Week Four

Hello to anyone reading! Exciting thoughts about what this module is turning out to be. As you may or may not know I have been assigned a brief and group in a module as part of college course in which we meet weekly on the program Second Life. I have been investigating the dichotomy of this online platform with our present advancement towards automation. We are set weekly readings and tasks to encourage us to investigate this platform as well as the topics raised in class. 
I'm going to try to utilise this particular blog post to formulate my thoughts in order to bring a clear and concise set of aims and ideas to the group I have been assigned for this project (as of yet, I have not been able to secure them for a meeting, it seems everyone has had hectic schedules this past week so hopefully over the course of the next one we can build momentum and excitement about the project to encourage participation. One of the things that stuck with me from last weeks readings on building a good rapport within a group is finding everyone's interests and strengths to ensure maximum enjoyment and involvement. 

Anyway, I have been looking further into the theory of the anthropocene, if it could even be classed as only a theory at this stage, and Stiegler's neg-anthropocene which seeks to reverse the current consumption model. I found his 'Work Marathon' lecture particularly engaging (I will leave my notes from the talk at the bottom of this post for anyone interested!) in which he discussed the heightening role of innovators, scientists, philosophers, creatives etc. to formulate alternate pathways of building societies and structures. This is pertinent in so many ways as corporations aims seem to lie less in building sustainable societies and more in production of capitol. I think it's a really interesting stance to take in regards to the kind of project this is, as we exist as characters only in Second Life a reality that might be the outcome of this anthropocene as we are forced to turn away from our physical environment towards digitial, automated formats and tools. 

I would like to encourage my group when we finally meet to explore how participating in a program such as Second Life feels to us, emotionally and psychologically. In Japan there is a large quantity of young men called Hikikomorri who rarely, if ever leave their homes and prefer to exist mainly as online characters. This kind of 'second life' is without doubt an outcome of both the harsh reality we face today from being exposed to so much knowledge, and often frustration with this knowledge, as well as the temptation put in place by programs that allow us to exist in an alternate reality designed as a respite from the increasingly industrial, draining surroundings we face. 

I think for this brief there is a real possibility to investigate the effect of virtual environments on our capacity to ameliorate our environment and the necessity of us doing so and to run this investigation parallel with a look at how our environment and the entropy we face because of large corporations and leading figures may have caused so many of us to retreat into solitude and regress from a community based mentality. An issue that has also been included in our brief is the rise of the part-time job. How it has benefits (faster learning and more satisfaction in what we do) and also cons (lower pay and time wasted on training etc.) The rise of the individual is not something lost on me and I think there is scope within this project to investigate what the aforementioned topics are doing to heighten this epidemic. 

With more and more automated machines taking over employment we are facing a huge increase in unemployment rates (according to Oxford University 77% of jobs in China could be eliminated by automation within the next twenty years!). 
This chart published in the Future of Jobs Report displays the levels of tasks performed by humans and machines. 

As Stiegler puts it ’If we want to change the world we must share common interpretations of the world’. I would like to begin with getting to know the interpretations of the world I share or don't share with those in my group to see how these topics could be investigated in a way that is engaging for all involved.

Thanks for reading!

Cold toesies

Bernard Stiegler (french philosopher/innovator):

Work Marathon: Too Late? The Final Warning

We live in anxiety that industrial societies are increasingly bankrupt and falling into decay yet we look on helplessly as we watch these industries move in what we know to be the wrong direction environmentally

There are currently 437 nuclear reactors on earth of which we know not how they would react to political or environmental disturbances

Our current industrial model relies on consumption and negligence rather than a contribution model based on attention and care

He will suggest nine concepts using vocabulary from the contribution model

-’If we want to change the world we must share common interpretations of the world’

Entropocene- entropy at the heart of the anthropocene!

Neganthropocene refers to a new era of the biosphere in which the economy would be first and foremost an organisation of the struggle against entropy

In a time when we face threats from workplace automation, these questions arise in a state of emergency (leading to a decline in global employment and therefore global solvency)

Aim to redefine the function of ‘work’, work being not ‘labour’ because labour is now assumed by robots. Work is now invention, creation or something new. By this redefinition a new arrangement is prescribed between human work and automated systems.

Even a universal basic income would not be sufficient to get us out of the anthropocene that has been generated by entropy. What must occur is a valorization of what Schrodinger called ‘negative-entropy’

Temporary jobs and unemployment are increasing in developed countries

Oxford stated that within 20 years automation could eliminate 77% of jobs in China.

The remaining jobs will require more and more qualifications

Stiegler is interested in ‘smart cities’, but not the dominant proposal of them which aims to use algorithms and date collection to manage assets and resources efficiently for capitol. Instead interested for example in suggestions like using date to highlight the consumption of an area and then hold a meeting to educate and inform the inhabitants of the area on how to reduce consumption.

Today society is atomized, we need to create bonds and collective knowledge to ensure we are able to economize (originally meant to take care of)