Pervasive Labour Union

Welcome to the 10th issue of the Immaterial Labour Union zine, which will also be the last one under such name. In order not only to mark this occasion, but also to justify the name change, we will be looking at the often hidden layers behind the term “Immateriality”. Thus, and as we wrote in our call for submissions, this issue will hopefully serve as a bridge towards the renaming of the project into an alternative that doesn't erase the material realities of media and so-called immaterial labour. With that in mind, on her submission for this issue, co-editor and founder Lídia Pereira attempts a proposal for the new name , as well as provides a background for the origin of the previous name, reviewing its problems and inadequacies.

BrowserBased Group’s contribution explores how older network infrastructures become platforms for urban communication and are characterized by a jump out of their expected use.
Niek Hilkmann’s allegorical tale confronts us with the sustenance of the physical body of the “immaterial” producer, whose crippled state (a consequence of his endeavours to stay alive) ultimately allows him to flourish as an artist.
Marloes de Valk’s article explores our self-documentation excesses within the context of digital economy, underlining the hidden physical nature of apparently immaterial data and the destructive consequences it poses for health, safety and the environment.

Contributions by:
BrowserBased Group, Lídia Pereira, Marloes de Valk, Niek Hilkmann, Simone Cassiani

All contributions to the zine, unless otherwise specified, are licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License 1.3¹.
The scale on this issue's cover is based off a design by joyzine².

Welcome to the 12th issue of the Pervasive Labour Union Zine, the first regular issue to come out under the new name. As such, and to bridge with the last issue to come out with the old name, whose theme was Immateriality, the theme of the current issue is Pervasiveness. On the call for submissions we wrote:

Pervasive here refers also to the seemingly non-existing boundaries of this reality - an all-encompassing body where to disconnect means either great privilege or a fall into oblivion. With this issue, we hope to explore the continuities and disruptions afforded by pervasive computing: Which players stand to gain the most and what exactly are they gaining? Are there any new players? In which new (and old) ways can pervasive labour take form? Which new layers does pervasive data collection add to the already blurred boundaries between work and leisure? By continuing and expanding the neoliberal transfer of (economical, social, physical, etc) survival responsibilities to the individual, how does pervasive computing affect narratives of community building and organization? How to deconstruct efficiency within this context? What counts as counter-movement within the context of pervasive efficiency? And last, but not least: How pervasive is this reality?

As a response to this, we got a range of submissions that engage with various levels of what pervasive can mean within this context.
Oana Clitan's contribution playfully mixes the aesthetics of work and play, thus underlining the informality adjacent to pervasive forms of labour.
Lukas Engelhardt’s visual poem reflects on the pervasiveness of authorship of digital images via the "personal" experience of the watermark.
Olivier Auber's first contribution is an open letter to YannLeCun, Head of Research in Artificial Intelligence at Facebook, wherein Auber expounds the concerns that led him to leave Facebook, namely, the loss of control over one’s own communications. Auber’s second contribution is an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg; here, Auber takes Zuckerberg on his resolutions for 2018 to present him with the amount of money owed by Facebook for his hours spent there, as a form of exchange for Facebook’s lack of "interoperability of personal data". Here, you will also be able to find a link to generate your own Facebook invoice.
On his contribution, Lucas Domínguez Rubio traces the possibilities offered by science fiction and, more specifically, cyberpunk literature, to reflect on the infrastructural opaqueness of neoliberal control.
Lucia Dossin’s contribution talks to us in jest about the Sisyphean task of infinite scrolls and the cycle of production on corporate social networking platforms.
On this issue, you will be able to enjoy the first Pervasive Labour Union memes! Also, and because this is an issue of many "firsts", the Letter to the Editors section was inaugurated with the concerns of a reader regarding our previous special issue, edited by Silvio Lorusso, "The Entreprecariat".
And if you want to find out how to get a 1 euro tax deduction, Niek Hilkmann’s contribution will surely help you out!

