In this article, I discuss an issue which lies at the core of today’s “political economy”
of the domestic sphere. The issue in question is that human beings are pushed to
“outsource” their emotions, information, communication, education, organization, and
entertainment, while they are left with scarce new technological support with which
to cope with the fatigue, stress, boredom, and complexity of housework. My question
is “Why has technology which is related to the material aspects of housework ceased
to develop, whereas the technology connected to its immaterial aspects (information
and communication technologies or ICTs) has grown at an increasing rate?” For
answering this question, I analyze briefly how the machinization of the domestic
sphere has developed the technologies connected to material labor such as means of
transportation and domestic appliances and those connected to immaterial labor such
as mass media, ICTs, and new media. A double strategy has always been pursued: a
specific strategy is applied to immaterial labor, involving a great deal of technology, and
an opposite strategy, involving much less technology, is applied to material labor. This
bifurcation is necessary to maintain a high level of value production in everyday life.
Nowadays immaterial labor not only creates value in the process of reproduction of
the labor force but also generates capital directly. One only needs to think, for example,
of Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, and so on. They are basically enterprises which extract
value directly from sociability, friendship, and emotion for producing capital
