hundreds of millions of people continuously make the totality of their life energy available to a handful of enterprises,” said Trebor Scholz, conference convener and assistant professor of Culture and Media Studies at Eugene Lang College. “ The speakers will join to propose different visions in which individuals and groups can be change agents in the building of alternatives. By approaching this subject through a series of collaborative follow-up events, we hope to support and continue the critical analysis of this ever-evolving social phenomena.”
Internationally visible authors, activists, and artists including Mark Andrejevic, Michel Bauwens, Jonathan Beller, Patricia Ticineto Clough, Gabriella Coleman, Sean Cubitt, Jodi Dean, Ursula Endlicher, Alexander Galloway, Pat Kane, M. Christopher Kelty, Nick Montfort, Lisa Nakamura, Christiane Paul, Howard Rheingold, Douglas Rushkoff, Fred Turner, McKenzie Wark, and Jonathan L. Zittrain will address issues of digital labor from various disciplinary standpoints.
The conference will take place at The New School campus in Greenwich Village. On Thursday, November 12, the conference will begin with a film screening of Sleep Dealers, a widely celebrated science fiction film about virtual labor, followed by a discussion with the director, Alex Rivera. The screening will begin at 5:00 p.m. in Room 404 of 66 W. 12th Street and be followed by a reception at the Eugene Lang Café at 7:30pm. On Friday, November 13, at 10:00 a.m., New School President Bob Kerrey will open the conference, which will run events in three parallel tracks. At 6:00 p.m. on Friday, performance artist Ursula Endlicher and Burak Arikan will perform “Facebook Re-enactments,” a piece about networked structures, identities, and online behavior. On Saturday at 10:00 a.m. at 66 Fifth Ave in Room 101, presenters include Harvard Professor Jonathan Zittrain, cultural critic Brian Holmes, media theorist Mark Andrejevic, and Jodi Dean, Professor of Political Science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges and Erasmus Professor of the Humanities in the Faculty of Philosophy at Erasmus University.