Organic Division of Labor — Ergonomics/Cybernetics of Labor — Inorganic Division of Labor

While we have the vocabulary to analyze situations of labor from the factory to the digital economy, we lack a vocabulary for the labor of the nonhuman. Does nonhuman labor put pressure on the category of labor itself? Toward this, the essay proposes thinking with “cybernetics of inorganic labor.” If we want to know how far we need to go to pragmatically live in/with our Anthropocenic ruins, we will have to pose the limit case questions to ourselves: not just life, but what matter can we value? As we come to terms with the havoc we have wreaked, it will be an uphill battle. Which laborers shall we recognize (or even pay)? How?