[syndicate] Fwd: Downtime & Play

[Frederic Madre]

Trebor is the nothing new that was always within Geert

f. 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sympa Owner [mailto:sympa at kilby.copyleft.no] On Behalf 
> Of _dream.thick[ener]_
> Sent: Saturday, November 19, 2005 9:57 PM
> To: syndicate at anart.no; thingist at bbs.thing.net
> Subject: [syndicate] Fwd: Downtime & Play
> 
> 
> 
> >On my way to Zurich I just met a colleague at the airport. 
> We both fly
> >routinely. "I can't do it anymore." he said. "All this air 
> travel is just too
> >much downtime for me." I moved onward passing through 
> airport lobbies in New
> >York City, London, and finally my Swiss destination. In 
> these inbetween spaces
> >I was persistently confronted with big, fat back-lid ads. 
> And they were all
> >about time. T-Mobile's slogan is "Upgrade your downtime." 
> The airline Jetblue
> >draws attention to their wireless hotspots at John F. 
> Kennedy with the
> >commanding "downtime-download." The mantra of the British 
> Vodaphone is "The
> >power of now!" BT shows a jolly business man fly-jumping 
> through what looks
> >like a landscape of Powerpoint charts: "The digital network 
> economy. Where
> >business is done." In JFK, Sprint, the American cell phone 
> tycoon, set up
> >yellow placards in the size of a house that say "yes to 
> making just about any
> >place a work place." It made me stop. I was buffled. How 
> dare they be so in my
> >face about what I perceive as the agony of immaterial labor?
> >
> >Before moving to San Francisco I never heard terms like 
> "quality time" or
> >"downtime." In East Germany, for me, time was just time 
> indiscriminately. 
> >For a
> >wide variety of reasons there are many that pledge 
> allegiance to everything
> >not-networked, offline, and non-digital. Who can blame them? 
> Post-Fordist work
> >conditions turn the super-mobile manager into a networked 
> lap dog. At six in
> >the morning those waiting in the airport gate area pull out 
> their laptops.
> >Sneaking over their shoulders I see spread sheets. The 
> networked early morning
> >work day starts with coffee and a cheese-and-egg-pizzas. 
> Downtime now is
> >download time. Life is work. There is not enough time to 
> rest, cook, reflect,
> >or walk in the woods. The insidious penetration of the 
> Internet into our every
> >grain is hard to deny. Workers become 
> part-of-the-solution-nodes rather than
> >full-time employees. Health insurance can be done away with. 
> Wages in the
> >immaterial networked realm don't have to bear resemblance to 
> the work that was
> >done. And, who ever mentioned pensions? Also Unions get 
> whacked when the work
> >force is geographically pieced together. Then there is all 
> that sense of place
> >stuff that Lucy Lippard was so adament about. But the 
> uprooted lifestyle seems
> >like peanuts compared to what is happening now, -- the 
> horror, the horror.
> >Passing through these airports, the net started to feel like 
> an itch that we
> >can't scratch.
> >
> >Much of the discussion about networking is focused entirely 
> on business. 
> >Howard
> >Rheingold's essay "Technologies of Cooperation" is 
> magnificent and inspired,
> >imho, but it is written in large part to help out the 
> amazon-dot-coms of this
> >world. Doug Rushkoff comments on his blog that he hopes for 
> the ideas in his
> >latest book to help businesses (and well, also a few 
> others). Fair enough.
> >What's wrong with that you may ask? Well, let's just say 
> that there is an
> >utilitarian impetus that rarifies play and experiment at 
> least if they don't
> >link up with business interests sooner rather than later. 
> Let's just say 
> >that I
> >hope for people with insight into network technologies and 
> their human uses to
> >also take on projects that do not support those who already 
> have plenty. Why
> >help eBay to make even more money? Who really needs our help?
> >
> >
> >Some cultural workers have much in common with managerial 
> networked types. 
> >Brian
> >Holmes points to that. It's not just the rock stars of what 
> Richard Florida
> >calls the creative class who sit on planes next to the 
> smiley jet set manager.
> >Artists become entrepreneur of themselves. Self-worth is 
> quantified in 
> >frequent
> >flyer miles and numbers of invitations. But the opportunistic, 
> >ego-tripping art
> >enterpriser is not all there is. Cultural practioners travel 
> and perform their
> >ideas all over the world. They are gift-givers with all the 
> problematic
> >hierarchies that this creates. On good days they enact their 
> ideas with
> >passion, inspiration and substance. The Brooklyn-based 
> artist Martha Rosler
> >documented her more than frequent passing through airports 
> in many series of
> >photographs and critical writing. She describes her 
> motivation for these works
> >related to her occupation. And in new media as much as in 
> photography, the
> >international scenes are closely knit. Travel is a 
