Re: <nettime> Return to feudalism

[Morlock Elloi <morlockelloi@gmail.com>]

As Karl M. analyzed relationships of labor, reproduction and capital in 
the era when there was pervasive need for human labor, we need new 
analysis for the era when no one needs any human labor (5-6% of 
population needing to work is practically "no one").

What is the value of the attention when the purchasing power is zero? 
The most likely uplifting answer is, after the redundants are given some 
food and shelter ("basic income"), pacification. The dystopian 
prediction being kill them all.

The human drive to be useful to the society - the most dangerous drive 
in the new context - needs to be managed, channeled and neutered. I 
think that we can see the outlines of the things to come in gaming and 
VR. As porn has domesticated sex, these industries have potential to 
domesticate this last link we have with the so-called "humanity". This 
requires more production ingenuity than porn, and if we're lucky it 
cannot be fully automated, so some jobs after all. Panem et circenses, 
this time industrial strength.

Back to the new economy, the direct value of the attention will be 
proportional to the savings on brute-force pacification. Which means 
that increasing the costs of brute-force pacification is the end game, 
the new objective of the class struggle in the 21st century: unruliness, 
Nixon's Madman doctrine trickling down to level of the individual.


On 9/18/17, 17:06, John Hopkins wrote:
> We in the west exist in a different energy-harvesting regime, but one
> that concentrates our attentions with impressive thoroughness. It has
> many tentacles, many of them screen-related, though as pointed out, IoT
> quickly insinuates itself into tampons, medicine, wine bottles, toilets,
> ... everything ...

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