Unsere Tiefenzeit
In Siegfried Zieliński's great book, Media archaeology. About the deep time of technically mediated listening and seeing, translated by K. Krzemieniowa on page 303 we read:
“In the article On the trends of proletarian culture Gastiew wrote; "The machine controls living people. Machines have ceased to be objects of control, they have become their subjects". (...) In the future, working people would be "the modes of a huge machine". There would be a psychology identical to the rules that determine the operation of the automaton, with its two states: "being turned on" and "being turned off" and a closed set of functions" The author conscientiously refers to another publication at the quote: R. Traub, Lenin and Taylor. The Sichicksale of the "Wissenschaftlichen Worksorganisation" in the (French) Council, "Kursbuch" 43, Berlin 1976, p. 151.
When we start checking, if only because we like a frame from Chaplin's film Modern Times From 1936, it quickly turns out that everything was a little different. Western citation precision is almost always stuck in Eastern alphabets. Alexey Kapitonovich Gastiev (1882-1941, according to Polish Wikipedia) he actually wrote something similar, but not in this article (About the trends of proletarian culture, "Proletarskaya Kultura", 1919, № 9 – 10). The quote comes from a polemic with Gastiev written exactly a hundred years ago by Alexander Bogdanov himself (About the trends of proletarian culture. THE A. Gastevu. 1919 г. [In:] Bogdanov A. A.About proletarian culture: 1904 – 1924, L. М.: Publishing partnership "Kniga", 1924, p. 320). Bogdanov writes: ""machines from controlled move to controlling" (he himself [Gastev] emphasized this in cursive), — then for us it should already be clear that he fell into a misunderstanding." Yes, in 1919 Bogdanov was right, and the fantasta Gastiev "He was in a misunderstanding". In 2019, while waiting for 5G, we begin to guess that it is not known by some miracle: Machines from controlled to controlling. Chaplin could (without words!) Play: "Be turned on/ be turned off". Maybe we can do it too. And Gastiev was shot in 1939.
