With the world becoming increasingly intangible and moving towards the immaterial landscape, it is not difficult to understand the concept of ‘The Chronic Task of Sorting.’ This concept relates to the idea of ‘Liquid Labour’ and the ways in which this new form of work in our physical world can be translated so easily into the digital.
The notion of Liquid Labour first came about from Peter Drucker insisting the idea that our network paradigm is shifting from being industrial workers with machines having the power, to knowledge workers having information as power. Having this new way of working, understanding that space and time were both factors in which the coordination of a company could be successful, a new system had to be created, which prompted the shift from companies.
Instead having a Hierarchical system (centralised hub) to a decentralised system so that information could be spread effectively between smaller groups of people. This allowed for the quick coordination of smaller groups at anytime within a company. However, this was at the transaction cost of having employees/workers ‘standing reserve.’
Standing reserve to labour was the manifestation of individuals always being available and ‘presence bleeding’ due to the ‘permanent flux, constant change and structural intermediary’ of the new network paradigms and constant change of time and space in society. It was to fight between work and leisure.
Leading on from this, positions in companies such as casual, freelance and temporary employment popped up (all being forms of liquid labour) due to the new paradigm and notion of standing reserve for information flows. 
Taking the company of YouTube for example (a completely decentralised network, however having the site as its main node), the website is always readily accessible with an abundance of content. However, that is not the product, instead we are the product, investing our time as our expense and not being paid for it. This is also an example of liquid labour as the information flows effectively through space and time with information as the product and currency.
The idea of ‘work based on information’ indeed leads to a horrific end of only sorting and nothing else. Imagine having to sort through all of Kayne West’s tweets. Hell.
krisesandchrosses 
Haha great post this week, you always explain things clear cut. Having read about ‘liquid labour’ and the outcomes including a ‘bleeding of presence.’ Similar to labour market flexibility, there is always a supply and demand which reflects the way the internet and the users correspond to one another. There is however a lot of content out there that isn’t demanded in our society. For instance, with the IBM, and the idea of reinvention through the ‘cognitive computing’ they are looking at organising and filtering a database to give us more specified search content. (basically cutting all the crap out that has no relevance.) Do you think it will put this company back in business are just change the way in which users supply information? http://www.research.ibm.com/cognitive-computing/#fbid=xlpRbUUwZDz
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You explained this in such a simple way to understand, it made a lot more sense after reading this! I liked that you used YouTube as an example, because it’s relatable to most people today. I do think the use of another example might help you in this case because you have a heap of info.
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Great post! I was confused of the information about liquid labour I found on the Internet but your explanation and examples are very simple and easy to understand. And it’s interesting that you find another aspect of information based work leads to an horrific end, which is new and different from what I found on the Internet.
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I read the hat meme in like an evil dark voice. Kind of like the Freddy rip off on Rick and Morty. But either way great meme. The second one was good too. Taking the Clingy Girlfriend aspect and turning it into a Clingy Freelancer.
Your post really outlined the change in workforce habits and how different the conditions are in the modern day which is really cool. It’s something that is really affecting us and is going to change we work after uni in comparison to our parents.
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[…] This meme was done by Kriss and the post is linked here. […]
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Great post! I’d love more examples to correlate with all the information you have given but otherwise it’s a super informative post and gave me a much more useful insight into the ‘chronic task of sorting’ that is liquid labour.
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Me again, your personal stalker. You have a fluidity of thought that compresses quite complex ideas into simple expression that I’m sure we all appreciate so well done. I find your last point very interesting, all though I do think that Kanye would love to sort through his own tweets, he is after all God. *Shudder* Data sorting and filing is in itself an industry and third party companies make millions doing just that. Taking the hum drums of unwanted data and creating systems with which to organize, categorize and catalogue them. Forget Kayne West I feel sorry for whoever has to deal with Shia LaBeouf’s dribble.
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I really like how you pointed out that we are the products of YouTube – and using that as an example of liquid labour. Your writing and the source links you had throughout the piece flowed well and I was able to take in information about, for example, hierarchal and decentralised systems, and how they are changing the working landscape in an easy to understand way.
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Your post was very interesting and I found that you explained everything very well (and I finally understood what was being talked about this week). Using YouTube as an example was really well thought out. Their content is highly based on user participation that if everyone was to stop they would be n serious trouble. It would have been interesting however to look into YouTube stars and find out how much they would be making and how much YouTube would be taking for their shares. I found the hyperlinks to include some good information also, which really backed up your ideas and also gave us more information about the topic. Great post!
– Bec
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This is a great post! You’ve broken down the elements of the topic and explained each of them really well. YouTube is also a great example as it relies on us to generate content. However, keep note that that you can make money from YouTube if you get enough views and subscribers. Not a bad place for one to make money if you’re good enough! This is an article about the highest paid YouTube stars in 2015 🙂 http://www.forbes.com/sites/maddieberg/2015/10/14/the-worlds-highest-paid-youtube-stars-2015/#68e1dadb542c
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Not wrong about Yeezy’s tweets, altho I think their is freelance work available for that. Much like Kanye contemplating what to call his album, we are in a constant state of flux. Our attention is constantly disparate and torn between all that demands it. To combat and in fact utilise this can be an advantageous product of the paradigmatic shift of the materiality of the workplace. The output generated is totally intangible and requires no assembly line, but rather a producer to channel this free flow of information
Great blog again my dude
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YouTube’s network is supposed to be distributed. However, you tube now has more rules for the youtuber. So if YouTube is becoming the main nod, is it still distributed or decentralise?
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