I’ve just been waiting for a change to bring blacksmithing back into the class discussion.  Thanks Banks and Humphreys for the opportunity.  When I began doing ornamental iron work professionally, I did it because I liked the work (which I was doing as an unpaid hobby) and I found people willing to pay me to do what I liked.  When the customer gave me some creative license and flexibility, I seldom charged for all the hours I would put into a project.  Was their exploitation involved?  If so, who exploited whom?  I got paid (even if below market value) to do what I would do for free.

Generally, I am not much of a pc game player, but I did play Oblivion in a few of its incarnations (Morrowind, Elder Scrolls, Skyrim).  The game had a large community of followers, so for the last version, Skyrim, the producers included instructions and platform for mod building where players could change the game, design elements, user interface and other things.  Not surprisingly, the first mods were to revamp female characters to be more attractive and less clothed, but whatever.  Many of these mods were practical and improved game play, some were just really funny.  Before too long, the producers were even recommending certain mods.  The game’s “mod-ability” became a selling point and was touted by reviews in gaming magazines.  The company certainly benefited from user created content.  Some of the mods achieve usage rate of 90% of gamers, but even with millions of people using mods created and distributed for free, I don’t think the creators felt exploited.

There is a very interesting book called Drive by Daniel Pink about motivation.  It looks at projects like Wikipedia vs. Encarta to show how personal interest and investment can be more powerful than material reward.  His argument undermines the capitalist/Marxist perspective on social and cultural construction. Absolutely worth a read: http://www.amazon.com/Drive-Surprising-Truth-About-Motivates/dp/1594484805/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1353002980&sr=1-1&keywords=drive

I appreciated the perspective provided by Banks and Humphreys and agree with their statement, “Such stark oppositions are not all that helpful when mapping these relationships” (403).  Binary modes of thinking in terms of corporate/consumer frames does little to increase understanding of changing media usage and forcing explanations into such frames may ultimately blind researchers to the broader implications.

Similarly, I though Jenkins highlights a salient point.  While corporations may have more legal power, the consumers ultimately have the economic power.  Pissing off your fans is never good business sense.   Media companies that remain relevant and profitable are those that will effectively negotiate a balance between their commercial interests and the fan’s creative interests by finding means of mutual benefit.

On the other hand, Adrejevic (a very communist name) presents a very different argument.  I would like to point out that an article of the same title Social Network Exploitation could be written about the hard working men and women who create, invest in, and maintain social networks sites.  These sites are provided at no direct cost to the use and clearly have some value to more than a billion people, yet their creators are criticized for making money off of their efforts.  How dare they?  Adrejevic envisions a social network platform created and maintained by happy elven magic and powered by clean burning unicorn farts.  Let me know how that works out.