Re: <nettime> Essay-Grading Software

[Brian Holmes <bhcontinentaldrift@gmail.com>]

On 04/25/2013 05:31 AM, nettime's avid reader wrote:

> The software uses artificial intelligence to grade student essays and
> short written answers, freeing professors for other tasks.

Such as:
a. raw domination
b. rank servitude
c. outright revolution

[Note: You can only tick one of the boxes...]

The only future I can see beyond submission to the economic destinies of 
robotization and outsourcing is some kind of political organization, my 
friends. To be sure, the 60s, reinterpreted and repurposed by neoliberal 
ideology, trained us all against any kind of hierarchy whatsoever. We 
are so "free" that power is walking all over us. The capitalist 
democracies have gone down the very path predicted by Weberian 
sociology: complete rationalization for accumulation's sake. The 
university is now envisioned as a largely automated service provider for 
the human-capital needs of corporations. That's endgame, because without 
a public institution for critical perception, analysis and deliberation, 
the only social steering mechanism is the imperative to accumulate, 
accumulate, accumulate, until the last ton of coal is effectively burnt 
and we're all reduced to a cinder. Isn't that kinda obvious now? What's 
the next step?


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