“I’m Not a Robot,” or am I?: Micro-Labor and the Immanent Subsumption of the Social in the Human Computation of ReCAPTCHAs

This article analyzes Google’s reCAPTCHA as one instance of what Hardt and Negri have conceptualized as a subsumption of the social as opposed to the extracting taking place under conditions of formal and real subsumption, which occurs in a punctualized production process (e.g., manufacture or fordist factories). Like Hardt and Negri, we see digital networks as having enabled a new commons that capital is trying to subsume. We trace the subsequent development of reCAPTCHA as an ever-evolving form of subsumption of the social that varyingly reconfigures elements of hybrid, formal, and real subsumption. We distinguish between two phases in the subsumption of the social. In a first phase, dispersed micro-labors are captured, aggregated, and put to use to improve the use value of Google’s free Web services. In a second phase, we see that reCAPTCHA tools evolve into a tracking technology, allowing for an immanent subsumption of the social. We observe that thus processes of autonomous and cooperative work in the digital commons are brought under capitalist relations.