Andrew Thomas

Robins, K. Webster, F. (1999). Times of the Technoculture: From the information society to the virtual life. London and New York, Routledge.

Notes on Chapter 5: "The Cybernetic Imagination of Capitalism"

• "Absolute" mobilization of labor: Jean-Paul de Gaudemar
• division of labor, waged employment, discipline of the ‘factory-prison.’ NOTE: See Gates’ micro-monitoring of productivity of workers in remote rural outposts
• Fordism and Taylorism, current undermining of the 8-hr workday/40-hr workweek, globilization
• Undermining of ‘traditional culture’, social control and moralization of the workforce through religion and schooling. NOTE: Gate’s rhapsody about the extension of entertainment technologies into the home.
• Intrusion by ‘capitalist social relations,’ consumerism as a way of life
• Increasing state intervention in the management of society
• ‘annexation of time and space.’ Leisure time has become more like work time. Capitalist rhythm and tempo upon time and time consciousness.
• Questions:
• Example of technology-related division of labor and work discipline.
• What are capitalist social relations? How do we see these manifested in family life? Friendships? Vacations? Schooling? Socializing and entertainment? Do any of these examples explicitly involve technology?
• Robins and Webster repeatedly refer to the "struggle" against the forces they identify. The struggle for them is the dialectic. What are some examples of this struggle? And are there any technology-related countervailing forces that mitigate against the absolute mobilization of labor and capital?
• Cybersurveillance
• Bentham’s Panopticon (Also see Foucault, Canetti)
• "The network society is a more transparent society and a more transparent society is, potentially, a more disciplined society (118)."
• NOTION: OS as Panopticon, Infractructure as Panopticon, Network as Panopticon
• Surveillance as inherently tied to technology. How? Gathering information, improving productivity, organizing
• Questions:
• Does Panopticon suggest monolithic power, agency?
• Mobilization of Information
• Commodification of information
• Connected to regime of intellectual property, globilization
• Gathering in of traditional/social knowledge is heightened with self-reporting and more easily archived and accessed due to infotech
• Capitalist control of information
• Ex.: search engines
• Only marketable info available
• Dimension of the digital divide: control of powerful information
• Alternatives?
• Can there be social use-value created within commodity engineering such that the intent of the engineered commodity is subverted? Popuar music. What about the gift economy? Napster/Open Source?
• Can there be an empowering dimension to the way we grapple with modernity? Can elimination of the horizon be liberating? Certainly post-modern theory offers a way to seize change and make sense of it.