<Fair City Amsterdam> Fwd: Re: <nettime> Supreme Court Rulling consequeces

[Patrice Riemens]

Dag Allen,

Dit is een enigszins ingewikkelde, technische uiteenzetting van de 
'digitale', 'Net', achtergronden van het volkshuisvestings gebeuren in 
het Engeland van vandaag, maar veel van wat erin gesteld wordt is 
eveneens van toepassing voor Nederland/Amsterdam (OK, we hebben nog geen 
Grenfell tragedie gehad - hoelang nog?). Daarom wel interessant, al is 
het ietwat 'voor gevorderden'.

Groeten, p+7D!


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: <nettime> Supreme Court Rulling consequeces
Date: 2019-09-26 11:20
 From: "Tom Keene" <tom at theanthillsocial.co.uk>
To: nettime-l at mail.kein.org

My experience of dealing with UK local authority housing managment has 
encountered a domain of large scale cartels with complex layers of 
contractors and sub-contractors in a hyper-accelerated efficiency drive. 
This efficiency has driven down the pay of contractors who sub-contract 
to an unskilled and underpaid workforce - Stuart Hodkinsons book "Safe 
as Houses: Private Greed, Political Negligence and Housing Policy" 
provides excellent commentary on the worst affects of this. Not least of 
which, London's Grenfell tower tragedy that saw the deaths of 72 people. 
The narrative that comes from Grenfell residents of being ignored and 
dismissed by both the political and executive arm of government in the 
run up to the fire, chimes with my own experience of housing managment.

Whats this got to with Brexit or networks you might ask? Well, the 
administration of housing managment is facilitated by network 
infrastructures, database technologies, and handheld devices. This 
distributes decision-making and introduces ways of optimising throughput 
of workers and residents reporting repairs. This infrastructure 
eliminates housing estate caretakers  in favour of remote call centres 
that are separated from the ethical implications of their decisions. The 
focus of housing managment is now directed towards metrics of completed 
repairs jobs rather than the quality of those jobs and the people they 
affect - throughput is king.

Faced with this housing network infrastructure, it is near impossible 
for the predominantly working class communities  to contest poor repairs 
or inadvisable decisions over refurbishment or regeneration - Grenfell 
provides stark example of this. It is reported that police have seized 
over 30 million documents in their investigation. To cope with this 
volume of information the police have had to introduce database 
technologies operating over network infrastructure.  This scale of 
information is clearly a product of technical systems that enable such 
complexity to occur. Even council officers are unclear how the technical 
systems they use every day operate and they certainly are not versed in 
the ethical or political implications of those technologies.

What hope do residents have of fighting these systems and wall of data? 
What hope do residents have in a political class where predominantly 
labour councils are demolishing council housing (over 200 council estate 
in London alone) and 'decanting' their residents across the country?  
What hope is there when distinction between a left and right political 
class no longer makes sense because the left is no longer defending 
communities against the excesses of a capitalism accelerated by network 
technologies? Its not AI we need to worry about 'right now', its the 
dull infrastructure of government and the intricate ways its affecting 
democratic processes.

Communities have lost hope because they are being beaten  by both left 
and right wing politics that attacks their very homes. I'm not surprised 
they vote for something like Brexit (I feel I have to say I voted remain 
on this list which I think says quite a lot...) - some kind of change is 
hoped for because the promises of the left and right are meaninglessness 
when your home is under threat by all parties. Where were the large 
scale marches against Britain's austerity drive or working class 
communities being driven from their homes regeneration? Plenty of 
communities continue to cry out for help, but the lack of solidarity 
from predominantly middle class groups is deafening. Yet, a climate 
crises has gained large-scale support (and rightly so) though the lack 
of engagement and understanding of issues of social justice from again, 
predominantly middle class groups, is striking. I'm not saying working 
class communities are not bothered by climate change or Brexit, clearly 
people are. Rather, there is an tacit understanding in those communities 
that systems of inequality are reproducing themselves in both climate 
and 'brexit remain' campaigns - the network with all its components is a 
huge components (human or otherwise) of how those inequalities are 
enacted.

Tom