Processed World magazine hopes to enhance the worker's self-esteem by appealing to his intellect and giving him tips on how to subvert the workplace. It's a homespun publication that articulates the experience of office workers so that they may realize they're not going crazy and their situations are not unique. It serves also as a forum for workers to share their observations on consumer society, abuses at work and techniques for fighting back. Slogans like ''sabotage ... it's as simple as pulling a plug'' and joke ads for "cobalt-magnet data-zappers'' for erasing office hard disks accompany the articles and testimonials written by reader/workers about ways in which to disable the workplace and thus disrupt the evil practices of big companies.
The computer is the primary instrument of sabotage in the workplace. The techniques that industrial hackers use against competitive companies are now being used by workers against their own companies. Usually – as throughout Cyberia – the routes to the greatest destruction have already been established unwittingly by the company bosses in the hope of better monitoring and controlling their employees.
On a tour of the data entry department at a major insurance firm, a computer serviceman and office saboteur explains the way things can get reversed. ''Our office managers monitor the workers through a special intercom feature in the worker's telephone,'' he whispers as we stroll through the tract-deskscape. "I know this because I installed the phone system, and I taught the office managers how to use it, and I know that they do use it, because I monitor them!'' We arrive at the desk of another worker, who plays video games on his computer. When he hits the escape key, a dummy spreadsheet covers the screen.
''Show him how the phone works,'' my escort requests.
The worker punches some keys on his phone and hands me the receiver. Someone is dictating a memo about how to order paper.
''That's the floor manager's office,'' the worker says, smiling proudly as he takes back the receiver and carefully hangs it up.
My guide boasts about the achievement. ''You can repair a Rolm (a subsidiary of IBM) phone system through a modem to act like a bugging device – useful for bosses to spy on their workers. But if you modify the software – which is easy enough to do through the modem by remote control without ever entering the boss's office – you can take advantage of the same feature in reverse!''
''He did it right from my desk with my computer!'' adds the worker, thankfully.
As we walk, most of the workers smile knowingly at my guide. They all are in this together. In the lingo of office sabotage, he confides proudly, ''We've got this place pretty well locked up.''
Sabotage, like computer hacking, can be seen as both a natural iteration and a destructive urge. True, it makes people feel more powerful and sends a warning signal – in the form of negative feedback – to the system as a whole. But it's also an opportunity for people to vent their frustration in general. A child who feels powerless and unpopular suddenly gains strength and status with a computer modem. An anonymous worker who cannot see any purpose to his life gets an ego boost when his well-planned prank disables an entire company.
Whether the motives are cyberian idealism or masturbatory ego gratification, these actions still serve as iterative feedback. We cannot dismiss these efforts as neurotic impulse or childish power fantasy just because their perpetrators cannot justify themselves with cyberian rhetoric. Even the most obsessive or pathological urges of saboteurs, when viewed in a cyberian context, appear to be the natural reactions of an iterative system against the conditions threatening its existence.
The most pressing of these conditions, of course, are the ones currently destroying the biosphere. As James Lovelock observed, Gaia defends herself through iterative feedback loops like plankton, algae, trees, and insects, which help maintain a balanced earth environment and conditions suitable for biological life. One such iterative loop may be the radical environmental group Earth First! These self-proclaimed ''ecoterrorists,'' like their founder, the burly Arizonan Dave Foreman, have developed an extraordinarily virulent sociopolitical virus called "ecotage'' or ''ecodefense.''
Ecotage is a terrorist approach to the defense of the environment. Rather than conduct protests, stage blockades, or influence legislation through lobbying, ecoterrorists perform neat, quick, surgical maneuvers that thwart the aims of those who would violate the environment. These actions, called ''monkeywrenching,'' take the form of burying spikes in trees so that they may not be cut down; disabling vehicles; pulling down signs or electric wires; destroying heavy machinery or aircraft; spiking roads or woods to make them impassable; triggering animal traps; and, most important, getting away with it. Their acts are never random, but carefully planned to make the greatest impact with the least effort and risk. Cutting two cables on a helicopter rotor the evening before an insecticide spray, for example, does more damage than stealing the distributor caps out of forty jeeps in a company's parking lot. A few low-cost, well-planned ecotage attacks can make an entire deforestation project unprofitable and lead to its cancellation.
As Foreman explains in his Ecodefense: A Field Guide to Monkeywrenchin – kind of Anarchist's Cookbook with a purpose – monkeywrenching is powerful because it is nonviolent (no forms of life are targeted, only machines), not organized (impossible to be infiltrated), individual, specifically targeted, timely, dispersed throughout the country, diverse, fun, essentially nonpolitical, simple, deliberate, and ethical. Of course the ethics are arguable. Businesses have a ''legal'' right to destroy the environment (especially if they've paid big bills lobbying or bribing for that right). The monkeywrenchers feel that the current political system is merely a gear in the destruction machine, and that the only tactic left is direct action.
Bob and Kali (yes, she's a TOPY member) are ecoterrorists from the Northwest. They have limited their activities (or at least the ones they're willing to talk about) to ''billboard trashing and revision.'' Their hope is to preserve national parks and reverse the propaganda campaigns of would-be environmental violators. Kali, who works as a waitress in an interstate highway rest stop, is an odd mix of American sweetheart blonde and ankle-braceleted Deadhead – on her way from the counter to the tables she can be heard humming "Sugar Magnolia'' through her Colgate smile. Her unthreatening demeanor allows her to listen in on and even provoke truckers' and construction workers' conversations about ongoing projects. Her boyfriend, Bob, then gives this information to more serious monkeywrenchers in their area over his school's computer network.
Bob is an art-studio assistant at the state university farther up the highway. He was motivated to take action against billboarding on his long drives down to the diner to pick Kali up from work each evening. ''There's more and more billboards every week. There was a law passed to limit the number of billboards, but every time we pass a good law like that, the opposite thing happens in reality.'' Taking his pseudonym Bob from the "savior'' of the Church of the Subgenius, a satirical cyberian cult, the young man has a tongue-in-cheek attitude toward his monkeywrenching and delights in the efficiency of his visual wit.
''One two-dollar can of spray paint can reverse a hundred-thousand dollar media campaign. You use their own words against them, expose their lies with humor.'' Using his own version of a device diagramed in Foreman's Field Guide, Bob puts a can of spray paint on top of a long metal rod with a string and trigger in the handle. From the ground, he can alter or add to a billboard many feet above his reach. Following Foreman's advice, he keeps the tool dismantled and hidden in a locked compartment of his truck, and varies the locations and times of his "hits'' so that he won't get caught. ''The book says answer the billboards. That's what we do. It's like they leave space for our comments.'' Among Bob's favorites are painting tombstones on the horizons of Marlboro Country and changing campaign slogans from "elect'' to eRect.''