Landnahme im Informationsraum. Neukonstituierung gesellschaftlicher Arbeit in der „digitalen Gesellschaft“

Cloudworking and crowdsourcing are currently often seen as the epitome of a ”revolution in the world of work”. The article deals with these developments and their relevance for work and society. The emergence of a global information space enables companies to expand the scope of their value production far beyond their formal borders, integrating forms of work that have been non-capitalist in character up to now. The result is a new stage of capitalist colonization (‘Landnahme’). The novelty of these colonization strategies in information space is that they endeavour to make work, both inside and outside the formal borders of the company, mutually exchangeable, on the basis of informatized and industrialized production structures, and to capitalize on this interplay between inside and outside. This development entails great challenges at the societal level. The social system of work is being reconstituted, a process infringing on the foundations of our present work regulation system, both at the level of society and the level of company.