Full Citation Medak, Tomislav. Shit Tech For a Shitty World. Ljubljana,
Slovenia: Akisoma, 2016. Print.
Notes
Of waste, technological and human (pp. 3-4)
- The major mode of existence of contemporary technology is as waste through
the process of obsolescence (pp. 3)
- Obsolescence is not primarily through physical damage/wea over time but
through technological advancement (pp. 3)
- Obsolescence = the continual replacement of old tech with new; this is the
dominant manifestation of tech in our social world and appears in various
conceptual guises, ie. innovation, progress to make its concrete character
invisible (pp. 3)
- Process of obsolescence is not a neutral/natural movement from old to new
(pp. 3), but a "sedimenting material expression of capitalism" both
productive processes and as social domination (pp. 4)
- The huge amount of human waste that technological development produces but
does not address even though it could (pp. 4)
- Uses the artist Sašo Sedlacek as a jumping off point to examine how social
domination structures technological development and how the present
configuration of technology helps reproduce domination (pp. 4)
Structural dynamics and technological development (pp. 4-7)
- Technological development is a significant historical driver by modifying &
expanding the fundamental transformation of energy and matter through
human/animal/plant metabolism (pp. 4)
- Technology as fundamental to fulfilling "natural and social needs"; but also
plays a major role in reproduction of capitalist system (pp. 4)
- Contemporary technologies are mostly capitalist technologies (pp. 4); they
may not be developed/produced to do the work of capital accumulation, but
they are already amenable to this work in two ways: (pp. 6)
- 1) They are tools in production processes (pp. 6)
- The machinery that makes capitalist production look like an impersonal force
(Marx Grundrisse); technologies assimilate labour into capitalist production;
transformation of production into technoscientific process beyond individual
activity (pp. 6)
- Intensification of mediated communication which is simultaneously separation
of individuals from each other undercutting collective action (pp. 6)
- 2) They are consumer goods (pp. 6)
- The driver of technological development as consumer goods in not entirely in
what they can do (increase productivity, increase convenience, etc.) but in
the fact that they can replace an activity that was previously free with one
that costs money (pp. 6)
- Technologies as consumer goods which make the realization of value in
circulation smoother and increase profit through speeding up the turnover of
capital (pp. 6)
- Occasional positive feedback of widening scale of adoption, standardization;
but significant advances have been overlooked since they are not seen as
worth financially investing in (pp. 6-7)
Configuration of technologies reproducing the present capitalist world-system
(pp. 7-12)
- Not simply a one-directional relationship by which technologies/tech
development is molded by capitalism (pp. 7)
- Need to understand technology within our current concrete and specific regime
of accumulation, this means looking at the specific composition of
technologies (pp. 7)
- Argues against "immaterial economy" as driver of contemporary capitalist
production, but rather that the intensification of control over
geographically disaggregated productive processes might make it seem so from
the POV of Western economies (pp. 7) See below for the components of this
transformation:
- Logistics (pp. 7-10)
- Process of post-industrialization (= movement of manufacturing to "emerging
economies") and neo-liberalization (= depression of wages coupled with rise
of credit/finance) required huge transformations to the structure of productive
processes (pp. 7-10)
- Reorganization and integration of resource/commodity/labour flows (pp. 10)
- Fragility and importance of global logistical chains and their
"securitization" to harden them from disruption (pp. 10)
- Changes to work: reduction of protections on transport workers, exploitation
of international immigrant labour, disciplining of domestic labour in
capitalist core (pp. 10)
- Computing (pp. 10-11)
- Propelled changes in logistics described above alongside standardisation of
transport (pp. 10)
- Computing = the concrete ways of achieving systems analysis and systems
integration (pp. 10)
- Dual movement of infusing material flows with "immaterial data", and the
intensified materialization of the IT industry as fixed and centralized (pp.
10)
- IT, previously reliant on telecommunications networks, made huge financial
investments in fixed projects [my eg. data centres] to implement larger
computational grids (pp. 10-11)
- Also the development of virtualization across geographically distant data
centres and aggregation of large amount of data have made IT companies the
main mediators of communication while breaking up older forms [my eg. digital
TV, streaming, internet phone] (pp. 11)
- Management of natural resources (pp. 11-12)
- Consists of the technologies associated with food production, energy
production, and waste disposal; energy is particularly necessary for
capitalist development (pp. 11)
- Close relation between technological sectors, the example of oil and gas
driving logistical development (pp. 11)
- The fact that Logistics and IT are both energy intensive industries (pp. 11)
- Global climate change placing a premium on the ability of developed nations
to pass its effects to less developed nations; depositing of waste in natural
systems which stresses them and the negative effects lumped on struggling parts
of the world (pp. 11-12)
Alternative technologies and unmaking of the capitalist world-system (pp.
12-13)
- Uneven and combined development of the capitalist world-system through the
above big three general technologies (pp. 12)
- Returns to Sedlacek and how his works repurpose tech that grows up in the
shadows of capitalist technoscience (eg. free software, indigenous
techniques, obsolete hardware); these he calls "shit tech" (pp. 12)
- Examines the potential of what shit tech can do (pp. 12-13)
- Technologies cannot overcome worker exploitation and the destruction of
ecological systems on their own; they rather mitigate/hide crises and prolong
its reproduction (pp. 12)
- Notes that revolution is the only mode of overcoming capitalism, but this
will also disintegrate the global technological systems built up under
capitalist production (pp. 12)
- The break with capitalism will require relying on an old world in decay, we
will not ne sure what technologies will remain usable (pp. 12)
- Due to this, the contemporary need to focus on technologies that "maximize
social use values" and undercut the logic of disaggregation (distancing) and
integration (under control) of global production/circulation (pp. 13)
- Eg: open innovation pools, smaller scale production, renewable energy
cooperatives, "low-intensity trans-local exchanges," and collectively managed
infrastructure (pp. 13)
- These are what an eco-socialist (= "equal, freely associative and
sustainable, translocal and internationalist") could be based on (pp. 13)
- Making this action part of the repertoire of strikes, blockades, occupation,
and sabotage (pp. 13)
- Necessity to understand that technology will condition any transition from
capitalism to socialism and that it's an important strategic register; if its
not directly engaged with, reversion to capitalism would be immanent (pp. 13)
