----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
Thanks Alex and Jon for posting. Hoping that our large group or guests will
feel free to make posts about their own thoughts and work.
Alex the ubiquity of capitalistic surveillance is also present in the US
worksplace in fact within lives of staff workers prepandemic, as early as a
couple of years ago. University computers within staff offices were monitored
for activity on social media: Facebook, Instagram, etc. Our own staff member
who monitors our department Facebook page was called in for “more time than
necessary on the platform.” I would say during pandemic times that the our
computer cameras, zoom technology, and Canvas applications has incited the
technological mechanization of being on or off work. It all blends together
now. The staff and faculty work, teach, manage from home with computers,
cameras, applications like zoom and canvas, people soft and a host of other
management and financial tools to monitor the on/off of its employees, how long
they are working, and at what time.
I heard from a collegue in China that she felt like a captive in her tiny
apartment. Her movements were tracked via her cellphone. She was forced to
keep her cellphone next to her because if the cell phone was left unattended
for more than fifteen minutes she would receive a notification from a work
application. She reported that she felt that she needed to shift the phone to
different places in her apartment every ten to fifteen minutes to avoid her
preceived inactivity.
My Korean students who returned to Seoul reported that at the airpost they were
toggled to an app that monitored their movements. They had to stay within
their apartments and were unable to leave until the time of their quarantine
was finished.
What I am curious about is if you all think we can go back to before Covid
existance without webcams, zoom, and tracking surveillance. My hunch is that
at least in the structures of corporate university life the realization is that
covid existance has proved that life can go on with less staff and faculty,
larger classes, less one on one interaction, less classrooms and real estate,
etc, etc, etc.
Anyone care to share their own experiences? Thanks again Alex and Jon for
bringing this thread up for discussion. Renate
Renate Ferro
-empyre- soft-skinned space
Curatorial moderator
From: Alex Taek-Gwang Lee <tg...@khu.ac.kr>
Date: Tuesday, February 16, 2021 at 2:59 AM
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Welcome to Week 3: Social Media: algorithms, untruths
and insurrection
Dear all,
Many thanks for Renate's kind introduction and invitation. I have enjoyed the
previous discussions and been excited by those ideas of algorithms and other
things. These days, I am working on the effect of mechanical surveillance and
its impact on us. I want to share my ideas of "mechanical algorithms" with you.
The COVID-19 pandemic does not mean the crisis of capitalism but instead
compounds the existing problems within the capitalist mode of production. The
precarious status of the essential workers, regardless of their living
condition, has been worse off. In contrast, unrestricted capitalist
accumulation in valorizing the market above everything else has been more
efficient and has exacerbated social inequality. These contradictory
consequences of the pandemic situation prove that the nature of capitalism does
not need workers for its completion. The pandemic serves as not so much the end
of capitalism but as another moment to sustain its paradox. Indeed, what is
being observed at the moment is the more traumatic experiences of capitalist
restructuring. It means the modification of work as such by the introduction of
technology to the workplace.
This transformation dramatically evolves to the idea of mechanical management
based on surveillance technology in this pandemic. In other words, the
mechanization of work, the perversion of Taylorism, reconstructs the labour
force’s fundamentals and drives each worker to be a part of the mechanism. The
financial bull market on technology investment precipitates this shift further
and reformulates the distribution of labour. I would call this inversion of
capitalism the very essence of “pure capitalism,” i.e., the “free” economic
system that encourages individuals’ voluntary competition to produce and trade
without government intervention. It is not easy to determine where
administrative interference could engage the system if the workers have no
human management. “My Boss Is Not Human”(我的领导不是人), an article recently
published in Caijing, a Chinese economic magazine, proves how this mechanical
surveillance reorganizes the workplace. You can find it at this link:
https://news.caijingmobile.com/article/detail/428729?source_id=40
According to the report, many Chinese enterprises have adopted artificial
intelligence for more efficient and standardized management. The new system
works with more than 20 surveillance cameras all over the workplaces and
records every worker’s behaviours and activities. An electronic roll call at
the entrance is necessary to identify each person and monitor the group. This
algorithmic scrutiny, the mechanical transformation of all human actions into
data, totalizes the whole process of work like a single machine. The monitoring
camera transcribes workers’ performance per second, and the central operating
system checks up its efficiency. Each component is designed as a prescribed
processing time by the algorithm, and the “Intelligent Task Distribution
System” will recognize and facilitate the due sequels of the worker’s actions.
The electronic time attendance system refines the check-in procedures
previously set at the company gate. Workers must swipe their cards if they
leave the workplace. If they are absent at their seats for more than 15
minutes, the recorded data will be submitted to the central operating system,
and the sum of the salary will be automatically deducted at the end of the
month.
My point concerning this Chinese version of Taylor’s scientific management does
not lie in the fact that Orwell’s imagination of Big Brother has come to be
realized. Instead, the administration aims to modify the human behaviours for
the algorithmic mechanism. There is no such thing as Big Brother in the system,
but the technological stupidity to control the workers by simplifying their
actions. Any digressive and unpredicted move does not seem to be allowed in
this process. However, the workers follow the rules not because the system
tightly governs them but because of the new scientific management's norms,
i.e., the command of the mechanical surveillance, which forces them to obey the
axioms of the mechanism. Therefore, the algorithmic organization of the
workplace is not a crucial factor in the new management. The problem is that
there must be an invisible decision-maker behind the automatic system in
solving any accidental and unpredictable outcome, even though the algorithmic
mechanism operates without the presence of the human boss in the venue. My
argument is that the void of the surveillance, i.e., the subjective
articulation, is always already included in the mechanism and preserves the
locus of resistance. I want to know what you think.
All the best
Alex
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