The Information Process and the Labour Process in the Information Age

Abstract

This paper examines how information fundamentally influences the labour process in the information age. The process of becoming human in the labour process brings to the fore the notion of information and our dialectical interactions with our natural environment as organisms-in-the-environment. These insights lead the authors to posit that information/ideas are material. Information/ideas are not ethereal/immaterial, as is commonly believed, which does not negate that information/ideas may be abstract. Taking a fundamental approach serves to discard the concept of immaterial labour and products, to posit an undeniable materialist basis for the labour theory of value. More importantly, it serves to point to the immanence of information and labour in the labour theory of value.

Keywords

• Digital Labour
• Critical Theory
• Labour Theory of Value
• Commodity
• Information
• Ideas
• Mate-rial
• Physical
• Immaterial
• Science of Information
• Distributed Cognition
• Dialectics
• Communi-cation
• Shannon Information
• Distilled Information