The Next Layer is a collaborative environment combining open source, experimental and artistic research methodologies.

Double Ages

Submitted by Brian Holmes on Wed, 04/07/2010 - 20:38

Why is that each of the Industrial Ages identified by the technological innovation school (Mensch, Perez, Freeman, Soete etc) is marked by major innovations which are not considered to be among the mainstays of the period, but which do play a great role in it, to the point where they leave just as much of a stamp on popular memory as the dominant industrial process of that Age?

Installation and Deployment of Great Surges

Submitted by Brian Holmes on Wed, 04/07/2010 - 20:14

Excerpted from Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital, by Carlota Perez (Edward Elger, 2002), fig. 5.2, p. 57

Installation and Deployment of Great Surges
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5 Industrial Ages

Submitted by Brian Holmes on Wed, 04/07/2010 - 20:02

Excerpted from: The Economics of Industrial Innovation, 3rd Edition, by Chris Freeman and Luc Soete (MIT Press, 1997), table 3.5, pp. 65-67.

5 Industrial Ages
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Floating Structure: A Platform for Artistic Measurements and Research

Submitted by Armin Medosch on Wed, 03/10/2010 - 13:26
in

This text is the preliminary outcome of a research project going back to 2003/2004 and developed jointly by Franz Xaver and Armin Medosch. It has a theoretical and artistic dimension as well as an activist one. At the point of its inception stood questions relating to the crisis of art in informational capitalism. The project sets out to bring some clarifications by word and deed about the relationships between art and technology, art and science and the role of the artist at the beginning of the 21st Century.

Review of "Beyond Marx" - Über Marx hinaus

Submitted by Armin Medosch on Wed, 02/10/2010 - 15:14

This article presents a review, summary and notes on Über Marx hinaus Arbeitsgeschichte und Arbeitsbegriff in der Konfrontation mit den globalen Arbeitsverhältnissen des 21. Jahrhunderts. Edited by Marcel van der Linden and Karl Heinz Roth, this book combines many heterodox thinkers of the left, who had a close engagement with Marx, but are convinced now that we need to go beyond Marx for a number of reasons. This carefully edited volume makes a very interesting contribution to the history and present of labour and deserves to receive enough attention so that it gets translated as a whole or some of the pieces in it.

Ten Postulates for Technopolitics

Submitted by Brian Holmes on Thu, 01/21/2010 - 10:44
in

The point of the technopolitics project is not so much to carry out an original historical analysis of industrial capitalism, but instead, to test and modify the existing theories and then use them for engaged cultural critique. That requires a lot of reading and evaluating of ideas. To get through the existing literature without getting lost along the way, we’ll periodically have to reformulate what we're talking about. Each reformulation will add something, subtract something, forget something; but the essence is to keep on working cooperatively. To that end I want to propose ten postulates. They revisit what has already been written in the programmatic text on technopolitics, but with a different emphasis, mainly in terms of geography, culture and the cumulative nature of historical sequences. They're not set in stone, just some departure points, and it may be that a magical eleventh postulate is needed. Here they are:

Vision in Networks (1)

Submitted by Brian Holmes on Sat, 01/16/2010 - 22:33
in

Whether it originates from statistical tabulation or remote sensors, whether it flows in real time or out of recombinant databases, whether it serves the needs of private individuals, globe-spanning corporations or government agencies, information visualization is the operative technology of the networked age, a language of vision for the control society. Infoviz proliferates on the screens of factory workstations, financial trading floors, military commands and surveillance watchspots, everywhere that decisive movements are subject to managerial scrutiny.

Post-Privacy or the Politics of Labour, Intelligence and Information

Submitted by Armin Medosch on Fri, 01/15/2010 - 15:07

This text argues that the erosion of privacy is not a by-product of information and communication technologies, but a systemic property of informational capitalism. The foundational myths of the information society motivate and legitimise the building of control systems applying probabilistic techniques to control future risks. At the root of this configuration are antagonistic labour relationships which have determined the path of technological development since the Industrial Revolution. Those tendencies have reached a culmination in the recent neo-liberal crisis. The digital commons offers itself as an incomplete and tentative remedy.

Chimerica Persists

Submitted by Brian Holmes on Sat, 12/12/2009 - 12:30
in

In 2007 the conservative English historian Niall Ferguson and co-author Moritz Schularick wrote an article entitled 'Chimerica' and the Global Asset Market Boom, in International Finance, 10:3. A new text by Hung Ho-Fung gives a lot more depth to their analysis.

A Logistical Explanation

Submitted by Armin Medosch on Thu, 12/03/2009 - 10:08

This text by Brian Ashton, which appeared on OpenMute http://www.metamute.org/en/Logistics-Factory-Without-Walls, and was forwarded to me by a friend of mine, covers some interesting issues on logistics and Just-In-Time production.

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