Human Motorola

Human Motorola

Finally, a profound change in the perception of work and the working body became incorporated in a single metaphor—the frequently invoked ‘human motor,’ a striking image that illuminates an underlying affinity between physiology and technology. This image originated in an equally new perception of the universe as an industrial dynamo, or motor, the accomplishment of the thermodynamic physics of the nineteenth century
[Rabinbach, 24].



The work performed by any mechanism, from the fingers of the hand, to the gears of an engine, or the motion of the planets, was essentially the same. With this semantic shift in the meaning of ‘work,’ all labor was reduced to its physical properties, devoid of context and inherent purpose. Work was universalized [Rabinbach, 47].

At all moments of the machinated body, it is important not to amputate the prosthetics attaching the 19th century automated working body (proto-cyborg, integrated production line) to today’s info-compa(u)table body (modern cyborg, the cube farm). Capital’s liquid form follows the malleability of matter (technology) from the conversion of heat into use: the steam engine, the steel factory, conductive copper wire, the cooling units of heat-densified fiberoptic traffic. [Kazys Varnelis, Centripetal Cities...] The myth of a post-industrial body is that information technology has rendered us immaterial and invisible; we just need magnifying glasses, or perhaps laser pointers. ‘Traditional’ automation has moved offshore, the same shores that allow us to put the post in our industrial complex. In the ever consolidating information economy, American cyborg workers, whether in front of academic Apples or Applebee’s restaurant touch-screens, “[Our] engineers are sun-worshippers mediating a new scientific revolution associated with the night dream of a post-industrial society” (Haraway, Cyborg Manifesto 154) and their sacrifices are nimble-fingers in microelectronic sweatshops.


[Designed in California. Assembled in China]