Glossary:Playground as Factory

The Internet as Playground and Factory refers to both a foundational conference and theoretical framework that examines how digital platforms simultaneously function as spaces of leisure and sites of labor exploitation. The concept, developed through a 2009 conference at The New School and later expanded in Trebor Scholz's 2012 edited collection "Digital Labor: The Internet as Playground and Factory," describes how the Internet operates as both an entertaining playground where users engage voluntarily and a hidden factory where their activities generate value for platform owners through what Tiziana Terranova termed "free labor."

Conference Origins

The framework emerged from the groundbreaking conference "Digital Labor: The Internet as Playground and Factory" held November 12-14, 2009, at The New School in New York City. Organized by Trebor Scholz, the conference brought together scholars including Andreas Wittel, Tiziana Terranova, Mark Andrejevic, Christian Fuchs, and others to examine the political economy of digital participation. The conference challenged prevailing narratives about Web 2.0 democratization by revealing how user participation in seemingly playful online activities constitutes uncompensated labor that generates enormous profits for digital corporations.

Theoretical Framework

The "playground and factory" metaphor captures the dual nature of digital platforms where the same activities serve contradictory functions. As a playground, the Internet offers spaces for creativity, social interaction, gaming, and entertainment that users experience as voluntary leisure activities. As a factory, these same platforms extract value from user activities through data mining, content creation, social networking, and attention capture. This duality creates what Scholz calls "playbor" - the collapse of the traditional boundary between play and labor in digital environments.

Key Concepts

The framework encompasses several critical concepts in digital labor theory. "Free labor," as theorized by Tiziana Terranova, describes how users voluntarily create content, provide data, and engage in activities that generate value for platform owners without compensation. "Exploitation 2.0" refers to new forms of value extraction that rely on user participation rather than traditional employment relationships. The concept also addresses "digital alienation," where users become estranged from the value their activities create, and "platform capitalism," which describes how digital platforms function as intermediaries that capture value from user interactions.

Cyborg Anthropological Implications

From a cyborg anthropological perspective, the Internet as playground and factory represents a fundamental transformation in human-technology relationships and labor conditions. Digital platforms create hybrid subjects who simultaneously embody worker and consumer identities, challenging traditional categories of economic activity. The framework reveals how cyborg integration with digital systems involves not just technological enhancement, but also new forms of economic subjugation where human cognitive and social capacities become inputs for automated value extraction systems.

Further Reading

• Free Labor
• Playbor
• Digital Alienation