May 14th, 2012 § 0 comments § permalink
And when do the protests placate
Of blood compressed in arteries?
And when rest on the table remnants,
Dentures and miseries?
And when do animals tremble of cold,
looking at the new shadow castrated?
And when in the desert of shudder
We gamble against our cards and dice?
And when are we tired of questions,
and answers we have not, even screaming?
And when to hopes together here
We cannot say how or when?
[ José Saramago, "As palavras são novas", Os poemas possíveis, 1966 ]
May 12th, 2012 § 0 comments § permalink
When I bury the tattooed whore’s body it’s cold in that fucking factory. The bitch didn’t know anything I didn’t already. But she pissed me off. Her and her fucking tattoo pissed me off. Luckily I didn’t get any blood on me. I take off the rearview mirror to check again while I light a Camel. The son of a bitch at the shop didn’t have anymore Gauloises. I prepare a line of coke on the mirror, snort it and put it back into place. » Read more «
May 10th, 2012 § 0 comments § permalink
Courtesy of Opendemocracy.net
There is still a solid social cushion in France if we compare it to other European countries. But the pressure for work-hour productivity – one of the highest in the world – oppresses generations of digital cognitive workers.
Network labour remains central in the sector of new information and communication technologies (NICTs), but has invaded a much more extensive area, expanding to every sector of production under corporate control. Beginning in the ‘70s and ‘80s, corporations introduced ERP business application packages (Enterprise Resource Planning), developed by large companies like the German SAP or the American Oracle, in order to restructure and automatize organization in the search for profit. Once the internal machine was fine-tuned, beginning in the ‘90s, these programmes were directed toward the outside through CRM (Customer Relationship Management) packages. CRMs are the first instance of an interactivity with the multitude understood as “client consumers” and it is these that launch the era of the “client producer” (i.e. crowdsourcing), thus contributing to the age of economic rent. ↑
More recently, over the course of the last decade, we have moved towards a strengthening of the ability to capture and control the multitude integrating the web 2.0’s “collaborative” procedures and the pervasiveness of “always connected” mobile devices into ERPs and CRMs. Initially experimented on in companies tied to NICTs – like services in technological engineering, large digital publishing and the giants of the web 2.0 – the methods and the procedures that integrate planned management with network labour tools have multiplied in proportion to NICT’s expansion into all other sectors. This expansion was not only into digital management, but also into the daily production of the media, financial, industrial and commercial sectors.
Consequently, the presumed dichotomy between digital and traditional capitalism collapses, with the emergence of a growing number of activities piloted using these applications and infrastructures, even in the companies most representative of the ‘old’ industrial system. In the constellation of cognitive capitalism, multinational corporations are the giant stars and, at the same time, the black holes that swallow up living labour and common production. The network is the driving force and central tool of this reorganization. » Read more «
May 9th, 2012 § 0 comments § permalink
At the federation they are already singing the International. I join them on the last chorus. There are a lot of new people I don’t know, new people fucking bother me. One of them says now is a good time to let the secretary speak. I remember his name is Gargiulo, he’s my vice-secretary and is one of Big Brother’s guys. Everyone applauds, one of them hands me the microphone. I take it. Silence. I say excuse me but before speaking I have to go to the pot. Someone laughs, I don’t know why. In the bathroom I snort a line of coke, drink a sip of rum and shoot up a little, with my morning needle. » Read more «
May 6th, 2012 § 0 comments § permalink
At 9:15 I’m at the pharmacy and I buy two packs of Oxazepam. I get home at 21:47. Sara is lying on the couch watching tv, she pets the dog and says hi without turning her head. On tv there’s a political show but instead of real people there are animated figures. She asks me why I don’t have a hat. I tell her it’s no time to joke baby. I open the fridge and get a beer. » Read more «
