There’s a whole literary field of broken dreams on our addiction to smart phones. The Art of Surveillance Capitalism talks about how our data is harvested, Irresistible looks at how tech companies keep us hooked, while The Shallows shows how our concentration span is reduced. The Twittering Machine sits among these, but offers a different slant. What if we are being enslaved by our devices, what if they’re robbing us of our surplus value?
It’s a very Marxist critique of the rise of the Social Industry (definitely a phrase I’m stealing). We increasingly fetishize our devices, our creativity being stripmined by machines, allowing it to atrophy into affective labour. Thus captured as a commodity, it’s harnessed in different ways, discussed through the book; “we are all connected”, “we are all trolls” being 2 chapters. Our creativity isn’t producing new art or ways or thinking, but is rather channeled into very narrow forms of creation; rage-bait, the commodification of trauma, or the shallow fame of performed authenticity. High-frequency, low-quality content grist for the mill.
Our mill is no longer a workbench we sit at from nine to five. It’s something we carry with us to the the dinner table, it invades our bedrooms. Whereas before, our working life finished and was part of our inner life, this new evolution of capitalism brings the proletarianization of our private life. This is in turn diminishes our feelings, reducing our joy to the dopamine hit of a like.
Our affective labour becomes cannibalistic. Our technology is capturing it to capture others, creating rage-bait to enrage and ensnare each other. We’re all pulled into endless hours of responding to Sisyphean debates. Our discussions go round for hours because they don’t want resolution but the emotional energy from meaningless circular discussion. A settled argument is a silent user is bad for the profit motive. The Twittering machines channeling our living human spirit into the dead labour greasing the machines of Social Industry.
