Cyberspace & Cybertime

"Cyberspace grows in an unlimited fashion, yet mental time is not infinite. The subjective nucleus of cybertime follows the slow rhythm of organic matter. We can increase the time of exposure of the organism to information but the experience  cannot be intensified beyond certain limits.

Beyond these limits, the acceleration of this experience provokes a reduced consciousness of stimulus, a loss of intensity which concerns the aesthetic sphere, that of sensibility, and importantly also the sphere of ethics. The experience of the other is rendered banal, the other becomes part of the uninterrupted and frenetic stimulus, and loses its singularity and intensity - it loses its beauty.

Thus we have less curiosity, less surprise; more stress, aggressiveness, anxiety and fear. The acceleration produces and impoverishment of experience, because we are  exposed to a growing mass of stimuli that we cannot elaborate upon, according to the intensive modalities of pleasure and knowledge.

Again we have more information, less meaning; more information less pleasure. Sensibility is within time. Sensuality is in slowness, and the space of information is too vast and fast to elaborate upon it intensively, deeply. At the point of intersection between electronic cyberspace and organic cybertime is found the fundamental crux of  the present mutation. The great majority of humanity is subjected to the invasion of the video-electronic-flux, and suffers the superimposition of digital code over the codes of recognition and of identification of reality that permeated organic cultures.

The psychopathic epidemic that appears to be spreading in social behaviours also depends on this gap, on the asymmetry between the formal emission ( the techno-communicative system ) and the format of reception ( the social mind). The acceleration produced by the network technologies and the condition of precariousness  and dependence of cognitive labor, forced as it is to be subject to the pace of the productive network, has produced a saturation of human attention which has reached pathological levels.

In the labor process we no longer have availability of time, attention is supersaturated. First of all we have no time for attention within work, and secondly we have no time for affect, for that kind of spatial attention that is eroticism, the attention to our body and to that of others. Sensibility tends to become obtuse. but what happens when we no longer have time for attention.

What happens is that we preconceive things badly; we're no longer able to make decisions.... Society risks being propelled into a condition of panic, of defuse psychopathology, of desensitisation and disaffection. Annoyance in the face of the other and the aggressive reaction are the roots of the new climate of war into which the West has fallen.

To understand the origin of this psychopathology we must first look at the relationship between cyberspace and cybertime. Cyberspace is th infinite productivity of the General Intelligence, of the General Intellect of the Net. When an immense number of points enter into a a non-centric and non-hierarchical connection we have the infinite production of signs, i.e intelectual commodities.

Yet cybertime is by no means infinite. Cybertime is the organic, physical, finite capacity to elaborate information ..."

Franco Bifo Berardi on Cyberspace & Cybertime - extract taken from Precarious Rhapsody - Semiocapitalism & The Pathologies of The Post Alpha Generation - (Minor Compositions, 2009) 

On Capital Absolutism, Bio-Semiocapiltalism & Cognitive Workers

An epidemic of unhappiness is spreading across the planet, while capital absolutism is asserting its right to unfettered control of our lives. A bio-semiocapitalism infiltrates the nervous cells of conscious sensible organisms, it inoculates in them a thanato-political rationale, a morbid sentiment which is progressively taking hold of the collective unconscious, culture and sensibility. The biopolitical effect of semiocapitalism ( better said: thanatological effect of semiocapitalism) is essentially the capture of cognitive activity, and the subjection of the faculty of expression of the linguistic animal to the sleepless, aggressive dynamics of the labour market.

Language is captured by the networked machine and turned into an essentially productive activity. Herein lies the trap: people are encouraged to consider their linguistic competence as factors of economic competition, and to manage and invest in them as such. Creativity, expressiveness, affection, emotion - the human soul, in other words - are considered to be productive factors and consequently, they are evaluated according to standards of productivity. Exploitation, competition, precariousness, redundancy are not perceived as the effects of a conflictual social relationship, but internalised as deficiencies of the self, as personal inadequacies. The unceasing restructuring of the organisation of work is perceived as humiliation and brutality.

Only NON_INVOLVEMENT and the ability to remain extraneous, to refuse any identification with one's job and with one's working condition, only a radical rejection of the ethics of responsibility, might offer works the possibility of navigating a way out from this productivity blackmail.

Unfortunately, the ethics of responsibility, the phoney discourse on participation and collaboration, are prevailing in today's political and cultural life. We invest our psychic energies and our expectations into work because our intellectual and affective life is poor, because we are depressed, anxious and insecure. So we are trapped. The industrial worker who was obliged to repeat the same gesture a thousand times every day had no reason to identify with her work - so she invested her psychological energies into solidarity with colleagues, and her mind was free to hate the assenbly line, and to entertain thoughts that had nothing to do with her daily slavery. Conversely, cognitive works have been lured into the trap of creativity: their expectations are submitted to the productivity blackmail because they are obliged to identify their soul (the linguistic and emotional core of their activity) with their work. Social conflicts and dissatisfaction are perceived as psychological failures whose effect us the destruction of self-esteem.

For cognitive workers, particularly in conditions of precariousness, solidarity is rare. Everyone feels alone, pushed to complete at the mercy of precariousness.

Franco Bifo Berardi - extract from Heroes: Mass Murder & Sucide (Verso 2015)