This mass u nemployment is forced o n us partly by the au tomatio n of postindustrial production and partly by the auto matio n of reflex actions in our now outrageously speeded-up emploi du temps, our agenda. Th at is the impetus behind the much-touted threat of relaunching the world economy - except that, this time, such a relaunch would be without any emploi du temps whatsoever and would occur within the cybernetic space defined by the inertia of the p ropitious instant - the right moment - for supern umerary man, a man decidedly without qual ities . . .
I n the Un ited S tates, for i nstance, the drop in the wage bill in the last quarter of 2009, coupled with an unchanged level of activity, does indeed signify that American firms are imp roving productivity - b ut o nly to the detriment of employment. That fact dearly points to a future deindusrrialization o f nations, as a p relude to wh ich the cu rrent delocal ization of firms in favou r of low-cost employees is nothi ng more than an early-warning sign of the spread of automation . Tomorrow, the robotics of artificial intelligence and its ' enhanced reality' will take on the bulk of productivity i n a resolutely postmodern world.
THE GREAT ACCELERATOR
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