A secret question hovers over us, a sense of disappointment, a broken promise we were given as children about what our adult world was supposed to be like. I am referring not to the standard false…
It struck me that when Graeber talks about industrial labor being outsourced, it's in essence a sleight of hand in the same way that the "cloud" in the IT sense is also a sleight of hand. There's nothing cool going on underneath - all there is is more brute forcing.
But it also goes back to the earlier point re: Baudrillard and Eco. For Baudrillard, it wasn't even about discovering the real, in fact it was practically impossible. What was interesting, and becomes increasingly so, is the further stratification of these alternate realities. The sweatshops already exist on a plane that isn't real, making products for a section of the Western world that doesn't materially encounter, and oftentimes mentally, encounter the sweatshop. Neither does it encounter the lower classes within its own cities, and if it does, everything is done to scrub its mind from such an encounter. And of course, now with the metaverse/VR still looking large, the stratification will increase further, and of course, will take place in the "cloud."
There are legitimately people I've met who don't put a thought into the idea of the physical layer that makes up the "cloud". Some of it is ignorance, and some of it is undergirded by thoughts of Disney-like ideology
There are legitimately people I’ve met who don’t put a thought into the idea of the physical layer that makes up the “cloud”.
That’s honestly by design. Technology should be as fluid to use as possible.
Comparing cloud computing and sweat shop labor conceptually is an interesting thought experiment, but the cruelty of sweatshops is on an entirely different tier than a server farm.
It struck me that when Graeber talks about industrial labor being outsourced, it's in essence a sleight of hand in the same way that the "cloud" in the IT sense is also a sleight of hand. There's nothing cool going on underneath - all there is is more brute forcing.
But it also goes back to the earlier point re: Baudrillard and Eco. For Baudrillard, it wasn't even about discovering the real, in fact it was practically impossible. What was interesting, and becomes increasingly so, is the further stratification of these alternate realities. The sweatshops already exist on a plane that isn't real, making products for a section of the Western world that doesn't materially encounter, and oftentimes mentally, encounter the sweatshop. Neither does it encounter the lower classes within its own cities, and if it does, everything is done to scrub its mind from such an encounter. And of course, now with the metaverse/VR still looking large, the stratification will increase further, and of course, will take place in the "cloud."
There are legitimately people I've met who don't put a thought into the idea of the physical layer that makes up the "cloud". Some of it is ignorance, and some of it is undergirded by thoughts of Disney-like ideology
There are legitimately people I’ve met who don’t put a thought into the idea of the physical layer that makes up the “cloud”.
That’s honestly by design. Technology should be as fluid to use as possible.
Comparing cloud computing and sweat shop labor conceptually is an interesting thought experiment, but the cruelty of sweatshops is on an entirely different tier than a server farm.