| 6 Jun 2017 | 12:00pm - 1:30pm | Seminar Room SG2, Alison Richard Building | |
- Description
Description
Speaker: Dr. Seb Franklin, English (King's College London)
Discussant: Nathaniel Zetter, English (Cambridge)
Abtract
In January 1951, R. S. Hunt–a British technical editor and former chemist without any university degree or diploma–sent a manuscript titled “Two Kinds of Work” to the mathematician Norbert Wiener, who did not read it. Hunt's manuscript promises to “put metaphysics within the scope of physics.” And it claims to do so by making “such quantities as beauty, virtue and happiness,” as well as all manual and intellectual labor tasks, intelligible as electronic circuits. In other words, Hunt's text anticipates the wildest fantasies of digital culture and the concepts of affective and immaterial labour associated with post-Fordism.
“Two Kinds of Work” is centred on a concept that Hunt names “G-energy.” This force, Hunt argues, “defies the second law of thermodynamics” by moving material systems from less to more probable states. In other words, it represents all processes that give form or pattern. The 'discovery' of G-energy, Hunt insists, necessitates a radical new ontology; humans, nonhuman animals, machines, materials, and concepts all hold and transmit G-energy, and are thus connected in networks of exchange. Hunt's formulation predicts the current methodological formations of matter and bodies as vital networks. But crucially, Hunt's underlying motivations are not philosophical but economic: G-energy is for him the essence of value, a 'natural' phenomenon that is represented by money. It is what employers are really paying for when they think they are paying for time.
By reading “Two Kinds of Work” in the light of current theoretical concerns, this talk identifies historical and conceptual connections between theories of digitality and value.
Bio: Seb Franklin is Lecturer in Contemporary Literature in the Department of English at King's College London, where he co-convenes the MA in Contemporary Literature, Culture, and Theory. He is the author of Control: Digitality as Cultural Logic (MIT Press, 2015). His essays have appeared or are forthcoming in journals such as Camera Obscura, Cultural Politics, Grey Room, Novel, andWorld Picture.
(Dr. Franklin's paper will be pre-circulated and may be read in advance. Please write to lsp33@cam.ac.uk for a copy.)
Coffee and tea will be served after.
Part of Cybernetics and Society Reading Group Series
Administrative assistance: gradfac@crassh.cam.ac.uk
