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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black">Thanks Alex and Jon for posting. Hoping that our large group or guests will feel free to make posts about their own thoughts and work.
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black">Alex the ubiquity of capitalistic surveillance is also present in the US worksplace in fact within lives of staff workers prepandemic, as early as a couple of years
ago. University computers within staff offices were monitored for activity on social media: Facebook, Instagram, etc. Our own staff member who monitors our department Facebook page was called in for “more time than necessary on the platform.” I would say
during pandemic times that the our computer cameras, zoom technology, and Canvas applications has incited the technological mechanization of being on or off work. It all blends together now. The staff and faculty work, teach, manage from home with computers,
cameras, applications like zoom and canvas, people soft and a host of other management and financial tools to monitor the on/off of its employees, how long they are working, and at what time.
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black">I heard from a collegue in China that she felt like a captive in her tiny apartment. Her movements were tracked via her cellphone. She was forced to keep her cellphone
next to her because if the cell phone was left unattended for more than fifteen minutes she would receive a notification from a work application. She reported that she felt that she needed to shift the phone to different places in her apartment every ten
to fifteen minutes to avoid her preceived inactivity.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black">My Korean students who returned to Seoul reported that at the airpost they were toggled to an app that monitored their movements. They had to stay within their apartments
and were unable to leave until the time of their quarantine was finished. <o:p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black">What I am curious about is if you all think we can go back to before Covid existance without webcams, zoom, and tracking surveillance. My hunch is that at least
in the structures of corporate university life the realization is that covid existance has proved that life can go on with less staff and faculty, larger classes, less one on one interaction, less classrooms and real estate, etc, etc, etc.
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black">Anyone care to share their own experiences? Thanks again Alex and Jon for bringing this thread up for discussion. Renate<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica">Renate Ferro<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica">-empyre- soft-skinned space<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica">Curatorial moderator<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:12.0pt;color:black">From: </span></b><span style="font-size:12.0pt;color:black">Alex Taek-Gwang Lee <tglee@khu.ac.kr><br>
<b>Date: </b>Tuesday, February 16, 2021 at 2:59 AM<br>
<b>Subject: </b>Re: [-empyre-] Welcome to Week 3: Social Media: algorithms, untruths and insurrection<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">Dear all,</span><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">Many thanks for Renate's kind introduction and invitation. I have enjoyed the previous discussions and been excited by those ideas of algorithms and other things. These days, I am working on
the effect of mechanical surveillance and its impact on us. I want to share my ideas of "mechanical algorithms" with you. </span><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black">The COVID-19 pandemic does not mean the crisis of capitalism but instead compounds the existing problems within the capitalist mode of production. The precarious status of the essential
workers, regardless of their living condition, has been worse off. In contrast, unrestricted capitalist accumulation in valorizing the market above everything else has been more efficient and has exacerbated social inequality. These contradictory consequences
of the pandemic situation prove that the nature of capitalism does not need workers for its completion. The pandemic serves as not so much the end of capitalism but as another moment to sustain its paradox. Indeed, what is being observed at the moment is the
more traumatic experiences of capitalist restructuring. It means the modification of work as such by the introduction of technology to the workplace. </span><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black">This transformation dramatically evolves to the idea of mechanical management based on surveillance technology in this pandemic. In other words, the mechanization of work, the perversion
of Taylorism, reconstructs the labour force’s fundamentals and drives each worker to be a part of the mechanism. The financial bull market on technology investment precipitates this shift further and reformulates the distribution of labour. I would call this
inversion of capitalism the very essence of “pure capitalism,” i.e., the “free” economic system that encourages individuals’ voluntary competition to produce and trade without government intervention. It is not easy to determine where administrative interference
could engage the system if the workers have no human management. “My Boss Is Not Human”(</span><span lang="KO" style="font-family:"PingFang SC",sans-serif;color:black;mso-fareast-language:KO">我的领导不是人</span><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black">),
an article recently published in <i>Caijing</i>, a Chinese economic magazine, proves how this mechanical surveillance reorganizes the workplace. You can find it at this link: <a href="https://news.caijingmobile.com/article/detail/428729?source_id=40" target="_blank">https://news.caijingmobile.com/article/detail/428729?source_id=40</a></span><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black">According to the report, many Chinese enterprises have adopted artificial intelligence for more efficient and standardized management. The new system works with more than 20 surveillance
cameras all over the workplaces and records every worker’s behaviours and activities. An electronic roll call at the entrance is necessary to identify each person and monitor the group. This algorithmic scrutiny, the mechanical transformation of all human
actions into data, totalizes the whole process of work like a single machine. The monitoring camera transcribes workers’ performance per second, and the central operating system checks up its efficiency. Each component is designed as a prescribed processing
time by the algorithm, and the “Intelligent Task Distribution System” will recognize and facilitate the due sequels of the worker’s actions. The electronic time attendance system refines the check-in procedures previously set at the company gate. Workers must
swipe their cards if they leave the workplace. If they are absent at their seats for more than 15 minutes, the recorded data will be submitted to the central operating system, and the sum of the salary will be automatically deducted at the end of the month.</span><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in"><span style="color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black">My point concerning this Chinese version of Taylor’s scientific management does not lie in the fact that Orwell’s imagination of Big Brother has come to be realized. Instead, the
administration aims to modify the human behaviours for the algorithmic mechanism. There is no such thing as Big Brother in the system, but the technological stupidity to control the workers by simplifying their actions. Any digressive and unpredicted move
does not seem to be allowed in this process. However, the workers follow the rules not because the system tightly governs them but because of the new scientific management's norms, i.e., the command of the mechanical surveillance, which forces them to obey
the axioms of the mechanism. Therefore, the algorithmic organization of the workplace is not a crucial factor in the new management. The problem is that there must be an invisible decision-maker behind the automatic system in solving any accidental and unpredictable
outcome, even though the algorithmic mechanism operates without the presence of the human boss in the venue. My argument is that the void of the surveillance, i.e., the subjective articulation, is always already included in the mechanism and preserves the
locus of resistance. I want to know what you think. </span><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black">All the best</span><o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black">Alex <br>
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