Abstract
The unruly worker, the software glitch, wilful acts of laziness, sabotage and refusal, traffic gridlock, inventory blowouts, customs zealots, flash strikes, protocological conflicts and proliferating standards. Disruption generates logistical nightmares for the smooth-Â‐world operations of ‘supply chain capitalism’.1 Contingency prompts control to reroute distribution channels and outsource labour to more business friendly client-Â‐states and corporations. Enterprise resource planning (ERP) software parameters are adjusted to calibrate key performance indicators (KPIs) in ways that demonstrate enhanced productivity and economic efficiencies. Peasants revolt across IT special economic zones in West Bengal and the infrastructural transformation of farming land comes to a grinding halt. Global architectural firms export Chinese visions of high-Â‐speed economies coupled with new world urban integration and social utopias. Shipping container yards and warehouses coordinate the movement of people and things through technologies of remote control. Wharf-Â‐ side loading and unloading of cargo becomes increasingly automated, with labour displaced by algorithmic tracking devices and human oversight of machine-Â‐ operations. These are possible scenarios of Logistical Worlds, a computer game that does not as yet exist. Set against operational fantasies of real-Â‐time labour management and the governance of things within logistical industries, this article registers code as a site of struggle for labour and life. Located somewhere between SimCity and the Grand Theft Auto series, Logistical Worlds envisages a multiuser game environment within which players collectively stage wildcat strikes at port facilities, misplace consignments in container yards or write code for patches that mess with models of supply chain integration by rerouting stock to warehouses already burdened with excess inventory. Whether it is a technical process or operative principle, Logistical Worlds explores code as a system of the future-Â‐present in which living labour must reckon with logistical regimes of governance and control.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 53-76 |
| Number of pages | 24 |
| Journal | Cultural Studies Review |
| Volume | 20 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Publication status | Published - 2014 |