The Right to the City. Towards the Dictatorship of the Digital Proletariat in an Age of Total Planetary Computation

Alexa, turn on the hall lights.’ Words taken from a 2017 promotional video for the Amazon Echo —‘a disembodied voice’, and ‘interface for an extraordinarily complex set of information processing layers.’ ‘Alexa, do x’. The discounted toilet-roll is ordered or the house lights come on, but before they do, travelling at the speed of light, a small packet of data arrives at a banal warehouse in the middle of somewhere where needs, wants and desires are farmed in a repository of disembodied voices. From the mining of tantalum, used in the manufacturing of the Echo, from the geological strata of the Democratic Republic of Congo where the profits helped fund the deadliest civil war since WWll; to cavernous, so-called ‘fulfilment centres’ where an invisible workforce are called into action by our buy-now-1-click interface commands; moving robotically down seemingly endless isles of algorithmically organised products arranged according to purchase preferences the like of which we never knew we had — someone who buys a Foucault book is likely to go on and and buy cat food; a computer monitor; underwear a hammer and a John Grisham novel; objects juxtaposed together, a strange kind of architecture of consumer desires — a new production of space: abstract space. Products primed and ready to move across a more than military grade infrastructure to arrive as a banal, innocent looking brown box through the domestic front-door letterbox-come-retail destinatio

The Production of Space and the Archive of Everyday Life

The cloud is a complex material entanglement that moves across multiple scales from the microscopic to the mega-city. The material manifestations of the cloud, like data centers are nodes in an entangled network that cannot be thought apart from the modes of being that they produce. This requires us to think beyond the question — dominant in much architectural discourse — of what it is and ask what does it do? Concerning the cloud these two questions cannot be separated, to ask one is immediately to ask the other. This is the reason why I propose that Lefebvre’s triadic is a useful conceptual framework which architects can use to understand the processes at play in the production of space within the archive of everyday life.. To make the case for the ongoing usefulness of the triadic I will begin by briefly introducing Lefebvre’s three-dimensional spatiology. I will then focus on two processes within the triadic that will help foreground the complex entanglements between architecture, ways of being in the world and the production of space. These two areas are perceived and conceived space. In The Production of Space Lefebvre does not explore in detail how it is that the shifts in the modes of production actually change modes of perception and conception. Someone who does do this is philosopher of technology Bernard Stiegler. I will therefore expand on the role of perception and conception in spatial production by reading them through Stiegler’s concepts of tertiary retention and tertiary protention which I contend are central to understanding the spatial nature of shifts in modes of being created by new modes of production

The Magic and Metaphysics of Shit :The Production of Space and Digital Technology

Reading Henri Lefebvre alongside Bernard Stiegler, this paper explores the changes that have taken place to the production of space in our age of digital technology. Lefebvre sensed the radical changes taking place in society through the implementation of computational technologies. He asked a prescient question: How is this space being produced? Lefebvre was unable to foresee the significant changes to the actual mechanics of the production of space brought about by the third industrial revolution. A thinker who does do this is Bernard Stiegler who is interested in how new digital technologies change memory via tertiary mnemotechnical devices – memory storage devices that are external to the human body. Reading Lefebvre alongside Stiegler might seem unusual, however I will demonstrate that implicit in Lefebvre’s argument regarding the production of space is memory and implicit in Stiegler’s argument regarding the exteriorization of memory in technics is space

A Study of Thirty-Six Organizations of Logan, Utah, in 1945-46 to Determine Their Fields of Activity and the Amount of Duplication and Coordination that Exists Among Them

The city of Logan, Utah, was first settled in 1859 and derives its name from an old Indian Chief named Logan, who had befriended the early white settlers

Affect of Specified Factors on 1951 Farm Prices of Utah Peaches

Utah ranked nineteenth in the United States in the production of peaches for a ten year period 1940-49, producing 1.2 percent of the national total. Peach production is an important part of Utah\u27s fruit industry. The 1951 peach crop estimated at 800,000 bushels, valued at $1,520,000 represents 32 percent of the value of all the fruit grown in Utah and 0.8 percent of the value of all agricultural commodities grown in the state

Propellant combustion phenomena during rapid depressurization Final report

Idealized combustion model in which exothermic or endothermic reactions are permitted at or very near solid-gas interface

Influencing water consumption at South Staffordshire Water PLC : a disaggregated behavioural analysis of contributory factors

This research identifies factors which influence the consumption of potable water supplied to customers' property. A complete spectrum of the customer base is examined including household, commercial and industrial properties. The research considers information from around the world, particularly demand management and tariff related projects from North America. A device termed the Flow Moderator was developed and proven, with extensive trials, to conserve water at a rate equivalent to 40 litres/property/day whilst maintaining standards-of-service considerably in excess of Regulatory requirements. A detailed appraisal of the Moderator underlines the costs and benefits available to the industry through deliberate application of even mild demand management. More radically the concept of a charging policy utilising the Moderator is developed and appraised. Advantages include the lower costs of conventional fixed-price charging systems coupled with the conservation and equitability aspects associated with metering. Explanatory models were developed linking consumption to a range of variables demonstrated that households served by a communal water service-pipe (known in the UK as a shared supply) are subject to associated restrictions equivalent to -180 litres/property/day. The research confirmed that occupancy levels were a significant predictive element for household, commercial and industrial customers. The occurrence of on-property leakage was also demonstrated to be a significant factor recorded as an event which offers considerable scope for demand management in its own right