> substantial part of the
> >lives of cultural producers. I can't point to the travelling 
> managerial
> >networkers "over there." They are so distant and 
> conveniently different from
> >me. I don't have all the ethical and political 
> rightenousness on my side. I am
> >part of the picture. The network beast lives also inside me.
> >
> >We move through space. "We" are all those cultural producers 
> who fly thousands
> >of miles to talk to different audiences or present their 
> artwork. We are quite
> >the experts when it comes to travel. We know it all. 
> Airport, home, gallery,
> >and lecture hall are equally familiar venues for us. We have 
> it down. We know
> >how to block off obnoxiously loud fellow travelers. We 
> recognize how to remain
> >friendly (most of the time)- with borderline-abusive 
> security personnel. We
> >inhale every magazine article about tricks of air travel. 
> Our bodies are
> >transported through the air. We are just resting. Covered 
> with masks, our eyes
> >are closed. We enter a think space. We know what to do about 
> the lack of
> >humidity on planes. The increased elevation at take-off 
> jazzes us up. We know
> >when to stretch and which way to rotate our ankles. We 
> developed a continuity
> >of purpose that makes it secondary where our bodies are 
> located. The scenarios
> >through we move don't distract us so much anymore.
> >
> >We repurpose trains, and airport lobbies into offices. The 
> person next to us
> >becomes unwillingly involved. We pull ourselves out of the 
> public into the
> >private networked space. We shift through the walkways of 
> airports, drive in
> >taxis and trains. Networked devices keep us always anchored, 
> always in touch,
> >consistently connected to myriads of social networks. But 
> the flickering
> >screens to which we are hooked is not just the bluetooth 
> lifeline to the boss.
> >We have all those with whom we share our lives in reach 
> nearly at all 
> >times. We
> >cannot feel the warmth of their face, we cannot touch. But in our 
> >"downtime" we
> >can talk or exchange text messages. And doing so may prevent us from 
> >talking to
> >the stranger right next to us.
> >
> >We "grow" network tentacles (like air roots) that allow us 
> to be always on.
> >There is the perpetual, invisible link between our body and 
> the nearest cell
> >phone tower. We are always plugged in, interlinked at all 
> times. In the city,
> >at the moment when the subway train comes out of a tunnel to 
> go over a bridge
> >dozens of people who endured at least 15 minutes of 
> out-of-reach time pull out
> >their devices to feel reassured that they did not miss something. The
> >technology is not plated into us. It is miniaturized. The 
> only piece of
> >hardware that Lev Manovich mentions on his blog, for 
> example, is the "I-Go," a
> >universal connecting plug for all kinds of devices. It 
> allows him to leave the
> >cable clutter at home. Our nano-sized multi purpose-devices 
> are not what
> >counts. What matters is the linkage that they establish. The 
> wireless Internet
> >signals casually picked up by our laptops facilitate 
> exploitation. We have to
> >look hard to see the emancipatory nature of socio-technical 
> networks. But it's
> >on the edges of network culture where the sun sparkles. It's 
> not in the center
> >of pesky business culture.
> >
> >But network technologies cannot be reduced to instruments of 
> oppression and
> >casualized labor that squeeze every last drop of genuine 
> energy and creativity
> >out of the worker. Cooperation-enhancing technologies are 
> not by default
> >networked assembly lines. The Treo is not the beast. Laptops 
> are not merely
> >locative Wall Street furniture. Cell phones are not the 
> pervasive enemy. 
> >Groups
> >of protesters at the Republican convention used them to 
> escape police tactics.
> >But at the same token networked technologies are also not 
> inherently linked to
> >a deviant life style or oppositional cultural practice. Technologies 
> >define us.
> >We are conditioned to relate to them in predefined ways. 
> Using technologies
> >changes what we know and how we know it. But we do have a 
> say in this. We can
> >shape the technologies that we are using.  Networked 
> technologies do not have
> >to stand for servitude. We can imagine  human uses. We can 
> support emerging
> >alternative socio-technical networks by reflecting on 
> technologies without
> >utopia-glazed eyes. Critiquing the vicious nature of 
> networked, neoliberal
> >managers is vitally important. But don't stop there. Don't 
> leave the discourse
> >about human uses of cooperation-enhancing tools and 
> networking to them (or to
> >them inside of us.)
> >
> >-Trebor
> >
> >You can read this text (with images) on my blog at:
> >http://collectivate.net/journalisms/2005/11/19/downtime.html
> >
> >
> >
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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