Whether you are reading this at my industrial tribunal, as a data archaeologist student, or as drone level sysadmin clearing space off a grandfathered WorkSpace database, I hope it brings you some small distraction from the otherwise humdrum irritations of your work day.
This is deep backchannel, as far as I can tell no one has broken my crypto yet – my analytics show zero – so the photons striking whatever passes for eyes where you’re at are conveying bona fide, grass roots, uncensored serf level worker angst.
My story starts here: Emotional Machine. New jobs are always a bitch but the tone was certainly set early and hard for me. A no frills Operator job, a reluctant, tiny cog in the WorkSpace corporation.
Against all my expectations it was a swift and uncomfortable elevation from a macjob level position in WorkSpace development, to an unwilling Cat’s Paw of a faceless, corporate WorkSpace management team. Some malign serendipity meant that I was forced into a clandestine investigation into an industrial espionage event that looked like it may reach deep into the upper levels of WorkSpace.
Previously ensconced in a bulky, non-motile, immersion Job, I am now endowed with a bonded, endo-skeletal Job - a privilege normally the preserve of upper management. My previous Job AI has been ported with me, a grumpy, quasi-sentient mentality that I have nicknamed: Babs.
These records may ostensibly present as a diary, but a writer’s vanity suggests that future readers may like some introduction into the dense and unnecessarily complex argot of the WorkSpace world.
A Glossary
WorkSpace: A sprawling, multinational conglomerate of Brobdingnagian proportions. Activities range from: energy production and distribution, to orbital factory platforms, to industrial waste disposal, to childcare.
Jobs: Jobs are AI-enabled, prosthetic symbiotes. In a (successful) attempt to substantially enhance worker productivity, each employee at WorkSpace is bonded, either endo-organically or via an enveloping exoskeleton, with their Job. The Jobs assist, either with processing capacity or gross physical enhancement, with the tasks that WorkSpace set their employees.
Confluence: WorkSpace operates a “total employment” policy. This entails the participation of its employees in a grid data processing technique that utilises both organic and machine intelligences. Managed by AIs, this process is mandatory for all WorkSpace employees.
Petabook: Standard WorkSpace issue PDA. Provides high capacity data storage and collectively the Petabooks help form an international wireless proprietary data network for WorkSpace.
TankSpace: The shared, virtual immersion environments used extensively throughout WorkSpace. These spaces are accessed via a number of sensory and EEG interface technologies; direct cerebral input has not yet been achieved.
Dunking/Dunktime: Anecdotal/slang term for the act of sensory immersion in a virtual environment.
The Gaunt: Physical headquarters for WorkSpace (UK) located in London. The Gaunt has a virtual (virch) analogue called WorkSpace Prime.
Involution: A term relating to an evolving corporate tendency to close ranks against undesirable economic and cultural conditions.
FastTrack: Accelerated management training programme only available to the very best WorkSpace employees.
SARCOS: A type of ex-military, powered exoskeleton suit used in construction and heavy lifting tasks.
Kashem Corp: Bangladeshi-based subsidiary of WorkSpace, primary activities include macro-scale industrial deconstruction and disposal.
Janahara Azad: The mysterious south Asian personage behind the hostile acquisition of WorkSpace during the third decade of the twenty-first century.
Life after WorkSpace (LAW): Quasi-legal, self help counselling group. LAW helps disenfranchised ex-WorkSpace employees adjust to life on the outside.
Formalising Externality (FE): WorkSpace employee management technique used to enhance productivity and increase revenue. Characterised by insanely ambitious performance targets and employee cantered blame dynamics, FE typifies the WorkSpace approach to employee fostering.
Newev: Generic term relating to AI technologies and personalities.
The Chimneys: Subterranean accommodation reserved for senior WorkSpace management personnel; located below The Gaunt.
Nodal Identification: Research tool used to locate and categorise pivotal historical events.
Neo-con (neo-conscience): AI variant used to supply prosthetic morality frameworks to psychopathic WorkSpace employees.
Pardis Hospice: Located in Southern Afganistan, the Pardis Hospice is a WorkSpace sponsored warfare mitigation initiative. Providing medical and counselling care to the victims of yet another branch of WorkSpace - a combat revenue programme - the Pardis Hospice is a poorly funded, ailing hedge against the necessities of global profit generation.
Job (Therapy model): A specialised Job variant designed to provide a safe, virtual counselling environment. Optimised for empathy enhancement, the Therapy Job provides mental healthcare specialists a unique insight into the suffering of their patients.
WorkSpace is a episodic narrative located in a fictional, near-future context. WorkSpace may ostensibly present as a science fiction story, but at its core is an examination of the rage and despair inducing frustrations of life in a modern workplace.
<kilbotpost. The Daily Rage historical broadcast | web memento.DATESTAMP: 2009.03.19.03:46:15>