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70.
PROCESSED WORLD #1-13 (SF: Processed World, Spring 1981-Spring 1985).
8vo. Stapled pictorial wrps. Pagination varies (46pp.-68pp.). Illustrated with détourned graphics, cartoons and photographs.
A consecutive run of the first 13 issues of this anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian magazine, founded in San Francisco by Chris Carlsson and Caitlin Manning with the intention to satirise and critique neoliberalism and the new era of computerised information processing.
The front cover of the first issue (April 1981), featuring artwork by Linda Wiens and emblazoned with the slogan “Are you doing the processing? ... or are you being processed?”, set the tone for an attitude it shared with both the post-situationists (Christopher Winks of Point-Blank! contributed to the early issues), and the contemporary punk scene in San Francisco.
Emerging at a moment when the utopianism of the '60s and early '70s was giving way to techno-capitalist triumphalism, Processed World documented the rise of ‘New Information Technology’ and the neoliberal shift from social to market-based relationships, as well as various local rebellions, such as the Blue Shield Insurance office workers’ strike in northern California. It also sought to foment revolution and promote subversion through its ridiculing of the powerful and rich, and via its frequent encouragement of absenteeism, sabotage and disorganisation.
Presciently, it foresaw the modern technosphere and the alienation of office-bound ‘data slaves’, noting early on (in its fifth issue) that “the ruling image-makers have things so well in hand that the terrifying absurdity of most modern work still seems normal to most people, and ‘technology’ remains an unstoppable Monolithic Monster to be embraced or blindly rejected. For us the real point is not to do office work less speedily or more safely, or to have more say over how it’s allocated, nor even - in the long run - to get more money for it. The real point is: why do it at all? What is the purpose of all this office work?” (p.37).
Consecutive runs of early issues are scarce (32 were published irregularly between 1981 and 1994); some were handed out on the streets by volunteers, and the first three, Carlsson later recalled, “were printed entirely on stolen paper from the banks of San Francisco”.
Covers of issues nos. 7, 8 and 9 damaged from old label removal; all issues show moderate wear; o/w Very Good.