Five Hypotheses on Informational Labor Approaches to the characterization of the labor market in Cognitive Capitalism

This paper presents five very general hypotheses about the notion of Informational Labor. This concept, in turn, attempts to analyze the characteristics of the prototypical work activities of this phase, the Cognitive Capitalism. The first idea is to point out that the advent of informational labor occurs together, inseparably with the rise of work activities with opposite sign: the precarious manual labor. Second, we try to hypothesize that these two types of jobs that grow in this stage are mixed within the same sector of the economy, the so called Services Sector. Moreover, we try to suggest that the informational labor produces goods and not services. Hence, we argue for the need of measuring a fourth sector of the economy, the Information Sector. Third, we present two points on the particular relation that the informational worker has with the means of production. On one hand, the ambivalence of its tools: used during but also before and after working hours. On the other hand, the limited importance of the ownership of the means of production. Informational workers may or may not own their PC's without this meaning a change in their level of social stratification. The fourth hypothesis, highlights the features of informational workers subjectivity -e.g. malleability, multiskilling, etc.-, which may be described with the idea of "windows subjectivity". Finally we state, according to several authors, that "control" is the typical form in which power is exercised on informational workers, to the detriment of the discipline that characterized the industrial work.