Newmedia on Sat, 1 Jun 2013 14:53:41 +0200 (CEST) |
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Re: <nettime> Driverless cars, pilotless planes -- will there be jobs left fo... |
Brian: > You claim that fundamental issues are > avoided, but most of the people who have written > back in this thread say the current unemployment > problem is not produced by any technological destiny. > It is produced by the way technology is developed > in an abusive capitalist society. That's a fundamental > issue, it's called technopolitics. Huh? I think I know what ???techgnosis??? is but what the hell is ??? technopolitics???? <g> Sorry, but if people are saying what you think they are (which, of course, isn't really saying anything), then they are speaking out of blinding ignorance and the scandalous failure to examine these issues. Of course we all live in "capitalist society" -- DUH!! Someone please send an Adam Smith an email . . . !! But the nature of that society has undergone massive changes in the past 20+ years -- shifts that the LEFT understood and anticipated in the 1960s -- which, unfortunately you wouldn't know by attending the upcoming LEFTFORUM in NYC. It turns out that the *theme* of the event is ECOLOGICAL mobilization (33 years after the first Earth Day) . . . !! There are hundreds of panels plus the various keynotes and it turns out that ZERO of them include the term "digital" or even "technology" in the title. http://www.leftforum.org/panels/approved The closest that anyone will come to the steady march towards 50% unemployment across the entire developed (i.e. not-yet industrialized) economies will be one panel called "Labor Goes Online: Technological Transformations in the Forms of Labor, Value, and 'Life Itself'". http://www.leftforum.org/content/labor-goes-online-technological-transformat ions-forms-labor-value-and-life-itself This panel is being chaired by CUNY's Tom Buechele, who is affiliated with the sociology department's (which puts on the conference) Center for the Study of Culture, Technology and Work -- which, as best I can tell, was a brain-child of CUNY prof. Stanley Aronowitz and, for a time, received some (mostly union?) funding. Now it seems to be defunct. The website for the Center speaks only of "previous" studies, has links to journals that don't exist anymore and highlights the 2008 Leftforum -- 5 years ago . . . !! http://web.gc.cuny.edu/csctw/ Aronowitz knows all about this *failure* by the LEFT to deal with what is going on here. He was there when the left produced the 1964 TRIPLE REVOLUTION *manifesto* which put CYBERNATION at the front of the fundamental changes sweeping *capitalist* society. http://www.educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/C_CC2a_TripleRevolution.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Triple_Revolution He even wrote (at least) one book about it -- "Post-Work: The Wages of Cybernation" http://www.amazon.com/Post-Work-Wages-Cybernation-Stanley-Aronowitz/dp/04159 17832/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369918025&sr=1-1&keywords=aronowitz+po st+work So what is the *left* doing about all this NOW? Complaining about how capitalist society is "abusive" and pointing to ???technopolitics??? . . . ?? You have given away the "secret" in your reply. As far as you (and most others on the left, apparently) are concerned, discussion of the impact of technology on the economy and society becomes a matter of talking about DESTINY. Which is, of course, *religious* language -- akin to "pre-destination" (of Protestant ethic fame) or even FATE (of "eastern" religious fame) -- which is anathema to most, even though many agree we are now "post-secular.??? The origin of your usage, presumably, is the *fateful* decision in the 1970's -- particularly in sociology, which is why the *leftforum* is so clueless (and why Aronowitz is treated like a doddering relic) -- is that thinking about technology automatically becomes the *thought-crime* of "technological determinism." BULL-DADA . . . !! <g> The only ???criminals??? are those who refuse to think through the implications of DIGITAL technology -- because there are *billions* of lives at stake and they are fiddling as the proverbial Rome burns, while blaming it all, like Nero, on someone else. Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org