User Labor Toolset proposal for Rhizome Commission 2008/09

Project Description

We would like to develop a toolset for User Labor, a framework for outlining the metrics of user participation in social web services. Our aim is to construct criteria and context for determining the value of user labor for distribution. The toolset will make the User Labor Markup Language (ULML), an XML data structure, actionable and accessible to a broader audience. User Labor Toolset will include the following programming libraries and plugins for reading and writing ULML:

Ruby
Python
PHP
Java
Javascript
WordPress Plugin
MovableType Plugin
Ruby on Rails Plugin

A very simple ULML document looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<ulml version="0.1">
  <channel>
    <record>
      <actions>
        <item name="photo" type="upload">120</item>
        <item name="photo" type="tag">330</item>
      </actions>
      <reactions>
        <item name="photo" type="comment">15</item>
      </reactions>
      <network>
       <item name="connection">256</item>
      </network>
    </record>
  </channel>
</ulml>

ULML elements represent the sum of people's activities to create, improve, and maintain their existence in social web. See ULML Spec and ULML examples for more detail on http://userlabor.org

User Labor framework addresses the exploitation of people's immaterial labor on the Internet, which is virtually invisible, inherent in everyday activities, and embedded in social relationships. Uploading videos to YouTube, tagging photos in Flickr, sharing bookmarks in Del.icio.us etc. all create value for the respective web services. While service providers may understand, calculate, and leverage user's labor to determine business plans and solicit advertisers, its value often remains opaque to the users.

Outlining metrics for user participation will ultimately lead to more sustainable service cycles that compensate user participation. Currently, web 2.0 services are not set up to reward their users' creative capacity, the capacity that provides the content of the service. Before speculating on the form of reward, we need to point out universal, transparent, and accessibile metrics. In other words, we need a common language, hence the emergence of User Labor Markup Language (ULML).

Adoption is key but challenging because services use different development environments. In order to become a common language for discussing the value of participation, the User Labor framework needs to be actionable in the common development environments: Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and Javascript. For each of these environments, the toolset will provide a freely downloadable/accessible library for developers.The toolset will also include plugins for open source blog software WordPress and Movable Type.

Feasibility

User Labor Toolset is a collection of programming libraries for reading and writing ULML. Based on the existing XML libraries, User Labor Toolset will be developed specifically for ULML data structure. Libraries will be open source so that they can also be extended and ported to other languages as needed. Libraries will be released as they are completed.

Burak Arikan and Engin Erdogan are experienced in programming parsers / generators and XML (See the work samples).

Production Timeline and Project Budget

ULML libraries and plugins will be released as they are completed.

June 2008 – Development of Ruby, Python, and PHP libraries
July 2008 – Development of Java and Javascript libraries
August 2008 – Development of WordPress, MovableType, and Ruby on Rails plugins

Rhizome Commission will be used to compensate this development.

Curriculum Vitae

Burak Arikan
http://burak-arikan.com
Burak Arikan is an artist and researcher who is based in New York and Istanbul. He focuses on creating networked systems that evolve with the interactions of people and machines. His work confronts issues ranging from cultural sustainability to finance to politics and labor in networked environments. He shows the instances of these systems online and onsite through diverse media including prints, animation, software, electronics, and physical materials.

Engin Erdogan
http://xdiscipline.com
Engin Erdogan is an interaction designer located in San Francisco Bay Area, currently employed at international design firm IDEO. At IDEO, he tackles user-centered design problems in a variety of fields, primarily in online software. When not at work, he enjoys experimenting with social and economical aspects of online networks, content production and consumption.

3 Work Samples

MYPOCKET (2008), Burak Arikan
http://turbulence.org/works/mypocket
MYPOCKET discloses the artist's personal financial records to the world by exploring and revealing essential patterns in the daily transactions of his bank account.

Meta-Markets (2007), Burak Arikan, Engin Erdogan, Cenk Dolek
http://meta-markets.com/
Meta-Markets is a non-profit stock market for social web content. In New York Stock Exchange or NASDAQ people trade shares of companies. In Meta-Markets people trade shares of their social web assets from online bookmarking, social networking, photo and video sharing services. The initial version of Meta-Markets contains four stock exchange markets: Facebook, Flickr, Feedburner, and Del.icio.us.

ActiviXML (2004), Burak Arikan, Engin Erdogan
http://plw.media.mit.edu/people/arikan/2004/activixml
ActiviXML is a dialect of XML that intends to abstract the information flow particularly between large scale small scale social activist communities and individual activists in order to reinforce the impact of social activism events. ActiviXML defines a standard format (ActiviXML Schema) for the documents that describe a social activism event. This standard format categorizes information and builds information hierarchy.

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