In 2013 Trebor Scholz edited a book titled Digital Labor: The Internet as Playground and Fac- tory (Routledge). The book collected contributions by some of the most innovative and eclec- tic scholars of digital work and highlighted the most important trends and implications of digi- tal labor in the current times. The main theme was the transformation of labor mediated by the digital technologies, at a time when technology hybridises every aspect of existence. The de- bate highlighted some unresolved issues in the debate concerning the digital economy, first and foremost the role of rentiers and unpaid labor within the digital technologies, as an ex- pression of the ability to extract information from millions of consumers and to use it as a condition for defending strategic positions in the market. This paper focuses precisely on the recent transformations and interpretations of the digital technologies, and analyses the tenden- cy to interpret the net as a dystopian device, underlining the ambivalent role played by auto- mation and technology in the social imaginary.