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autonomists leveraged this feature of material/industrial labour to their advantage by seeking out and communicating with the concentrated labour force that arrived at this place day after day. The third aspect that these two methodologies had in common was their overt political goals and desires. Both methodologies were designed to gauge the level of exploitation within the factory and, at the same time, rouse the ire of workers by making this exploitation palpable. The fourth common attribute, and where the present methodology distinguishes itself from its predecessors, was a disregard for the end products being produced by industrial workers.

Marx and the autonomists saw little interpretive value in examining the products being manufactured in the factory environment. This is understandable. The workers assembling these products had no input or power to control what was being produced, how it was being produced, and for what purpose the products were being made. The end products rolling off the assembly lines, in other words, had very little to say about the subjectivities of those who made them. In the Web 2.0 era, with its focus on User- Generated Content (UGC), Open Application Programming Interfaces (API), treating ‘users’ as co-developers, and the equipotentiality of granular participation, this is, quite simply, no longer the case.

4.5  A  Workers’  Inquiry  2.0:      

The first three similarities between Marx’s A Workers’ Inquiry and the autonomist methodology of co-research identified above remain consistent with the methodology used for this research project. First of all, just as Marx and the autonomists spoke with waged industrial labourers, the importance of speaking with unwaged immaterial

labourers and getting their impressions of the work they do, what they enjoy and do not enjoy about it, making evident their exploitation, and gauging whether or not they feel like they are being exploited remains a primary concern with ‘A Workers’ Inquiry 2.0.’ Secondly, the lack of a physical structure that concentrates labour may appear to be an obstacle in trying to apply this methodological lineage to the unwaged, immaterial domain. However, built into the virtual infrastructure of Web 2.0 sites and services are communicative channels that make emulating the methods used by Marx and the autonomists rather easy. Flickr’s Internet Protocol (IP) address, much like the street address of a factory, acts as a virtual, yet consistent, location where workers gather, and congregate synchronously and asynchronously at all times of the day. While different from the physical walls of a factory, there is a centralized meeting place where the unwaged labourers responsible for the work being done within ‘Factory Flickr’ gather. Thirdly, Web 2.0 sites and services are valued in the millions or billions. The unwaged immaterial labour of content generators is the primary source of this value. Therefore, according to the Marxist conceptualization of the term and in light of the position argued by political economists of the Web 2.0 such as Christian Fuchs in Chapter 3, exploitation clearly exists in this realm. The political aims of this research project and ‘A Workers’ Inquiry 2.0’ are, therefore, cognate to those of the methodologies on which it is based. Knowledge of this exploitation and a readiness to do something about it is one of the more interesting issues raised by this thesis, but the details regarding this point will be left to later so as to give them the attention they deserve. The fourth commonality between A Workers’ Inquiry and co-research is where the present methodology breaks from tradition.

Whereas Marx and the autonomists had no reason to examine or evaluate the end products of industrial production for clues regarding the subjectivities of those who made them, the important and irreplaceable position of the produsers subjectivity in the

conception, construction, and perpetual development of the artefacts of unwaged immaterial produsage makes this neglect untenable. With no boss or manager directing produsage, workers themselves make Flickr in their own image. We must, therefore, look at the artefacts of unwaged immaterial labour as reflections or refractions of the

individual and collective subjectivities that prodused them and as clues to the biopolitical relationships that guide and regulate their produsage. The subjectivities of the unwaged immaterial labourers responsible for Flickr, in other words, are intimately imbricated in the design, functionality, features, and applications of this photo-sharing social network. Unlike industrial labour, the artefacts of unwaged immaterial labour contain valuable information regarding the biopolitical norms that facilitate their produsage and the subjectivities of those workers exposed to them. Much more detail is offered regarding this methodological adaption below. For now, what is required is a more thorough and detailed explanation of the particularities of the two-pronged methodological procedures that guided this thesis.

4.6  The  Forest  As  Well  As  the  Trees:  Two-­‐Pronged  Research  Design    

Flickr is a perpetually expanding domain made up of the granular contributions offered by millions of individuals the world over. Considered in isolation, the actions of individual Flickr members are infinitesimally small. Like the work done by an industrial labourer on the assembly line, the individual actions of Flickr members contribute only one small shard to the overall endeavour. When assembled however, the sum of the parts