majA Bay

Universally relatable, non-specific, flat

anthropoids

jumping up and down, twisting and turning, long limbs extending in the 2D,

flash on your screen,

happy to announce:

the most recent update to your Facebook experience.

This colourful illustration style, coined Corporate Memphis, or by others, neo-liberal vector minimalism, has become a universally recognised part of the user experience across the internet. However, creation, and persistent existence of these, cross platforms, has become emblematic of the infrastructures that produce them, and its perception of the human experience.

The internet, the non-ideology

The internet is developed to effectively manage, store, order and share information – extending your local computer processing power across unimaginable distances, to reach people unimaginably far away. The infrastructure was originally developed in the 60s for the US military of defence, but shifted in the 1990s to become what we know today as the free-internet, along with the realisation of information's economic and commercial potential, and of course, without coincidence, at the same time as the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The Free-Internet placed the US, and its values, at the centre of a world becoming increasingly globalised.

With the world finally rid of communism, American right-wing philosopher, Francis Fukuyama, was able to confidently declare the triumph of the western-free-market-liberal-democracy, with the US spearheading the worldwide spread of the most free and just, emancipatory, non-ideology. A non-ideology that became a self-fulfilling prophesy, though, amongst others, the successes of the freely accessible internet, and the expansion of the weightless economy.

In the 2010s Google, supported by the US State Department, entered an ideological dispute against Beijing’s censorship regime, under the claims that the state enforced anti-social behaviour. China, under fire for political heterodoxy, counteracts, calling the United States out for promoting “informational imperialism”.3 By highlighting the Chinese counter claim is not to promote censorship, but rather, that the Chinese state points out a fatal flaw in the utopic idea of the free internet and its underlying structures.

Liberalism claims freedom as infrastructure, that is without central command, non-hegemonic, non-coercive and with absolute individualistic freedom of movement – and the internet, the manifestation of this. However, the myth of the non-ideology reveals itself in the fact that it is an infrastructure, a network. When there is a network there is a way of doing things, limits, dark spots, a language that is pre-determined, and universally understood.

At its core, the internet is just this: an infrastructure of information, information that is language. Like any language, binary code, the makeup of all internet, functions to process, analyse and communicate, and as designed, does so with great efficiency, and without error or misunderstanding. Each bit of information is broken down to 1 or 0, this or that, something or nothing, until all imaginable parameters are defined. For information, whether a blog post, a homegrown SoundCloud mix or updates to IBM stock prices, to enter the infrastructure of the internet, it needs to go through the process of translation into binary code, being understood universally throughout the web. The act of translating is the driver behind the internet as a liberal economic entity. Language is able to define what otherwise may appear vastly different in nature, validify it as an entity, and make it comparable in the global market economy.

The internet, the cooperation

The utopic idea of the internet as a free market, propose the existence of an economic playground in which the possibilities for economic growth on a global scale, is possible, due to the freedoms granted without the influence from a central command. However, the theory fails to recognize the underlying structures within, that the freedoms within, merely lays the power and control of space, in the hands of the people who have the ability to claim it. A free-market relies on corporations to build the spaces in which we operate. Corporations, whom, thrive within the infrastructures provided, expanding rapidly, monopolizing the space. Quite literally, the data centres that process and hold the information that we are exposed to and interact with, are owned by private corporations (and are notably, in majority, located in the United States.) The one that holds the gold makes the rules – and it so holds true to the internet of things.

Each corporation provides a digital space has already defined norms – language – deciding what it means to exist in cyberspace. In simple terms: Google defines how we locate and browse new information; Meta defines social interaction; Amazon defines how we order products online. They speak in the language of internet, using the same infrastructure – language - to build upon. It is clear, defined, easy to use but most importantly, for-profit.

Creating and upholding norms is at its centre what makes the internet, and by extension, tech corporations that shapes the space, a prolific and self-amplifying industry. To establish a norm, is to ensure that each person affected will act in accordance with the values, that ultimately help the body who established the norm, achieve its goal. To say that we should interact with an aesthetic picture of latte art, view it, like it, comment on it, validate opening the app in the first place, having an Instagram profile, existing in a social network. We do not question the meaning behind the actions but merely accept that this is the way of doing things.

But the aim, of in this case Meta, is not for you to look an appreciate the latte art, rather for the user to stay long enough on the platform – the digital space – to gather data, and to advertise. However explicitly asking users to provide this data, is not possible, unless the user is enticed and convinced that the thing to do is to stay and to continue existence in the space. So, to stay, the user should feel that they should stay up to date with where to get their next coffee, engage to make sure that others know that they appreciate the fact that they shared this information with them, and perhaps to feel inspired enough to post their own latte art.

