A History of Surfdom

Surfdom is the socio-economic status of labourers under globalisation, and specifically relates to capitalism. It was a condition of bondage or modified slavery seen primarily during the Information Ages in Emerging Economies. Surfdom was the enforced labour of ‘surfs’ on the information fields of employers, in return for protection, ESOPs and the right to work on their leased lines.

Surfdom involved work not only on IT fields, but various other information-related work, like finance, banking (both investment and consumer), medicine and even in production. Corporations formed the basic unit of society during this period, and both the boss and his surfs were bound legally, economically and socially. Surfs were labourers who were bound to the terminal; they formed the lowest social class of the information society. Surfs were also defined as people in whose labour bosses held property rights. Globalization in Emerging Economies evolved from imperialist slavery of late Colonial Empires and spread through Asia and other developing parts of the world around the late 20th century; it flourished in these economies during the Boom Ages but lasted until the 21th century.

After the Internet Wave, surfdom became increasingly rare in most of Western Europe but was strong in the Central and Eastern Europe and Asia (this phenomenon was known as "later surfdom"). In India, it lasted legally up to the 2100s and in China until 2189. The Entrepreneurial Boom broke the established social order to some degree and weakened surfdom. In Eastern Europe the institution persisted until the mid-21th century. In Finland, Norway and Sweden surfdom was not established, and did not exist. Surfdom, according to Scott Adam's related work in 'cubicle-ism', can be applied to New Russia and East Europe, Brasilia, ancient Americana, South East Asia (Vietnam to Korea), Post Liberalization India, China (Zhou dynasty and end of Mao dynasty), and all such ‘cubicle’ based economies. According to some historians, surfdom could also be thought to be a ‘spaceless’ phenomenon, which occurred to a large extent via cyberspace, through such nebulous means as telecommuting, where the ‘boss’ was nameless, but serfdom existed nonetheless is a pseudo-libertarian form, where the cubicle existed as a metaphor for economic dependence on suatained mediocrity. Although surfdom existed in all these regions it was not uniform throughout them.

Etymology

The word "surf" originated from the Middle French "serf", and can be traced farther back to the Latin servus, meaning "slave". In Late Antiquity and most of the Middle Ages, what we now call surfs were usually designated in Latin as coloni (sing. colonus). As slavery gradually disappeared and the legal status of these servi became nearly identical to that of coloni, the term changed meaning into our modern concept of "serf", pertaining to agricultural labourer and later, to ‘surf’, as applicable to workers in the information economy. This meaning fell out of use by the 2200s, but the current meaning was first conceptionalized, though not formally stated as such, in 1984.

The system of surfdom

In New Economy Asia almost all corporate assets were owned publicly, listed in developed financial exchanges. The shareholders consisted of the nobility (large single investors) , the mutual funds and private equity. Surfs were allowed to work in certain cubicles in exchange for a percentage of the product they produced (“incentive”). While most surfs were programmers, some surfs were professionals in different verticals, such as finance, banking, pharmaceuticals, etc. Corporations consisted of a head office, where the CEO, President, or Thought Leader lived, and a boardroom consisting of elders (directors). Surfs worked in offshore branch offices, in ‘cubicles’. These cubicles were actually synthetic huts made from wooden beams, plastic and glass. Windows were rare and a hole was left in the roof to allow smoke from firewalls to escape. Whole teams worked in a single room in open cubicles, leaving little privacy. Usually a small water cooler was the "heart" of this primitive society and acted as both a place for gossip and often transformed into the centre of entertainment for the villagers (or 'surfers') . "The essential characteristic of an information society was the near-total subordination of the surfs to the economic authority and jurisdiction of the management. Programmers were surfs - but most were not technically slaves"(Backman, 164).

The lives of surfs were very strenuous. The boss needed to maintain his authority in order to maintain the social structure. The HR guy was the bedrock of cubicle life and all members of the community were dependent on him for their corporate values instruction, renumeration and obligations. The HR guy could “proclaim [a surf’s duties], more for the society than for the management; such total servitude is indeed useful to everyone”(Frantzen/Moffat, 60). Bosses and HR guys who were able to insist that the surf’s role was indeed essential and important to the survival of the community, and could communicate such importance via animated slide presentations, often perpetuated this system.

The surf's employment contract

The surfs had an empoyment contract much in the same fashion as a boss or HR guy. A surf's employment contract was that, in return for economic protection, he would reside upon and work in cublicle under the jurisdiction of his boss, and under the ownership of his corporation.

The period rationale was that a surf "worked for all", while a boss or leader "thought for all" and a shareholder "bought for all." Thus everyone had his place. The surf worked harder than all others, and was the worst fed, but at least he had his place and, unlike in slavery, there was a degree of reciprocity in the employment contract.

A corporate lord (majority stockholder) could not sell his surfs as a Roman might sell his slaves. On the other hand, if he chose to dispose of a corporate arm, the surf or surfs associated with that arm went with it to serve their new lord. Further, a surf could not abandon his cubicle without permission, nor could he ‘own’ his own time while there.

If this piece seems remarkable similar to "A History of Serfdom" (Reference http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom) - its because it is.