Page 108 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

Commun cat on and Knowledge Labor |

DEFining knowLEDgE LaBor
Knowledge work has been defined in the narrow sense as involving creative
labor or the direct manipulation of symbols to create an original knowledge
product or to add obvious value to an existing one. According to this view, knowl-
edge work would include what writers, artists, Web page designers, and software
creators do. A more expansive definition encompasses the work of those who
handle and distribute information, including people like librarians and postal
workers. The reason for considering these jobs to be knowledge occupations is
because an increasing amount of the work performed involves making use of
information to efficiently and effectively deliver an information product. By in-
cluding this work, one acknowledges that the line between what is and is not cre-
ative labor in the knowledge field is very fuzzy and that a good case can be made
that workers who appear to be more marginal to knowledge production never-
theless add tangible value to the information product. There is also a practical
purpose to expanding the definition. The meaning of knowledge labor is not just
measured by external criteria but by how it is subjectively experienced by work-
ers themselves. Creative work is distinguished from information handling or dis-
tribution because it is felt to be different in the lives of workers. But that is less
the case today as evidenced by the growing “convergence” of different kinds of
workers organized under the same union umbrellas. Finally, the most expansive
definition of knowledge work would include all workers involved in the chain of
producing and distributing knowledge products. This view maintains that work-
ers involved in the production of computer hardware, including low-wage im-
migrant women workers in Silicon Valley and abroad, are knowledge workers
because they are an integral part of the value chain that results in the produc-
tion of the central engine of knowledge production, the computer. Similarly, call-
center workers who sell communication products and services would also fall
within this broad definition of knowledge work because they are central to mar-
keting information and make use of the products of communication technology
to carry out their work. Moreover, the management and control of their work
would not be possible without the advanced surveillance technologies made pos-
sible by developments in communication and information technology.

ThE risE oF knowLEDgE workErs

Discussion and debate about the relationship between the technologies of
communication and information, work, and social development is not new. An
extended history of the subject in the West would include the work of Comte
de Saint-Simon, who speculated on the transformation from manual to mental
labor in the eighteenth century; of Karl Marx. who referred to the formation
of a “general intellect” in the course of capitalist development; and of Charles
Babbage, whose difference engine gave us one of the first serious designs for a
computer in the nineteenth century. These and others have had a substantial
impact on how we think about work and information technology. In the last
50 years, the academic emphasis has been on developing measures to track the
growth of the information sector as an economic force. Jean Fourastié provided