Inequality – Sam Kinsley

19 June, 201919 June, 2019

‘Post-work’ and shifting from “the” future of work to futures of work

As part of my project on automation I’ve begun to engage with the wealth of literature about ‘the future of work’ and in particular the sorts of imaginings of a ‘post-work’ society that have emerged in popular discourse, not least in relation to idea(l)s of using automation to liberate workers. Many will be familiar with the sorts of arguments presented in books like “Fully automated luxury communism“, “Inventing the Future” and “PostCapitalism“, often receiving coverage in the left(ish)-leaning press (e.g.). These are often fairly muscular, advocations of using the machinery of capitalism itself to bring about its own demise through the liberation of the workforce.

One of the most interesting and helpful resources I have encountered in making sense of these sorts of arguments and where there may be opportunities to engage is the Futures of Work blog/journal led by Katie Bales, Harry Pitts and Huw Thomas and published by University of Bristol Press. I highly recommend browsing through but in particular the video and the articles linked below I think are really interesting and helpful ways of engaging with these ideas without getting lost (or, in my case, overly cross!)

Theories of a post-work society: (video) Paul Thompson and Elizabeth Cotton (co-Editor-In-Chief of Work, Employment and Society) discuss theories of a ‘post-work’ society, presented at WES Conference 2018.
From the future of work to futures of work: The inaugural editorial of the blog/journal outlining how we might shift to plural registers for considering how work may continue/change
Management consultancies: inventing the future: Andrew Sturdy and Glenn Morgan discuss the ways in which management consultancies move debates around future work from the speculative to the definitive and what this effects.
Post-work fallacies and the social reproduction of capitalism: Alex Wood argues that claims about job displacement/replacement via automation are founded on fallacies around demand, value and misunderstandings of skill and history.
Against Industry 4.0: Putting the fourth industrial revolution in its place: Al Rainnie and Mark Dean argue that popular articulations of a fourth industrial revolution misunderstand how and where the agency of workers is enacted in contemporary realignments of industry and work.

11 April, 201911 April, 2019

Bernard Stiegler on disruption & stupidity in education & politics – podcast

Via Museu d’Art Conptemporani de Barcelona.

On the Ràdio Web Macba website there is a podcast interview with philosopher Bernard Stiegler as part of a series to ‘Reimagine Europe’. It covers many of the major themes that have preoccupied Stiegler for the last ten years (if not longer). You can download the pod as an mp3 for free. Please find the blurb below and a link.

In his books and lectures, Stiegler presents a broad philosophical approach in which technology becomes the starting point for thinking about living together and individual fulfilment. All technology has the power to increase entropy in the world, and also to reduce it: it is potentially a poison or cure, depending on our ability to distil beneficial, non-toxic effects through its use. Based on this premise, Stiegler proposes a new model of knowledge and a large-scale contributive economy to coordinate an alliance between social agents such as academia, politics, business, and banks. The goal, he says, is to create a collective intelligence capable of reversing the planet’s self-destructive course, and to develop a plan – within an urgent ten-year time-frame – with solutions to the challenges of the Anthropocene, robotics, and the increasing quantification of life.

In this podcast Bernard Stiegler talks about education and smartphones, translations and linguists, about economic war, climate change, and political stupidity. We also chat about pharmacology and organology, about the erosion of biodiversity, the vital importance of error, and the Neganthropocene as a desirable goal to work towards, ready to be constructed.

Timeline
00:00 Contributory economy: work vs proletarianization
05:21 Our main organs are outside of our body
07:45 Reading and writing compose the republic
12:49 Refounding Knowledge
15:03 Digital pharmakon
18:28 Contributory research. Neganthropy, biodiversity and diversification
24:02 The need of an economic peace
27:24 The limits of micropolitics
29:32 Macroeconomics and Neganthropic bifurcation
36:55 Libido is fidelity
42:33 A pharmacological critique of acceleration
46:35 Degrowth is the wrong question

27 November, 201827 November, 2018

Panels from the 2018 AI Now symposium

The panels from the AI Now symposium in October 2018 are now available to watch online, well worth checking out.

I have particularly enjoyed “Research, organising & activism” with Rashida Richardson and Lucy Suchman, chaired by Meredith Whittaker; and “Austerity, Inequality & Automation” with Philip Alston and Virginia Eubanks, chaired by Vincent Southerland (both embedded below).