Nimoy and personalized to Sheldon. What he first took to be worthless turns out to be priceless instead. When he learns that Nimoy has wiped his mouth on the napkin, Sheldon excitedly proclaims that he now possesses Nimoy’s DNA, enough that he can grow his own Spock if only he were provided access to an ovum.
Penny, obviously uncomfortable, makes it clear that she did not have such an intimate relationship in mind. It is Penny’s turn to feel uncomfortable about the “obligations” implied—or at least read from—this exchange of gifts. Sheldon retreats, only to return with every gift basket he purchased. Deciding that, even collectively, their value does not approximate the worth of the autographed napkin, he finally, awkwardly, gives Penny a hug, a gesture which is touching in its unexpectedness and which seems, at last, to bring the negotiations to their proper close. The episode offers us a comic dissertation on the differences between value (as negotiated around the exact alignment of the prices of the various gift baskets) and worth (as understood in terms of the personal meaningfulness of the gifts being exchanged).
Throughout this discussion, we have deployed a range of analogies to earlier historical practices—to the moral economy that shaped peasant uprisings in early modern Europe, to the barn raising as a nineteenth-century community ritual, to medieval craftsmen and their guilds as an alternative to alienated labor, and to the gift economy as a system of exchange in traditional societies. Our point here is not to romanticize these earlier moments in the historical relations between production and “consumption,” nor is it to depict what contemporary audiences do as somehow “authentic” and free of economic constraints. However, we also want to argue against totalizing accounts which subsume people’s social and cultural lives fully into the economic sphere: whether those associated with Web 2.0 discourse which often erase the conflicting interests of producers and audiences or those worried that the mechanisms of capitalism overwhelm any potential for us to pursue alternative agendas. In many ways, these older values of craftsmanship—reciprocity, collectivity, and fairness—continue to exert a residual influence on contemporary commercial culture, much as new forms of participatory culture can be understood as involving the application of traditional folk culture practices onto the materials of mass culture.
Part of what has given the discourse of Web 2.0 its power has been its erasure of this larger history of participatory practices, with companies acting as if they were “bestowing” agency onto audiences, making their creative output meaningful by valuing it within the logics of commodity culture. To maintain a balanced perspective, it is vital to be able to imagine alternative forms of value and meaning. Social and cultural practices operate in an economic context, but economic practices also operate in a social and cultural context. There is a relative autonomy between these spheres of activity, even as many of the practices we describe in this book are working to blur the boundaries between them. Holding onto a notion of the relative autonomy of cultural life gives us a way to critique the logic of Web 2.0, insisting on respect for prior cultural identities and practices, which often are deeply important to the communities involved.
For media properties to move from the commodity culture in which they are produced to informal social contexts through which they circulate and are appraised, they must pass through a point where “value” gets transformed into “worth,” where what has a price becomes priceless, where economic investment gives way to sentimental investment. Similarly, when a fan culture’s “gifts” are transformed into “user-generated content,” there are special sensitivities involved as the material gets absorbed back into commercial culture. When people pass along media texts, they are not doing so as paid employees motivated by economic gain; rather, they are members of social communities involved in activities which are meaningful to them on an individual and/or social level. Such movement—and the transformations that media texts undergo as they are circulated—can generate both value and worth. However, content producers and online platforms alike have to be keenly aware of the logics of worth being employed by their audiences or risk alienating those who are emotionally invested in the material.
Nothing Is Ever Free
In 2008 and 2009, the Internet buzzed about the idea of “free” things. Media giants such as Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation worried about services such as Google News “taking their content for free” and profiting from it (Smillie 2009). Rumors circulated about television-network-owned online video site Hulu introducing subscription models for its material, effectively cutting off the “free” stream (J. Herrman 2009). (In June 2010, Hulu indeed introduced the subscription service “Hulu Plus” [Stelter 2010].) Wired editor Chris Anderson wrote about “the economics of giving it away” (2009), and terms such as “freeconomy” popped up (The Freeconomy Community n.d.).
In an especially prominent example illustrating this “freeconomy,” rock music group Nine Inch Nails released digital copies of its 2008 album The Slip under a Creative Commons license. When physical versions were released a few months later for a fee, The Slip remained available on the band’s site as a free download. While press buzz focused on the cost of the album—its economic value—and talked about the band “giving away” its content, Nine Inch Nails front man Trent Reznor discussed the decision differently. On the official NIN site, Reznor called the free download “a thank you” to the band’s fans for their “continued support” (Nine Inch Nails 2008), adding elsewhere, “This one’s on me” (Visakowitz 2008). Rather than “giving the album away,” Reznor was giving back to the fans for what they had already given him—their previous support and purchases—with an unspoken request that they continue to support him. What at first glance seemed to be “free” was actually a reciprocal exchange of social worth within an ongoing relationship between producer and fans.
Reznor’s efforts may be somewhat unconventional, yet the notion that no-cost exchanges aren’t truly free can be seen in types of “giveaways” with which we’ve been familiar for generations. Prior to the widespread introduction of air-conditioning, churchgoers in the U.S. once cooled themselves on hot summer days with paper fans branded by local funeral homes. Jewelry stores in shopping malls often offer services as marketing: providing “free” ring cleaning to passersby with the unspoken hope of gaining the loyalty of potential future customers. And brands—from local banks to presidential candidates—put their logos on pens, stationery, and T-shirts for “giveaways.” Those giving such gifts hope the receiver will incorporate the objects into their everyday lives, the brand regularly reminding them of the company, while the utility of the gift generates some sense of goodwill. Such branded goods also often turn users into brand promoters. In that sense, these branded goods are not “free”—there is some labor performed in exchange for these gifts. And, as people share their pens or other swag, these items become “spreadable media” themselves.
The exchange of “gifts” brings social expectations, as both Hyde (1983) and the writers of The Big Bang Theory note; as a result, not all gifts can be accepted. In that sense, there are goods and services which literally cannot be given away because we are all wary of hidden obligations, unstated motives, or covert interests smuggled inside the gift. This focus on the expectations which shape the exchange of gifts is especially important if we hope to explore how media spreads online, because many systems of peer-to-peer sharing, cooperation, and collaboration generate value through creating mutual ties, reciprocal expectations, and social “payments.”
Indeed, when we describe such goods and services as “free,” we mean that people have not purchased them with money, not that they have not paid for them via some other means. In each case, the producers and laborers working for “free” expect some form of (social) payment, and each person provides his or her time and labor under an expectation that others will contribute similarly, to the benefit of all. Understanding the popularity of many Web 2.0 platforms, then, means considering what motivates people to contribute their time and energy without expectation of immediate financial compensation—whether these motives are attention, recognition, and identity building; the development of community and social ties; the creation of a useful tool; or myriad other considerations.
Technology
