Surplus in the Algorithmic Age?

I. A new concept:

Around 1948, Norbert Wiener introduced the concept of cybernetics: systems of control governed by feedback. The thermostat was his example—sensing ambient temperature, comparing it to a set point, and adjusting output to maintain equilibrium. What mattered wasn’t the machine, but the loop.

This logic now governs.

Take Uber for example; they do not manage workers/drivers in any traditional sense. There are no managers, no fixed wages, no negotiations. There are only behavioral inputs, algorithmic adjustments, and continuous environmental modulation. Tasks are offered, completed, logged. Data is captured, processed, and restructured. The platform observes, infers, and adapts.

the company functions efficiently. It offers transportation with remarkable speed and convenience. It removes friction from the act of moving people through cities. For riders, it works. For many drivers, it offers flexibility. But beneath this convenience lies a transformation: the conditions of labor have been absorbed into a cybernetic system designed to extract value silently, iteratively, and without recourse.

Wages in this system are not offered—they are generated. Not as compensation for labor, but as the lowest acceptable price for continued participation. The worker is not evaluated. The worker is inferred.

II. What Is an Algorithm?

“In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm is a finite sequence of mathematically rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specifications for performing calculations and data processing. More advanced algorithms can use conditionals to divert the code execution through various routes (referred to as automated decision-making) and deduce valid inferences (referred to as automated reasoning).”

— Wikipedia

III. Marx After the Interface

Classical capitalism extracted surplus value by paying the worker less than the value of what was produced. The factory was the site of this asymmetry. Marx located exploitation in the visible structure of production.

In the platform economy, surplus is no longer seized—it is squeezed. Uber does not employ drivers. It enrolls them in a system that uses feedback to test thresholds.

The algorithm observes labor patterns, response times, completion rates, location histories, and work duration. But it also encodes material conditions. Older vehicles, low-income neighborhoods, nonstandard working hours, and other attributes associated with economic precarity become markers. These are not labeled explicitly, but their signals are captured. From these, the system infers one thing: flexibility.

Flexibility means room to lower pay without losing labor.

Wages are not calculated based on output. They are continuously pushed downward until the platform encounters resistance. Each worker is modeled according to how little must be offered to ensure continued compliance. The system is not optimizing for fairness—it is solving for desperation.

Compensation = stress test.

The platform does not need to know why someone accepts worse terms. It only needs to know that they will. This becomes the new baseline. A behavioral floor calibrated not to value, but to vulnerability.

Surplus, under these conditions, is not extracted from work—it is extracted from constraint. From the pressure to keep driving. From the inability to wait. From the absence of alternatives.

The wage is not based on labor. It is based on need.

And this pressure is asymmetric. The platform sees everything. The worker sees nothing. There is no knowledge of what others earn, no access to the logic behind ride assignments, no negotiation channel. All feedback flows upward. All adaptation flows downward.

IV. This Is the Medium Now

Uber is not exceptional. It is exemplary.

Similar dynamics now govern warehouse logistics, healthcare, teaching, writing, video production, content moderation, financial advising. Any task that can be tracked becomes subject to algorithmic management. Any worker that can be modeled becomes eligible for wage modulation. The conditions pioneered in ride-hailing are becoming infrastructural.

This is not temporary. It is systemic.

Convenience is not incidental—it is foundational. It enables the adoption of systems that sort, rank, and modulate labor at scale. The smoothness of the interface conceals the sharpness of its logic. Wage compression feels personal. It is not. It is architectural.

Calls for resistance often misrecognize the medium. The algorithm is not a policy that can be reversed. It is a substrate. It governs from below. To abolish it would require a total systemic rupture—economic, infrastructural, psychological.

There is no exit without collapse aka nuclear war. There is no return without fantasy… a utopia.

We need Timenergy.