mattermorphosis

"Visuality provides a crucial entry point into the location of the materiality of computer technology and its uses because it foregrounds a set of essential problems around the notion of immateriality—problems that are at the centre of the present critiques of post-Fordism. By not engaging with the materiality of computation the assorted discussions of novel forms of production and valorizable activity found in the work of Maurizio Lazzarato, Paolo Virno, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri amongst others curiously mirror the presentation of computation and networking found in software advertisements such as the Microsoft “Cloud Power” campaign. This supposed immateriality flies in the face of a range of evidence to the contrary: from the coltan reserves in the Democratic Republic of Congo to mass waste dumps such as the now-infamous Giuyu computer graveyard in China to the growing prominence of wrist supports, gloves, ergonomic keyboards and mice designed to ward off RSI in the workplace, the materiality of digital culture is plain to see."

Is Attention Really Immaterial? Visual Culture after Post-Fordism I Seb Franklin