In fact, drawing parallels from the way in which corporations use norms as way of control over their user base, mimics the way corporations manage their internal human resources. Perhaps because, as a user of the internet, one provides data as a form of labour, and as such the user is just as much a human resource, as the workers within the company itself. Any large corporation needs to establish a human resource department. Humans require management to ensure that the labour and even mere existence of them, is in alignment with the company's goals and values. Human resources create contracts, settles disputes, creates benefit programmes – outlining company values.

Working in the corporate sphere, most know the phrase: “HR is not your friend.” But how come a department whose job is to keep you happy may not be working for you. In essence the answer lies, not within the actions of the HR department but the goal. An HR department is in place to keep the employees happy, or rather complacent, enough to reduce turnover, avoid lawsuits and increase efficiency of labour; to increase profit. In doing so, it is quintessential for an HR department that employees comply with the norms that are established by the company, the company culture, embodying company culture.

The labour force, internally and externally of the company, are managed such that we feel accomplished and validated, when complying with company norms. “We’re a dream team”, “we want to hear your voice”, we value our employees,” feeling like an integrated part of the platform, becoming one and the same working towards the same goal. Why leave early, if there's drinks with the colleagues later? why leave when the company has good insurance and a gym membership? The company makes sure all needs are met. The Employee and the company, one and the same. Why question, if feeling complacent enough not to? In the same way, interacting an immersing oneself in digital spaces, rewards the user to stay long enough to not question why they are there in the first place. Likes, follows, convenience. The user integrates itself into the structure, making profiles, sharing data, visiting over and over, an integral part of the everyday. Following community guidelines. working for the algorithm. Working for the company.

The desired state is endurance-complacency: enduring and persisting with and endless task with the acceptance of the status quo and unwillingness or inability to investigate the underlying negative infrastructures, in the fear it might change things. A corporate workforce in burnout, mirroring, the masses of people in digital exhaustion, staying due to the lack of tools ever given to exit. And why search for another way, if complacent enough to stay?

In the essay “The commons: Infrastructures for troubling times” Lauren Berlant outlines that to glitch an infrastructure may be to realize that there is an infrastructural failure to begin with. In the case of endurance-compliancy, to break the cycle, one must realize, that the state of being, is symptomatic of an infrastructure that may not be serving us.

The internet, the body

When picturing cyberspace, it becomes something outside of the body, perhaps a parallel dimension, to which we can only project ourselves. One that can be manipulated, interacted with, but never touched or even perceived in its entirety. Browsing the web is floating around in the cloud without any visible edges or directions. As the internet grows, and technology innovates to get closer to the human experience, so too does the fear that the line between real and digital may cease to exist. However, it seems as though attempts at merging the two – the body and the digital – like meeting in a VR Meta office, seem more like a gimmicky illusion than a real experience. Exiting the cybersphere, feels dizzying, and leaves a vague awareness that something was off.

Translating the body to the digital, is the final frontier. Full immersion, digitization, commodification – however it may be impossible. Our body is able to perceive and experience things that can never be translated into language. The flat figurines pictured in Corporate Memphis become the reflection of the discrepancy that appears in this action. They portray the human body as something that is universal, to the point where it becomes relatable to no one. They attempt to represent everyone, by representing no one. As such, this flatness that we experience when entering the digital is the tool for glitching. Acknowledging the shortcomings of this translation, means revealing the shortcomings of the infrastructure itself, the language and the values behind.

In the essay “Eternal Recurrence and the Limits of Critical Analysis”, Donata Schoeller proposes the process of embodied thinking, as a counteraction to the dogma of analytical thinking. Schoeller argues that the process of analytical thinking, as a way of systematically breaking down information to gain understanding, may prevent any possibility for transformations. Embodied thinking defined as the process of relating thinking and actions, to the embodied experience, the individual experience of existence, and factoring it in as crucial part in critical thinking. Analysing information, the thinking becomes stagnant, bound in time, and may lose the nuances that cannot be defined analytically. Acknowledging the presence of embodied thinking as a continuous, ever present and operative dimension to thinking allows for the ability to create transformations in knowledge. The differences between analytical and embodied thinking are defined by Schoeller in her essay:

“The difference between the possibilities of analysis and of transformation is so profound that there is no easy way from one to the other (...) I would like to summarize them as three shifts: a) from detachment to the focus on the embodied here and now, b) from analytical distance to articulated closeness, c) from analysis to expressive shifting. These movements are implied in the difference of critically thinking about the body to what it means to think with the body.”

The language of the internet can be thought of as a process of analytical thinking. Something that rationalises information, even when unrationalizable. Embodied thinking counteracts everything the internet is built on. It is a contentiously undefinable, inconsistent and inefficient. Its a practise that can never be internet, without a definable specified input or output it is the enemy of the infrastructures itself.