misc/mistakes

Technology, including that in the actual production process, also plays a role in this beyond surveillance, but, as is almost always the case, not as a substitute for the burdens of labor but as the enabler and enforcer of its intensification. Given the limits on the length of the workday imposed by law, cus- tom, or union agreement, as Marx put it, “machinery becomes in the hands of capital the objective means, systematically employed, for squeezing out more labor in a given time.” Since Marx’s day, works by Nobel, Braverman, and others have shown that the design and use of technology is socially constructed to intensify management control, reduce worker skills, and increase efficiency and output. As Noble put it writing about post–World War II developments in automation, the concerns of those who designed and deployed the new technology were “reflected in a general devaluation of human skills and a distrust of human workers and in an ongoing effort to eliminate both” in the name of efficiency and, of course, reducing human toil.

In terms of the white-collar employees of Silicon Valley, their lack of labor unions is to be expected. Because their wages are comparatively higher, white collar professionals are historically less likely to see themselves as part of an oppressed class of laborers whose work makes money for wealthy CEOs and investors - even if this is technically true. John and Barbara Ehrenreich [...] coined the term 'professional-managerial class' to describe the class of employees who, though performing the same kind of wage-labor, feel a kinship with the rich owners, bosses and managers rather with than [sic] the blue-collar class more likely to be performing manual labor. 'Historically, the [Professional-Managerial Class] have designed and managed capital's systems of social control, oftentimes treating working-class people with a mixture of paternalism and hostility,' they write. [...]

There are many historical examples of professional-managerial class workers at tech companies who were left behind during boom times, while those at the top got rich. One of Apple's earliest employees, Daniel Kottke, was Steve Jobs' 'soul mate' in college, and shared a house with him in the early Apple days. Kottke had worked for Apple when it was still based in a garage. Yet because he was an hourly employee, he was never granted stock options. Prior to Apple's IPO, Kottke pled with Jobs on this topic - Jobs could have very easily granted him 'founder's stock' - but Jobs refused to do anything for his friend. A fellow engineer, Rod Holt, saw the writing on the wall for Kottke and went to Jobs' office to press him on the issue. As Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson documents:

'We have to do something for your buddy Daniel,' [Holt] said, and he suggested they each give him some of their own options. 'Whatever you give him, I will match it,' said Holt. Replied Jobs, 'Okay. I will give him zero.'

Kottke's labor was important in building the company's fortune, though he was one of many left behind. If he had any inclinations that his interests and his former best friend (now boss)'s interests were aligned, his experience with Jobs likely dissuaded him of this notion.

The first one he looked up was Sanchez, Flora Martina Sanchez, whom the others called Button. Her case was all over the internet. Sanchez and two other teenagers had assaulted a Chinese college student near the USC campus. He was premed, and the one allotted child his family was state-sanctioned to have. According to the confession Sanchez provided, the student had tried to “karate chop” her. All three kids mentioned in their confessions that the victim cried in a foreign language as they hit him with a baseball bat. The bat was green aluminum, Worth brand. It had on it fingerprints of the two boys and Sanchez. Sanchez had waved her Miranda rights. They all waved them, gave confessions, went to trial, got life without parole.

[...] Creativity and opportunity were greater than ever, but the language of cultural criticism was changing too. It moved away from the centralized arbiters of taste and toward the open-source model of the social media platforms, driving sharply divisive debates that repeatedly flared up about the relations of power within sites of cultural production, the role of identity in cultural consumption, and the limits of understanding across human differences.

“DaMarcus’s sugar cookies are especially good,” Sill told me. “And much enjoyed by the crew.”

“Thank you, sir,” DeMarcus said. “Will that be all?”