Beyond a Bad Attitude?
2011; McFarland & Company; Volume: 20; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.3172/jie.20.2.127
ISSN1941-2894
Autores Tópico(s)Cybernetics and Technology in Society
ResumoIt is now thirty years since first issue of Processed World (PW) hit streets of San Francisco. Hunt around on net, and you can find snippet of film footage showing three editors of PW pacing Financial District sidewalk, dressed in outlandish costumes (a computer terminal, can of nuts, and something else-a punch card? corporate ladder?), waving copies of their magazine (Shaping San Francisco 1982). A year or so later, PW collective would organize lively bus tour of Silicon Valley, visiting points of interest that made plain military connections and dubious management practices of rising computer industry. But to fail to look beyond this, dismissing PW as no more than zany eighties anti- tech revisiting of Merry Pranksters (Besher 1984), is to misunderstand project altogether. From its inception, journal bad attitude worked to promote workplace rebellion among the majority of work force, i.e., handlers (Cabins 1983a, p. 9), employed-typically in an office setting-to file, sort, type, track, process, duplicate and triplicate ever expanding mass of information necessary to operate global corporate (Athanasiou 1981, p. 16). While ultimately failing in its goal, PW proved to be an innovative undertaking on number of levels, from its critical account of work for capital and this engendered, to ways in which journal sought to mobilize printed word and graphic design to its ends.Within space of few short years, as Reagan era ushered in new phase of conformity in both workplace and society, it became clear to editors and readers alike that premises that had originally inspired Processed World were more and more difficult to realize in practice, at least in short term. Without abandoning either its leftlibertarian stance or its concern for sphere of paid work, its editors chose to broaden their field of view in search of what one of them would call an aesthetics of resistance (Med- O 1986, p. 53). Issues continued to appear into nineties and beyond, although with decreasing regularity (the latest was published in 2006, after five year hiatus, and may have been last).Processed World's circulation may never have topped 5,000 (Gee 1993, p. 245), although that figure was respectable for publication positioned outside mainstream culture and media of its time. A continuing if subterranean influence within leftlibertarian circles in North America and beyond, journal has since been remembered as part of a little- recognized punk culture golden age for alternative publishing (Solnit and Schwartzenberg 2000, p. 35), and as legendary magazine [that] covered growing pains of white- collar office work in pre-Internet economy throughout 1980s (Ross 2003, p. 267). In terms of its contributions to popular visual culture, Processed World can also lay claim to hosting some of earliest work by cartoonists such as Tom Tomorrow (Dan Perkins) and Ted Rall. Yet Processed World is not simply of historical interest. Examined from perspective of 2011, it can be argued that many of questions around work and workers raised in early years of publication continue to be relevant, making their revisiting timely.1 For not only have and technology continued to infuse present day work settings, but that sense of ambivalence-ambivalence concerning one's identity, prospect of career, communication with fellow employees, indeed very possibility and/or desirability of finding fulfillment in paid work-underpinning flow of words in pages of Processed World remains an all too common feature of work today (Armano 2010).This article will explore images of office workers that emerge in first fifteen or so issues of Processed World, as its editors and readers attempted collective self- portrait, centered upon new generation of temporary staff(temps) then being recruited to swelling ranks of white collar employees. …
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