> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jul/05/amazon-worker-fired-app-dystopia
tra i commenti ... We might call it the eternal return of Taylorism. One could conjecture that the vogue of mechanical automatons in the 18th century, which overlapped with the start of the industrial revolution, planted the seed of one day replacing all biological automatons, euphemistically referred to as human workers, with perfect mechanical robots. After all machines are the ideal tools for the running of the efficient market algorithm. Alas the system has had to content itself with actual human beings. The drawback with these pesky biological entities is that they actually care for their own wellbeing and that of their loved ones, and hence need to be paid a non-zero wage in order to survive. In other words, there is a definite physical threshold below which these creatures cannot be pushed, unless one wishes to reinstitute indentured labor. Why couldn't humans be as efficient, obedient, and trustworthy as the machines? Why do they keep asking for higher wages and better quality of work and life whereas they should just be grateful to be offered a pittance to carry on with their miserable existence? There have been abortive or only partially successful attempts in the interim to elevate humans to the level of machines, such as Taylorism in early twentieth century. It has taken technology more than two hundred years to finally catch up with the dream of the perfect machine, and now the dream may be on the verge of becoming reality. Technology may not yet be able to replace the lowliest of manual laborers, but its AI is today certainly capable of replacing their supervisors and overseers. The new information and surveillance technologies have led to the de facto realization of Bentham’s Panopticon, and the inefficient humans are increasingly becoming mere smiling appendages of the ever-expanding network of devices and software applications. Amazon and Co. strive to reduce their actual human workforce to the level of biological zombies, hence it is necessary not only to have their bodies - An updated industry-friendly interpretation of habeas corpus - but also their souls. Hopefully in the near future this useless mass of smelly, needy biological goo will become completely superfluous and disposable, and like the Cheshire Cat we will disappear and simply become a “grin without a cat”. At which time our human overlords can live happily ever after in the warm embrace of their perfect machines. In the meantime, the actual humans toiling in these places have no choice but to repeat the CSN & Beckett mantra to themselves all day long: “I can’t carry on, I will carry on.” _______________________________________________ nexa mailing list [email protected] https://server-nexa.polito.it/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nexa
