From Lawrence Joseph’s Visions of Labour:
Industrial Revolution is who owns and controls
the data. That’s what we’re looking at, labour cheap,
replaceable, self-replicating, marginal, contracted out
into smaller and smaller units. Them? Hordes
of them, of depleted economic, social value,
who don’t count, in any situation, in anyone’s eyes,
and won’t count, ever, no matter what happens,
the truth that, sooner than later, they will simply be
eliminated. In Hanover Square, a freezing dawn,
from inside bronze doors the watchman sips
bourbon and black coffee in a paper cup, sees
a drunk or drugged hedge fund boy step over
a passed-out body. A logic of exploitation.
A logic of submission. The word alienation. Eyes
being fixed on mediated screens, in semiotic
labour flow: how many generations between
these States’ age of slavery and ours? Makers,
we, of perfectly contemplated machines.
Mark Carrigan 