Day 1: Digial Labor Conference
I am at a conference called digital labor: workers, authors, citizens in London, Ontario, Canada. The conference aims to examine social, political and cultural dimensions of labor that are shaped and disciplined by new digital technologies. While library professionals have discussed ad nauseam about moving library to digital there has been little discussion regarding labor issues inherent in this shift. I hope my blog posts provide an opportunity to think about labor issues within library community. Vincent Mosco, Canada Research Chair in Communication and Society, Queen’s University, kicked off the conference as a keynote speaker and asked the audience to bring labor research closer to the center of communication research. He employs the concept of convergence. While the term is often used to describe technological convergence, Professor Mosco distinctively emphasized the convergence of unions across professions. By using the concept of convergence, he stressed that we should be able to advance labor interests and address current problems that are faced by technological changes, corporate concentration and rise of neo-liberalism. Professor Mosco pointed out specific successful cases of union convergence in mobilizing workers. Unions such as the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the Washington Alliance of Technical Workers (Wash- Tech) were successful in challenging the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation(CBC), in organizing workers in the wireless sector, and in winning against Microsoft. He argued that convergence is not the only option but rather one among many strategies that need to be utilized to address current labor issues. It is important to use the concept of convergence to help study communication labor within the broader communication scholarship. The question then is how do we define knowledge labor? It is complex to define knowledge workers but there is conceptual and political significance in terms of answering this question. Professor Mosco addressed that conceptual significance guides us to think about who should be the center of research while political significance will help us to bring workers together across various occupations. In order to succeed as a political project, he stressed that we need to bring people together across broad spectrum and various level occupations. Professor Mosco emphasized praxis – theoretically understand labor and incorporate political dimension. He suggests that we need to think about labor as an agency rather then dependent variable. The research should focus on giving voice to workers in order to create a political movement. By looking at what workers are doing in response to technological changes, neoliberalism, etc. we will see a resurgence of unions nationally and internationally. Finally he urged us to think fiercely global but also to bring the struggle home. He called for the inclusion of a global division of labor in labor studies in order to understand the complexities of a changing global division of labor. The scope of outsourcing labor has been expanding to legal workers, journalism etc and moving up the value chains. It is not just about US companies outsourcing IT jobs to low-wage knowledge labor in India but also Indian based multinational corporations in the US as a leading outsourcing industry. In response to this, he pointed out that resistance has been growing in China, India and around the world. The question is what’s next? Will knowledge workers of the world unite? Democratically or for democracy? Will library workers be a part of that struggle? Continue reading
FCC’s new Open Internet Blog
The Federal Communications Commission has a new blog: blog.openinternet.gov. The blog is intended to have "expert commentary from FCC staff on how best to preserve the Internet’s openness and questions that arise during this debate." And, in the first post on the site, FCC chairman Julius Genachowski says, "Our staff hopes to use this forum not only to share ideas but also to receive them. We encourage all visitors to weigh in with their own thoughts and engage in an open dialogue." Want a flavor of the blog? Try this bit about network neutrality from a post by the Jon Peha, the FCC's Chief Technologist:
Back in the 1980s, I spent much of my time thinking about an obscure topic – how to manage the flow of packets around the Internet, particularly if anyone were ever crazy enough to try telephone-like or TV-like services over what was obviously just a computer network. Like most grad students, I thought my dissertation topic was important to everyone. Sometimes after parties, my girlfriend at that time would remind me that a handful of engineers might care about such things, but normal humans, including lawyers like her, never would. But two decades later, it was mostly lawyers who were grappling with critical decisions on this topic, while most engineers paid little attention.The blog will also offer timely information on the FCC’s latest activities to preserve an open Internet. Continue reading
Gov’t Unveils New Short URLs
Gov't Unveils New Short URLs, By Andrew Noyes National Journal, "Tech Daily Dose" (October 13, 2009).
The General Services Administration on Tuesday announced a new application that allows government employees to shorten their Web addresses. Go.USA.gov lets officials create short .gov URLs out of any .gov, .mil, or .si.edu URLs. As of 5:30 p.m., Go.USA.gov has shortened 249 URLs that have been clicked 14,299 times.Continue reading
Putting Congress In Your Pocket
Putting Congress In Your Pocket, By Andrew Noyes, National Journal "Tech Daily Dose (October 13, 2009).
Want to find a congressional office phone number or a Hill aide's e-mail address? Review a bill or peek at a member's Twitter feed? There's an app for that.Continue reading
Rethinking the cloud
A couple of recent events have caused me to reanalyze and clarify my thoughts about [w:Cloud computing]: first there was the GPO Purl server crash and today there's the story about massive data loss from T-Mobile and Microsoft/Danger for anyone using a Sidekick:
"Regrettably, based on Microsoft/Danger's latest recovery assessment of their systems, we must now inform you that personal information stored on your device—such as contacts, calendar entries, to-do lists or photos—that is no longer on your Sidekick almost certainly has been lost as a result of a server failure at Microsoft/Danger."Ouch indeed! [w:Cloud computing] is basically the outsourcing of Web services (storage, email and other application layers, computational cycles etc) to a third party. Although I am guilty of using the cloud metaphor to describe the digital FDLP, it's clear from the concept map below that I don't mean we should outsource FDLP Web services to third parties. I hope it's clear that I'm describing a collaborative and distributed system of digital content, collaborative cataloging/metadata creation, as well as shared technical infrastructure in which data and technological redundancy and collective and proactive action reign. This is the exact opposite of the "cloud." So what would that metaphor be? I was thinking of the birch or banyan tree; but it's more like the symbiosis or [w:mutual aid] exhibited by certain ants and trees. It's a [w:Peer-to-peer] network with a conscience. Let's call it the FDLP ecosystem.