humans are becoming obsolete

It's time to reposition our role in society

employing humans to perform biological labour

And speculate with the value of their bodies

exploring the production of data as a form of labour

Shifting the new paradigm of invisible labour

institute of human obsolescence

biological labour

Exploring the potential of the human body to produce capital

Unused heat

Alone in The Netherlands there are 1,700 KW of unexploited electricity to be harvested from human body heat.

Benefit

From the electricity extracted of excess heat, the body-suit runs a computer producing cryptocurrency.

Health

Workers have to lay down and do nothing. The body-suit mantains their body temperature.

Maximizing the capital

We mine recently created cryptocurrencies that have more potential to grow in value.

Our numbers

A single human body at rest radiates 100 watts of excess heat. We created a body-suit that uses thermoelectric generators to harvest the temperature differential between the human body and ambient and converts it into usable electricity. The electricity generated is then fed to a computer that produces cryptocurrency.

37

Workers involved

127,211

Milliwatts hour harvested

212

Hours worked

16,594

Coin rewards

Cryptocurrencies production

Vertcoin
Startcoin
Dash
Lisk
Ethereum
Litecoin

Operations

The Institute of Human Obsolescence ran 4 different operations extracting biological labour for 22, 69, 39 and 82 hours. Those 212 hours were divided in working shifts of 1, 2 or 3 hours, 37 different workers participated in the process.

Data Production Labour

Despite seemingly moving towards a society without human work, we have started to perform new forms of invisible labour. Human-produced data is a resource already extracted by Big Tech, producing vast amounts of capital. This new role that humans have taken in society is obscured by promises imposed by Big Tech. Why aren't we, the data workers, capitalising from it? If even jobless workers are generating capital by producing data, are we truly unemployed?

Production

Big Data is becoming a 200 billion dollar industry.
We, the data workers are its key resource and unrecognised workforce.

Distribution

While the data produced should belong to the data workers, its control and exploitation is in the hands of monopolistic companies.

Vision

In a society that claims it no longer requires human work, we all have become invisible workers.

Data Labour Rights

With this new understanding of us as workers, we can now start advocating for our Data Labour Rights.

Data production labour

Participants of Data Production Labour reveal the exploitation and implications of their production of data for the Big Tech industry. The installations invite the participants to perform working shifts using different tools, such as their phones, a web interface, and their voice. They problematise the social inequalities, ownership questions and military implications of the dynamics established by Big Tech through their exploitation of invisible labour.

Data Labour Rights

As workers that produce data, what are our labour rights?



   Data Basic Income

    Instead of questioning what the value of the data produced is, we explore the proposition of giving everyone the same monthly flat-rate in exchange for the data produced, indepentently of categories like gender, nationality or class. This is what we call a Data Basic Income: a fixed payment for our production of data.

   Data Cooperative

Aimed to create an ecosystem in which the citizens-workers-owners are in control of their production of data, the workers of the Data Cooperative choose what kinds of categories of data they generate and collect. They are in control of how they benefit from their production.

   Data Workers Union

    The Data Workers Union aims to shift the imbalance between the ownership, control and profit of data produced by the workers versus the companies. This union strives to develop a space which elaborates a series of political proposals articulating and pursuing our Data Labour Rights.

Discourse

As part of our initiatives we organize discussions, assemblies, workshops and regularly participate in conferences.

Activities

Media, interviews and public events



Media

Current events

Presentation at the Centre for Internet & Society in Delhi, India
Presentation of our new project Cartographies of Dispossession

Data Production Labour series hosted at the Stadsgehoorzaal in Leiden, The Netherlands
Presentation of our three latest projects during Brave New World

Investigative Discussion Session at Data Production Labour series
With Katrin Fritsch, Ksenia Ermoshina and Luis Rodil-Fernández

Nomination Icarus Award 2018
Exhibition at the yearly congress of the Platform voor de InformatieSamenleving

   Past events

Contact

Email:

human@speculative.capital



Organization and contributors

Manuel Beltrán - Artist and founder
René Mahieu - Economist, data researcher
Eric Kluitenberg - Advisor
Katrin Fritsch - Data and society researcher
Roos Boshart - Fashion design assistant
Micah Westera - Design assistant
Anna Kieblesz - Photography
Katarína Galisinová - Photography



Sara Pape Garcia - Artist, economic activist
Luis Rodil-Fernández - Artist and hacker
Ksenia Ermoshina - Researcher and activist
Anna Lotte Peperkamp - Production
Mathilde Sallez - Production
Leo Nuñez - Programming, development Valerie Maltseva - Photography

   Partners

Copyright © 2019 - Institute of Human Obsolescence