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Technological Mediation and Vanishing Lines Giorgio Griziotti Foreword by Tiziana Terranova Translated by Jason Francis McGimsey English edition edited by Stevphen Shukaitis ISBN 978-1-57027-342-1 Cover image: Martino Saccani Cover design by Haduhi Szukis Interior design by Margaret Killjoy Released by Minor Compositions 2019 Colchester / New York / Port Watson Minor Compositions is a series of interventions & provocations drawing from autonomous politics, avant-garde aesthetics, and the revolutions of everyday life. Minor Compositions is an imprint of Autonomedia www.minorcompositions.info | [email protected] Distributed by Autonomedia PO Box 568 Williamsburgh Station Brooklyn, NY 11211 www.autonomedia.org [email protected] CONTENTS Translator’s Note ...................................... 1 Jason Francis McGimsey Foreword.............................................3 Tiziana Terranova Foreword the English Edition............................7 Politics, technique and co-research | Te Cathedral and the Bazaar Introduction .........................................13 Marxian Cyborgs | Te Tree Parts: Producing, Living and Organizing Part One: Producing ..................................19 Deconstructing industrial production towards the digital production of General Intellect Innovation and General Intellect ....................... 23 From the Ford Model T to... | …LINUX: a giant leap forward | Unix / LINUX: engines of the knowledge economy | Apple: innovation according to biocognitive capitalism End of Modern Times ................................ 37 Polling and Interrupt | “In the beginning was the Command Line...” | Te recovery of the client-server model | High-Frequency Trading (HFT) | From Fordism to Toyotism: real time computing | Te mirage of Toyotism: lean production | Information technologies in cognitive labor control and management | Te frm’s core: marketing and CRM – the customer centric strategy or the commodifcation of the social user | Te avant-garde mobile phone industry: from the customer experience to the NSA scandal Expropriation of Network Labor ....................... 65 Investigation into large IT services companies | Te international division of digital labor | Business marketing and “ethics” | Competitiveness, open space, profling and other pathogens of cognitive labor | Trade union decline and precarious work on the web: the French example | Burnout and escape Hackerspace and Fablab: New Battles Between Copyright and Common Production?................... 79 First Evasion: Time Devouring Spaces ..................85 Part Two: Living .....................................89 Bodies, perceptions and feelings in the space-time of biohypermediatic society | Historical context and global risks | Technologies and the production of subjectivity Bodies “Forced to Bleed” ............................. 97 Te ‘70s: Disobedient Italy | Te system of allergies and autoimmunity | Acting on the symptoms, leaving the causes intact | In search of the lost DNA The Turning Point of Biohypermedia....................107 Human and machinic awareness | Te cellphone, a biopolitical device Criticism of “becoming-machine” | Genealogy of biohypermedia devices Settlers of the New Frontier | Bring your own device | Switching and the aristocracy of cognitive startups | Video games and the art of escape | Robot intelligence and unconditional basic income Second Evasion: E.waste 2.0 ..........................137 Part Three: Organizing .............................. 143 Te society of automatic control Nomadic Subjectivity from the era of Belonging to Mixed Identities .......................151 Te rise and decline of belonging | Neonomadism: mixed identity society | Te emotional machine set to work | Te archaic god and the technological Leviathan – sacred techne | Neurocapitalism: what Foucault could not predict | Capital and body | Skeptical generations Cooperation and Sharing Between the Common and Financialization......................177 Historical nemesis of capitalism | A house of cards... | ...of many surprise | Afnity hanging in the balance | Fossil wars and false prophets | Te limits of hacker ethics | Te referee of sharing economy | Learning the common, the common of learning The Paradigm of Decentralization ......................195 “Do-ocracy”: autonomous commons and capitalist integration | Unblock the chain: the blockchain as algorithmic dystopia and tool of the common | Te digital commons and technologies of decentralization | Loosely coupled movements. Towards a fexible and autonomous post- capitalist organization The Collapse of Baliverna ............................207 Final Evasion: ...................................... 209 Acknowledgements ..................................213 Glossary............................................217 Bibliography .......................................233 TRANSLATOR’S NOTE Jason Francis McGimsey The translation readers will find in NEUROCAPITALISM is the fruit of a longstanding collaboration between the author and I. Several of the essays that are now in this book we previous translated for other (mostly digital) publications, either by myself or others. Tis made the assembly (and updating) of the text somewhat of a challenge, for two main reasons. First, translations age and, over time, once cur- rent references quickly become dated and even inaccurate, especially when dealing with digital technologies. Secondly, contemporary po- litical and philosophical terms themselves change quite quickly: while translators race to fnd the right adaptations in other languages, the concepts themselves change. Likewise, Europe’s social and political context is still very diferent from that of the Anglophone world and the language used to describe it remains quite “foreign.” One very good example is the idea of “pre- carious workers” (i.e. an employee without a secure contract): on the continent, workers are generally more accustomed to the protections ofered by the socialist state, whereas the English-speaking world has had at least thirty years to get used to a more “fexible” labor market. Tis makes the translation of “precarious labor” or “precariat” sound somewhat mechanical in English, while in Italian or French these terms are a part of daily conversation. 1 2 • Neurocapitalism Tat said, in the end, it is the hopes of any translator that the in- troduction and use of new terminology, while requiring a small efort on the part of the reader, can in turn enrich our ability to perceive and analyze new nuances in the world around us. FOREWORD Tiziana Terranova In the infinite production of texts, studies and analyses on computer networks and digital media, it is rare to fnd a book like that of Giorgio Griziotti, which is capable of combining a competent technical viewpoint with a coherent theoretical perspective and an obvious political passion. Griziotti tells us in his preamble how this synthesis was possible, from the moment he chose to implement his subjectivity, following the feminist exhortation