• Cory Doctorow’s Vision for a Just Tech Revolution
    https://jacobin.com/2023/10/cory-doctorow-seize-the-means-of-computation-big-tech-democratization-infra

    La critique du capitalisme actuel passe à travers de nouveaux protagonistes qui ne correspondent plus à l’image du prolétaire et son parti qui représente toute sa classe. L’écrivain Cory Doctorow nous propose son idée d’action techno-critique et les populistes entourant Sahra Wagenknecht apportent leur grain de réformisme peit bourgeois en incluant les idées syndicalistes. L’innovation politique redémarre à partir de zéro avec les enquêtes de Dickens et Goethe.

    In effect, your boss hands you your paycheck at the end of the month, and he says, well, I’ve docked your pay, but I’m not going to tell you why I docked your pay because you’re not allowed to know those rules. If I told you the rules, you’d figure out how to cheat. This contemporary form of Taylorism exceeds the schemes even Robert Blincoe could have imagined. Blincoe was the ten-year-old who was indentured to work in a Manchester factory and wrote a bestselling memoir about it when he finally escaped ten years later, and it became the basis for Oliver Twist, which is basically Luddite fanfic. His boss could not have dreamt up the app boss system.

    Doctorow découvte le sort du clickworker dans le récit qui a inspiré Charles Dickens.

    A MEMOIR OF ROBERT BLINCOE, An Orphan Boy ; SENT FROM THE WORKHOUSE OF ST. PANCRAS, LONDON, AT SEVEN YEARS OF AGE, TO ENDURE THE Horrors of a Cotton-Mill,
    https://www.gutenberg.org/files/59127/59127-h/59127-h.htm

    #capitalisme #luddites #plateformes

  • Clouds of Unknowing : Edward Quin’s Historical Atlas (1830)

    “Now when I was a little chap I had a passion for maps”, says the seafaring raconteur #Charles_Marlow in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899) (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/219/219-h/219-h.htm). “At that time there were many blank spaces on the earth, and when I saw one that looked particularly inviting on a map (but they all look that) I would put my finger on it and say, ’When I grow up I will go there.’” Of course, these “blank spaces” were anything but. The no-man’s-lands that colonial explorers like #Marlow found most inviting (the Congo River basin, #Tasmania, the #Andaman_Islands) were, in fact, richly populated, and faced devastating consequences in the name of imperial expansion.

    In the same troublesome vein as Marlow, Edward Quin’s Historical Atlas painted cartographic knowledge as a candle coruscating against the void of ignorance, represented in his unique vision by a broiling mass of black cloud. Each map represents the bounds of geographical learning at a particular point in history, from a specific civilizational perspective, beginning with Eden, circa “B.C. 2348”. In the next map titled “B.C. 1491. The Exodus of the Israelites”, Armenia, Assyria, Arabia, Aram, and Egypt form an island of light, pushing back the black clouds of unknowing. As history progresses — through various Roman dynasties, the reign of Charlemagne, and the Crusades — the foul weather retreats further. In the map titled “A.D. 1498. The Discovery of America”, the transatlantic exploits of the so-called Age of Discovery force Quin to employ a shift in scale — the luminescence of his globe now extends to include Africa and most of Asia, but North America hides behind cumulus clouds, with its “unnamed” eastern shores peeking out from beneath a storm of oblivion. In the Atlas’ last map, we find a world without darkness, not a trace of cloud. Instead, unexplored territories stretch out in the pale brown of vellum parchment, demarcating “barbarous and uncivilized countries”, as if the hinterlands of Africa and Canada are awaiting colonial inscription.

    Not much is known about Edward Quin, the Oxford graduate, London barrister, and amateur cartographer whose Atlas was published two years after his death at the age of thirty-four. We learn, thanks to Walter Goffart’s research into historical atlases, that Quin’s images were more popular than his words. The well-regarded cartographer William Hughes rescaled the maps for a new edition in 1846, discarding their artist’s accompanying text. The Atlas’ enduring technical advancement, which influenced subsequent cartographers, can be found in its ingenious use of negative space. Emma Willard’s Atlas to Accompany a System of Universal History, for instance, features cloudy borders that seem very much indebted to Quin.

    Looking back from a contemporary vantage, the Historical Atlas remains memorable for what is not shown. Quin’s cartography inadvertently visualizes the ideology of empire: a geographic chauvinism that had little respect for the knowledge of those beyond imperial borders. And aside from depicting the reach of Kublai Khan, his focus remains narrowly European and Judeo-Christian. While Quin strives for accuracy, he admits to programmatic omission. “The colours we have used being generally meant to point out and distinguish one state or empire from another. . . were obviously inapplicable to deserts peopled by tribes having no settled form of government, or political existence, or known territorial limits”. Instead of representing these groups, Quin, like his clouds, has erased them from view.

    https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/edward-quin-historical-atlas
    #cartographie_historique #cartographie #connu #inconnu #géographie_du_vide #vide #histoire #Tasmanie #fleuve_Congo #colonisation #colonialisme #Edward_Quin #atlas

    ping @reka @visionscarto

    via @isskein