IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2017 - 84

Both Gaffikin and Guy Debord are concerned about
the degradation of human life, where authentic social life
has been reduced to having (material exchange of goods
or services) and replaced with its (accounting) representation. The "decline of being into having, and having into
merely appearing" did not only colonize social life [7, p. 3]
on a global scale due to the onset of globalization, and
supplant actual relationships between people with their
(accounting) representation, which in turn may be
exchanged and further supplanted by another (accounting) representation, and so on. But it has also obfuscated all those multilayered representations in the complex
web of the global electronic market.
For example, take a social relationship between an
uninsured mortgagee who took out a loan from a financial institution for $300 000 in value, before the onset of
the 2007 housing bubble crisis in the United States. The
financial institution may have exchanged the $300 000
loan (as with packaging their "toxic assets" and selling
them to mutual funds) and supplanted that representation
with yet another (derivative) representation. The mutual
funds exchanged the "toxic assets" package representation with an insurance company, in return for yet another
representation, and so on. In time, those multiple representations bore no relation whatsoever to the original
social relationship between the mortgagee and the lender
(loan for an asset), which only distorted our perceptions
and degraded our knowledge of the risks. (Figure 1.)
This may explain, in part, why the "house of cards"
had to collapse during the 2008 Global Financial Crisis.
The attendant impoverishment of the quality of life for
billions of people is a testament to the valid concerns

by Debord and Gaffikin among others, about the degradation of human life due to the displacement of authentic social relationships by (accounting) representations.
There is no doubt that global markets and new information technologies, such as algorithmic or high-frequency trading, have not only imploded all that once
lived into mere representations, but they have also
obfuscated those past (socially commoditized relationships into financial) representations and merged them
with other future (financial) representations into an
indistinguishable continuum. This only confounds individuals into thinking that they are experiencing a kind
of never-ending present, and not a moment in time that
can be overturned through revolution [7, p. 26].

The Stress Economy

The private and professional aspects of our lives that do
not conform to the (arbitrarily) pre-set economic calculations would leave us exposed to a coupling effect of
smear and fear. Our inability to meet our pre-set "responsibilities" would smear our (private and/or professional)
"reputation," and is naturally coupled with fear due to the
real threat of humiliation, loss of status, and livelihood.
Think of all those occasions when you felt constrained by
parameters that were humanly inconvenient let alone
physically uncomfortable, but you have to accept them
because everyone else does without much protest.
One occasion that readily comes to mind is the stressed
state experienced when boarding a plane, and the stressed
position when taking a seat because the seat and space
allotted per person is way too small to be in anyway comfortable on long haul flights. If a passenger dares to complain then they will probably be
"invited" to upgrade for an exorbitant fee, or be thrown out all
Economic
Economic
Economic
together from the flight because
Exchange
Exchange
Exchange
the passenger is seen as not only
1
2
n
a nuisance, but a security risk as
well. Of course, passengers are
"tenderized" on the way to taking
seats on the plane through a
Representation
Representation
Representation
Real
series of measured queues that
1
2
n
Asset
are efficiently designed to streamline and pacify the masses.
Representation n Bears No Relation to the Original Real Asset
Passengers face packed narExample
row lines at the check-in counReal Asset (Real
Representation
ter, and then an aloof check-in
Money) = One-Tenth
(n = Derivatives
Mismatch
clerk behind a machine waiting
of the Value of the
Value)
=
10-Folds
Only Results in
Representation
the Value of the Real
for the slightest signal to pounce.
Hyperreal
(n = Derivatives Value)
Asset (Real Money)
Then there is the process of
going through the long queues
of immigration, the intimidating
immigration (border control)
FIGURE 1. Guy Debord's Transformation. [Being (social relationship) =>> Having (economic
exchange) =>> Appearing (representation)]
agents, and intrusive security

84

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

∕

SEPTEMBER 2017



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