Shit Tech for a Shitty World  --  Tomislav Madek

Full Citation
Medak, Tomislav. Shit Tech For a Shitty World. Ljubljana, Slovenia: Akisoma, 2016. Print.
 
 
Notes

Of waste, technological and human (pp. 3-4)
- The major mode of existence of contemporary technology is as waste through the process of obsolescence (pp. 3)
- Obsolescence is not primarily through physical damage/wea over time but through technological advancement (pp. 3) 
- Obsolescence = the continual replacement of old tech with new; this is the dominant manifestation of tech in our social world and appears in various conceptual guises, ie. innovation, progress to make its concrete character invisible (pp. 3)
- Process of obsolescence is not a neutral/natural movement from old to new (pp. 3), but a "sedimenting material expression of capitalism" both productive processes and as social domination (pp. 4) 
- The huge amount of human waste that technological development produces but does not address even though it could (pp. 4)
- Uses the artist Sašo Sedlacek as a jumping off point to examine how social domination structures technological development and how the present configuration of technology helps reproduce domination (pp. 4)  

Structural dynamics and technological development (pp. 4-7)
- Technological development is a significant historical driver by modifying & expanding the fundamental transformation of energy and matter through human/animal/plant metabolism (pp. 4)
- Technology as fundamental to fulfilling "natural and social needs"; but also plays a major role in reproduction of capitalist system (pp. 4) 
- Contemporary technologies are mostly capitalist technologies (pp. 4); they may not be developed/produced to do the work of capital accumulation, but they are already amenable to this work in two ways: (pp. 6) 
- 1) They are tools in production processes (pp. 6)
- The machinery that makes capitalist production look like an impersonal force (Marx Grundrisse); technologies assimilate labour into capitalist production; transformation of production into technoscientific process beyond individual activity (pp. 6)
- Intensification of mediated communication which is simultaneously separation of individuals from each other undercutting collective action (pp. 6) 
- 2) They are consumer goods (pp. 6)
- The driver of technological development as consumer goods in not entirely in what they can do (increase productivity, increase convenience, etc.) but in the fact that they can replace an activity that was previously free with one that costs money (pp. 6)
- Technologies as consumer goods which make the realization of value in circulation smoother and increase profit through speeding up the turnover of capital (pp. 6)
- Occasional positive feedback of widening scale of adoption, standardization; but significant advances have been overlooked since they are not seen as worth financially investing in (pp. 6-7)

Configuration of technologies reproducing the present capitalist world-system (pp. 7-12)
- Not simply a one-directional relationship by which technologies/tech development is molded by capitalism (pp. 7)
- Need to understand technology within our current concrete and specific regime of accumulation, this means looking at the specific composition of technologies (pp. 7)
- Argues against "immaterial economy" as driver of contemporary capitalist production, but rather that the intensification of control over geographically disaggregated productive processes might make it seem so from the POV of Western economies (pp. 7) See below for the components of this transformation: 
- Logistics (pp. 7-10)
- Process of post-industrialization (= movement of manufacturing to "emerging economies") and neo-liberalization (= depression of wages coupled with rise of credit/finance) required huge transformations to the structure of productive processes (pp. 7-10)
- Reorganization and integration of resource/commodity/labour flows (pp. 10) 
- Fragility and importance of global logistical chains and their "securitization" to harden them from disruption (pp. 10)
- Changes to work: reduction of protections on transport workers, exploitation of international immigrant labour, disciplining of domestic labour in capitalist core (pp. 10)  
- Computing (pp. 10-11)
- Propelled changes in logistics described above alongside standardisation of transport (pp. 10)
- Computing = the concrete ways of achieving systems analysis and systems integration (pp. 10)
- Dual movement of infusing material flows with "immaterial data", and the intensified materialization of the IT industry as fixed and centralized (pp. 10)
- IT, previously reliant on telecommunications networks, made huge financial investments in fixed projects [my eg. data centres] to implement larger computational grids (pp. 10-11)
- Also the development of virtualization across geographically distant data centres and aggregation of large amount of data have made IT companies the main mediators of communication while breaking up older forms [my eg. digital TV, streaming, internet phone] (pp. 11)
- Management of natural resources (pp. 11-12)
- Consists of the technologies associated with food production, energy production, and waste disposal; energy is particularly necessary for capitalist development (pp. 11)
- Close relation between technological sectors, the example of oil and gas driving logistical development (pp. 11)
- The fact that Logistics and IT are both energy intensive industries (pp. 11) 
- Global climate change placing a premium on the ability of developed nations to pass its effects to less developed nations; depositing of waste in natural systems which stresses them and the negative effects lumped on struggling parts of the world (pp. 11-12)

Alternative technologies and unmaking of the capitalist world-system (pp. 12-13)
- Uneven and combined development of the capitalist world-system through the above big three general technologies (pp. 12) 
- Returns to Sedlacek and how his works repurpose tech that grows up in the shadows of capitalist technoscience (eg. free software, indigenous techniques, obsolete hardware); these he calls "shit tech" (pp. 12)
- Examines the potential of what shit tech can do (pp. 12-13)
- Technologies cannot overcome worker exploitation and the destruction of ecological systems on their own; they rather mitigate/hide crises and prolong its reproduction (pp. 12) 
- Notes that revolution is the only mode of overcoming capitalism, but this will also disintegrate the global technological systems built up under capitalist production (pp. 12)
- The break with capitalism will require relying on an old world in decay, we will not ne sure what technologies will remain usable (pp. 12) 
- Due to this, the contemporary need to focus on technologies that "maximize social use values" and undercut the logic of disaggregation (distancing) and integration (under control) of global production/circulation (pp. 13)
- Eg: open innovation pools, smaller scale production, renewable energy cooperatives, "low-intensity trans-local exchanges," and collectively managed infrastructure (pp. 13)
- These are what an eco-socialist (= "equal, freely associative and sustainable, translocal and internationalist") could be based on (pp. 13)
- Making this action part of the repertoire of strikes, blockades, occupation, and sabotage (pp. 13) 
- Necessity to understand that technology will condition any transition from capitalism to socialism and that it's an important strategic register; if its not directly engaged with, reversion to capitalism would be immanent (pp. 13)