Re: <nettime> On Empire

[Morlock Elloi <morlockelloi@yahoo.com>]

> development of private capital pits capitalists against workers. But now
> there is a new dimension to class struggle, which pits the producers of
> intellectual property, what I would call a hacker class, against a new
> class that gathers into its hands all of the means of realizing the value
> of commodified information -- the vectoralist class.

I never really understood what the true meaning and etymology of "hacker" is,
to me it always sounded like a damaged offspring of the intercourse of the
american official denigration of intellectual activity in general (now an
integral part of the mentality) and the need to be cool while doing it (I'm not
quite sure yet who fucked whom.)

Engineers make many things, but they have always been hired hands and products
always belonged to employers. Considering a particular set of engineers as a
"class" is idiocy in itself. It would be like saying that engineers who
designed combines are pitted against landowners because they don't get to share
the wheat.

Harvesting wheat or information - same thing.

You hire engineers, they do the stuff and then you tell them to fuck off. And
they are getting cheaper and cheaper as we speak. And as they proliferate,
there is no more need to glorify the trade as a part of compensation. They are
just plumbers. 

A silly recycling of things said a century ago with buzzwords replaced.



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