My abstract for the conference:
Machinic Capitalism and Network Surplus Value: Towards a Political Economy of the Turing Machine
In the 1960s Gilbert Simondon noticed that industrial machines were already an information relay, as they were bifurcating for the first time the source of energy (nature) from the source of information (the worker). In the same years Romano Alquati was using the notion of ‘valorising information’ as a conceptual bridge between the notion of information in cybernetics and value in Marxism to describe the new conditions of industrial labour. In 1972 in the Anti-Oedipus Deleuze and Guattari introduced the notion of machinic surplus value as the regime of information technologies was exiting the factory and expanding to the whole society. Half a century ago then the conceptual toolbox was ready to describe the forms of production of the so-called cognitive capitalism. In my contribution I focus again on the Turing machine as the most general model we have to study the guts of cognitive labour. Specifically, the algorithms of the Turing machine are proposed here as the empirical measure of the new relations of production, engine of the new forms of valorisation and ‘crystal’ of social conflict. This investigation is advanced to move our attention away from the white cube of ‘creativity’ and turn to the black box of digital networks designed to capture the production of ‘the common’.
Download → DRAFT VERSION OF THE PAPER
THE LABOUR OF THE MULTITUDE?
THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF SOCIAL CREATIVITYInternational Conference of the Free/Slow University of Warsaw
Program: → www.wuw2009.pl
Dates and venues: 20-22 October 2011. Warsaw, Campus of the University of Warsaw: Old Library (Hall 205) and Warsaw University Students’ Council Hall, 26/28 Krakowskie Przedmieście.
Participants: Hans Abbing, Luc Boltanski, Neil Cummings, Diedrich Diederichsen, Isabelle Graw, Matteo Pasquinelli, John Roberts, Gigi Roggero, Martha Rosler, Hito Steyerl, Joanna Bednarek, Isabelle Bruno, Dusan Grlja, Precarious WorkersBrigade, Johsua Simon, Stevphen Shukaitis, Britta Timm Knudsen, Ewa Majewska, Jason Francis McGimsey, Vlad Morariu, Yiannis Mylonas,Alexander Neumann, Bojana Romic, Massimiliano Tomba, Marina Vishmidt and Patricia Reed.