Regulation, Technology, and Civic Agency: The Case of Facebook

Abstract

In his work The Hacker Ethic and the Spirit of the Information Age (2001), Himanen juxtaposes Weber's Protestant work ethic with the hacker ethic, thereby creating a polarisation between two sets of values. On the one hand, money, work, optimality, flexibility, stability, determinacy, and result accountability. On the other hand, passion, freedom, social worth, openness, activity, caring, and creativity. Such polarisation has persisted in much of the literature describing the wealth of potentials brought about by digital communications and the internet. The first part of this chapter will account for these in terms of the apparently mutually exclusive concepts of creativity and control, both of which are inscribed in the technology of popular commercial social media services. While Himanen conceptualises these on the seemingly contradicting premises of the Protestant work ethic and the hacker ethic, Marcuse suggests a certain dialectic of technology. According to Marcuse, technology is both an instrument for control and domination and a mode of organising and changing social relationships. Further distinguishing between technology