Fred Turner argues that Burning Man provides a cultural infrastructure for new media labor, modeling commons-based peer production, gift economies, community participation, and the potential of “vocational ecstasy”: self-fulfillment through creative work and radical self-expression. Turner links the social structure of Burning Man to Google’s company culture, which emphasizes collaboration, a relatively flat corporate hierarchy, and the pursuit of individual passion projects through “20 percent time.” He maintains that for Bay Area technologists, Burning Man represents a week where the idealistic principles of new media production are brought to life, cementing the rich social networks that flexible labor models make necessary, and “work[ing] through the contradictions” of locating these ideals in a corporate setting.

Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, loc. 139