Michel's post over at P2P Foundation today pointed me to Kenneth Rufo's critique of a binary view of social interaction in digital media environments: "...the assumption is that the virtual connections of the digital world either replace or compliment the connections in the real world. ... Neither is correct; the virtual is a supplement in the Derridean sense, in that it takes the form of an addition, but ends up reconfiguring the original to which it has been added." Even more intriguingly he promises further analysis in a future post, questioning the real/virtual binary from the perspectives of Baudrillard, Deleuze, and Derrida. Needless to say, I'm quite interested to read this.

I would like to throw one more view into the mix here, one that does not rely on a real/virtual distinction. It's important to move away from this binary as it becomes clear that the boundaries between digital and physical selves are becoming quite thin and porous. An good way to view digital interaction and socialization is through the lens provided by Hardt and Negri in Empire and Multitude - as a form of immaterial labor. While Hardt and Negri write about immaterial labor in a much more expansive application, I think applying this same perspective to social networks demonstrates the political, cultural, and social roles of these media.

Immaterial labor is that which produces affect, knowledge, ideas, etc. as opposed to physical goods. While this form of labor is, in some ways, the post-outsourcing American vision, it also occurs on much lower, light-weight levels through real-world networks. Yet these smaller levels of production are far from insignificant, their networks forming H&N's concept of a new biopolitical conception of social subjects: the multitude. We can look at web-based social networks as metonymous in relation to the larger phenomena (albeit an elite, monied metonym). If web-based social networks are networks of immaterial labor, then their product is a multiple, swarming subjectivity.

Instead of viewing these media as surrogates or complements for real-world interaction, we can see them as increasingly organic prostheses of interaction that aid and demonstrate the production of a new subjectivity that trancends both the crowd and the individual.