Contributions by:
C/R, Lucas Domínguez Rubio, Lucia Dossin, Lukas Engelhardt, Mathijs van Oosterhoudt, Niek Hilkmann, Oana Clitan, Olivier Auber

All contributions to the zine, unless otherwise specified, are licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License 1.3¹.

Exceptions:
Olivier Auber's contributions are licensed under the Free Art License².

We bid you all welcome to the fourth issue of the Immaterial Labour Union Zine!

We dedicate this issue to the question of the user profile, the digital ID which supposedly allows you to represent your networked self. Of course, this raises more questions than it answers. What is representation? What are the political consequences of the constructed, heavily curated online persona? Which protocols define the process of identity formation? How are they economically engaged? Do template restrictions outweigh the possibilities for self expression? Who is the default template?

Contributions range from reflecting about anonymity, feedback, self-performance and the economical instrumentalisation of identity, to the presentation of cynical platforms of interpersonal unification and anatomies of the categorised online self.

Contributions by:
Geert Lovink, Lídia Pereira, Lucia Dossin, Mathijs van Oosterhoudt, Mihail Bakalov, Steve Rushton, Δεριζαματζορ Προμπλεμ ιναυστραλια

All contributions to the zine, unless otherwise specified, are licensed under the GNU General Public License¹.

Welcome to the 6th issue of the Immaterial Labour Union zine! Our newest issue serves as a continuation of the previous one, ‘narrowing’ the theme of the Like Buttons down to its most recent iteration: the Facebook Reactions.
A small introduction of our current issue’s content: Juliana Silva introduces us to the hypocrisy of hiding behind 6 templated feelings; Fauno calls on us, the workers of the web, to struggle for our self-organisation; Δεριζαματζορ Προμπλεμ ιναυστραλια remixes emojis and isotype units, Template bring us insights from their research about... template culture; Klara Vincent-Novotna designs a poetic declaration on the psychological effects of networked capitalism; Silvio Lorusso introduces us to the corporate instrumentalisation of our “mood-hacking”.Erik H Zepka declares his quantified love for quantification and Jess MacCormack’s reaction is to burst into flames.

Contributions by: Erik Zepka, Fauno, Jess MacCormack, Juliana Silva, Klara Vincent-Novotna, Lídia Pereira, Silvio Lorusso, Template, Δεριζαματζορ Προμπλεμ ιναυστραλια

All contributions to the zine, unless otherwise specified, are licensed under the GNU General Public License¹.

Exceptions:
Fauno's contribution is licensed under the Peer Production License².

Welcome to the 7th issue of the Immaterial Labour Union zine, this time inspired by the trend of ‘Immersive Advertisement’. In an attempt to cope with the ever-engulfing sensorial pool of data which floods as we drown in it, we looked for contributions that could act as an appeal to reason against our ‘smart’ environment. The concept of immersion immediately evokes that of boundaries. Immersive advertisement, they say, lulls us into product gazing through creative storytelling, but might not one consider just as immersive all these companies inhabiting our digital interactions on corporate social media, thus creating a false sense of intimacy? Lee Nutbean invites us all to participate in his collaborative online persona and, in doing so, hopes this social performance of the self will ‘contaminate’ the well oiled machine of personal data economy.
Δεριζαματζορ Προμπλεμ ιναυστραλια remixes an article presenting the new Facebook Canvas, the mobile platform for immersive advertisement, only to make the already-there disturbing qualities glaringly obvious.
Back in May, Roel Roscam Abbing, Femke Snelting and Peggy Pierrot organized a workshop out of which a comment on the proposal to add new emoji modifiers was produced, which we now share and which concerns itself with the “danger of augmenting racist and sexist undertones”. Dmytri Kleiner underlines the insufficiency of going back to early Internet structures of decentralized servers, as cybernetic capital was designed to defeat precisely such attempts. Alternatives must thus be conceived with that in mind.
On her presentation of “Emergenc(i)es: Control and Calculation : Inheriting Liberation : Improvised Publics”¹, an exhibition which took place in June, D-M Withers, the event curator, speculates about the power of ‘resilience’ and improvisation within a growingly scripted society.
Nick Briz shares with us an instruction guide on how to leave Facebook without deleting your account, as doing so is not always the most feasible option for a lot of its users. So how to reach a compromise?

