IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2017 - 85

checks with their total reliance on Information Technology based machines. All the while, you are hoping that
the "state of the art" machines, do not mistaken you for
some evil-doer! Notwithstanding the need for heightened security in the age of terror (against a negligible
group of psychopaths), these processes seem to serve
no purpose apart from threatening passengers with
smear (being of some perceived security risk) and fear
(of being humiliated or stopped from boarding your
flight and apprehended).
The intentional under-allocation of space (the forced
creation of a "scarcity of a resource") is a new "stress"
economy, where the supply is manipulated (calibrated through ambiguous calculations, such as the average size of a passenger or the average space required
for a passenger) to distort what is the societal norm
for access to a resource, in order to inflate the price.
The demand for the "norm" would require the disaffected passenger to upgrade and pay a much higher
price to access what should have been the "norm" in
the first place.
Another case in point, is the annual (employee)
appraisals process, or career development reviews.
The set goals are often ambiguous and unrealistic due
to the simple fact that it is rather impossible to account
for all the tasks required for any of these goals. This
means that it is impossible to measure the time or the
cost required to complete these tasks. This leaves the
employee in an untenable position, which results in
employees finding time to complete the required tasks
from their own personal time and at their own cost. It
is not a surprise that this appraisal process usually
leaves employees feeling disappointed, disillusioned,
and frustrated that all their hard work was not "counted." No doubt the coupled effect of "smear and fear" is
directly correlated to stress in our personal and professional lives.
Information Technology intensifies this powerful emotional coupling (of smear and fear), because it further
obfuscates the complex moral technology of accounting
measurement, which leaves us in a complete state of
bewilderment as to why we were not able to meet our targets in the first place. We are aware of the limitations and
failings of these technologies, because intuitively we
understand that not everything can be measured, let
alone captured electronically. However, we still submit to
the tyranny of the "machine," because we are not the only
ones in our submission (to its tyranny). Thus the tyranny
of the tribe still reigns supreme and we have no choice
but to conform to the "norms" of the tribe however inconvenient or uncomfortable they may be, lest we risk being
ostracized and banished from the tribe. Our acquiescence to this new stress economy is only a reflection of
our perpetual "under duress" state of existence.
SEPTEMBER 2017

∕

Dromology
This perpetual state of movement in an indistinguishable continuum is how the essential nature of our modern technological society is being reconfigured, with that
which moves with speed quickly overwhelms that which
is slower. Paul Virilio [8, p. 47] concurs that dromology2
is the new logic of speed3 that has become the central
foundation of a technological or a technocapitalist4 society, where possession of the territory signifies control
regardless of any laws or contracts, because it is primarily "a matter of movement and circulation."
Outsourcing arrangements, for example, which are
usually subject to labor contracts and laws, have given
companies much desired control over their operations,
because of the speed by which they can move and circulate operations from one call center in Australia to
India to the Philippines, all a result of our technologically interconnected global economy.
Jean Baudrillard [11, p. 31] contends that our interconnected global economy is a model of simulation,
where it has become the real for us. In a sense, he
shares the same view as Debord, that the sign's referential (representation) is preserved through simulation in a
"dialectical" equilibrium. The entire critical discourse on
political economy of profit, surplus value, mechanics of
capital, and class struggle, is "staged as a referential discourse." He goes on to explain, that:
It is the real and therefore the imaginary, since
here again the two formerly distinct categories
have fused and drifted together. The mystery of
value is enacted on stage (of course, the mystery
has simply acquired a new value: the structural
law of value has become mysterious): everyone
agrees as to the "determining instance" of economics, and this has become "obscene." This is a
provocation. Capital no longer looks to nature,
God or morality, but strictly to political economy,
and its critique of its alibis, and lives through its
own denunciation from within itself - feedback
or a dialectical stimulus. Hence, the essential role
of Marxian analysis in designer capital.
2

Dromology had its roots in the Greek word "Dromos," to move fast or to race.
Bill Gates [9] pointed out that, "if the 1980s were about quality and the 1990s
were about reengineering, then the 2000s will be about velocity." He argued
that the very nature of business would change as velocity increases. The faster
a business transacts, the more it will shape the way consumers access its
information, and that would alter their lifestyles and expectations of business
in ways that would force faster quality and business-process improvements.
The evolving digital infrastructure is like the human nervous system to corporations, which enables them to "run smoothly and efficiently, to respond quickly
to emergencies and opportunities, to quickly get valuable information to the
people in the company who need it, and the ability to quickly make decisions
and interact with customers.
The successful companies of the next decade will
be the ones that use digital tools to reinvent the way they work."
4
A term coined by Luis Suarez-Villa in a book [10] by the same title that was
published in 2009, to indicate a new version of capitalism that is rooted in
technological innovation and corporate power.
3

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