Work: Crowdsourcing, Free Labour and the Californian Ideology

The California Ideology is a hybridization of cybernetics, free labour, and counterculture libertarianism. This ideology has been widely promoted by magazines such as the Wired and Mondo along with academic readings such as the books of Stewart Brand, Douglas Rushkoff, and Kevin Kelly among others. It was a systematic and analytical insight into the rapid growth of the Internet and its effect on the economy. In simpler terms the Californian ideology was a critical perception towards the technological neoliberalism that came with the expansion of the World Wide Web. The academic findings of the Californian ideology outlined a peculiar culture and highlighted the advancing technological arts, entertainment and media. The aim of the ideology was focused towards one goal only, which was to create a democracy in cyberspace where everyone was free to express themselves the way they wanted. (Barbrook & Cameron, 1995)

This phenomenon of free labour and Crowdsourcing that has been endorsed by the Californian ideology refers to the democratic participation of people as volunteers in order to complete an assigned task where a group of people contribute in their own small way leading to a greater result. (Jeff Howe, 2006)

This ideology was promoted through publications by the business class in the information technology market, which was a hybrid of the ideas of Marshall McLuhan along with some individualism, libertarianism, and neoliberal economics that gave birth to anti-statism and techno-utopianism. This new culture preached the principles of knowledge based economy through the exploitation of information that facilitates growth of wealth with the help of virtual communities across the Internet. (Best & Paterson, 2010)

Critics argue that although the Californian Ideology has empowered the organisations with increased wealth and growing network of business, it has classified the society into groups based on their socioeconomic conditions. The Californian ideology remains a form of reactionary modernism which has been seconded by Barbrook, who suggested that "American neo-liberalism seems to have successfully achieved the contradictory aims of reactionary modernism: economic progress and social immobility. Because the long-term goal of liberating everyone will never be reached, the short-term rule of the digerati can last forever." (Barbrook, 2000)