Contributions by:
D-M Withers, Dmytri Kleiner, Femke Snelting, Lee Nutbean, Lídia Pereira, Mathijs van Oosterhoudt, Nick Briz, Peggy Pierrot, Roel Roscam Abbing, Simone Cassiani, Δεριζαματζορ Προμπλεμ ιναυστραλια

All contributions to the zine, unless otherwise specified, are licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License 1.3².

Welcome to the 8th issue of the Immaterial Labour Union zine. The latest trend in urban development, one of the biggest concerns in the quest for the perfect 'smart' city is that of human behaviour and, more specifically, how that behaviour can be influenced. Human beings make irrational decisions, or so the line goes, which can hopefully be made rational with the intervention of 'smart' technology. All of this in the quest of the most efficient of all possible worlds. When we launched the open call we asked the following questions:"What consequences do 'smart' cities present for the future of labour? What governance modalities are at stake? What is the space for accident and error on a tech-utopian efficiency paradise? What is the role that corporate social networking platforms will play in the 'smart' city? What are the terms of service of the smart city and who is defining them?". We received contributions that not only reflect about the answers to these questions, but extend them and imagine possible, alternative futures. We therefore hope, with the present issue, to at least scratch the surface of the immense complexity involved in the political economy of 'smart', networked cities and the consequences presented towards a society where pervasive labour becomes the norm.

Simone Cassiani's poem echoes the fading voice of a subject immersed into a universe of metrics, statistics and hyperproductivity, which, operating under the effect of networked capitalism, can only demonstrate its reluctance.
Jathan Sadowski presents us with an alternative politics of data management and storage, where data ceases to be a commodity owned by corporations and instead a new democratic institution is created ,which, through participatory practices, serves the public good safeguarding access and transparency.
Danja Vassiliev' s "netless" appropriates part of the public transportation infrastructure to facilitate an independent network of data exchange related to citizens' urban experience. Silvio Lorusso's contribution reflects around the immersion of the individual into the concept of the office and its diffusion to non-traditional "work" spaces, through the extended use of digital devices and in alignment with existing structures of the "urban sphere".
Joseph Knierzinger offers a set of browser plug-ins which challenge the notion of "smartness" within emerging browser based technologies. Humorous yet historically and culturally aware, these plug-ins are based on significant devices of production and organisation. Lídia Pereira documents a future media ecological and archaeological finding, a swan's nest built from hardware presented in the Museum of Natural History of Rotterdam in 2085. It wonders about the space for accident and error in a narrative full of smooth surfaces of automation and efficiency, thus questioning tech-utopian visions of quantification, measurement and automation.
Nikos Voyatzis's contribution remixes the 'Posture Chair' of Greek architect and cybernetician T Zenetos, a dystopian 'smart' piece of office furniture that would make ever getting out of it absolutely unnecessary, as it seeks to fulfil an individual's every need and bodily function.
Professor Ursula Huws was, unfortunately, unable to participate, so instead we are directing you to these two pieces she wrote about the issues surrounding platform capitalism and our constant state of connected labour: Platform Labour: Sharing Economy or Virtual Wild West?¹ for Progressive Society and Logged In² for Jacobin Magazine.

Contributions by:
Danja Vassiliev, Jathan Sadowski, Joseph Knierzinger, Lídia Pereira, Silvio Lorusso, Simone Cassiani, Δεριζαματζορ Προμπλεμ ιναυστραλια

All contributions to the zine, unless otherwise specified, are licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License 1.3³.

Exceptions:
Jathan Sadowski's contribution is licensed under the CC-BY-NC License⁴.
Danja Vassiliev's contribution is licensed under the CC-BY-NC-ND License⁵.