I can’t stand it, I know you planned it
I’m gonna set it straight, this Watergate
I can’t stand rocking when I’m in here
‘Cause your crystal ball ain’t so crystal clear
So while you sit back and wonder why
I got this fucking thorn in my side
Oh my God, it’s a mirage
I’m tellin’ y’all, it’s a sabotage
-Beastie Boys, Sabotage
 
Sabotage the institution; push back; return to materiality; have fun while doing it. Techno Ludens. This is the sentiment around an ongoing microcosmic instance of institutional resistance I am engaging in at the Hogeschool van Amsterdam (HvA). It starts without significant transgression, filling out those same and familiar bureaucratic forms necessary for formalizing and categorizing employment. Name, birth date, phone number, et cetera.
The employed/able subject is shifted in place on that grand digital dashboard from Human Resources to Administration Centre Service Desk. Like a game piece moved one space. Two-step verification, necessary for access into the online employee portals, is the first instance of necessity of application induction. Microsoft Authenticator. The second? Access behind the locked doors of the HvA medewerker site and obtainment of identification card. Tiqr. The reflexive affective antagonism to a vertical decision-making apparatus directing one to download an application is, of course, justified. And so in this rejection comes a fork in the road: you can look for means to download the applications through abnormal modes (not ideal), or you can subvert the seeming ubiquity of digitalized employment modalities and seek out physical-hardware alternatives (more ideal).
Prong one of the fork, sideline the predetermined application downloading apparatus and install the .apk file directly. Attempted, and was unsuccessful. The reason why? Unknown. Irregardless, this can be acceptable for the likes of Tiqr, yet Microsoft Authenticator presents itself an imminent danger to the autonomy of the user and this application’s attachment to ones device(s) should be avoided when- and where- ever possible.
Prong two of the fork, pursue alterity. For Tiqr: go to the IT desk two floors below, ask about an alternative to the application. I am informed of the potential to get a YubiKey, a physical authenticator to be plugged into a USB port. Nice. I am informed by the IT desk that I should call IT for further information. I call IT. No wait time. Nice. IT informs me that I can request one via the service portal, and need approval from my manager. I ask a coworker who my manager is, and we decide Geert Lovink can be as director of the INC. Go to Geert, who encourages institutional sabotage. He writes me a letter noting his approval of my request for YubiKey plenitude, prints it out at the printer, shows me through his office window where the central IT and Service Desk is. I’m giddy with excitement. Techno ludens. This printing out of the paper is materializing both the rhetorical request and the political desire it remains indicative of. The physicality of this letter and the action of walking to a desk, one normally reached via phone call and email, brings a ludic twist to this nonetheless serious moral commitment to resisting that imposition of ineffective and exploitative digitalization which penetrates the everyday.
I arrive at the desk, first jaywalking across the street, because I’m cool as fuck. Techno ludens. My situation is described to one person, who after carefully listening, tells me he can’t help me and I need to ring the bell to speak with another. 3 paces to my left is a grubby white electronic doorbell. Press the silicon covered button and a bell noise is made. How is this in any way preferable to a real bell? Someone walks down the stairs, and listens to my story with as much care as the one before him. A third person arrives. Three feels slightly unnecessary. I show my paper letter from Dr. Geert Lovink, stating: “I hereby ask you to provide our intern/stagaire Noah Pelikaan with a yubikey, the authenticator that replaces the Tiqr app”. I am told, first of all, that the YubiKeys are ‘right over there’ as he points to a desk directly behind him. Within a 3 meter distance. I could hop over this service desk. Run. Open a drawer, grab a key, duck and weave, escape free as ever, victorious, YubiKey in hand. No one could stop me. But I don’t. That would be crazy. Who would do something like that, seriously. Do normaal.
After being shown the physical locality where my object of desire is stored, in a perverse twist, I am given the email of a different IT personnel who I am informed can order it for me. So close, yet so far. Žižek describes the objet petit a like so: “[i]n Lacanian terms… the objet petit a operates as the cause of desire. It is the ‘lost object’ which perpetually haunts the subject, preventing it from ever achieving full satisfaction.” (“The Sublime Object of Ideology” 93). YubiKey Hauntology.
I return to my office, base of operations. Email the one I am directed to, Carbon Copy (CC) Geert (isn’t it funny how abstracted that abbreviation has become?), attach his letter, yet this time it has been scanned into a PDF– a cyclical fate as the online doc became-material only to become-digital once again, and its materialization is left moot. An awkward mid-point of the cycle, now destined to enter a binder of files, one amongst many, yet sticking around as a material reminder of its temporal-affectual association. How fun. Techno ludens.
This is it, the response has arrived in my inbox, the number of unread emails– which I avoid rigorously– has morphed; shifted, from 50 to 51. Big moves in the works. This process, taking place over the past week, has reached its pivotal moment, its tipping point, will it be an event of cathartic resolution or the event of hamartia? The emailed IT individual responds with one line, and a link to an online site to order the YubiKey. I am blocked from this linked site, as I need authentication (such as YubiKey) to access it. I respond, as does he. Have a coworker fill it out for me. He would, but he’s gone on vacation tomorrow and won’t be able to help in case of an issue. A nice familial reminder of the human generative aspect of The Online Portal. Ha. And this is where I am now. Still without YubiKey, soon to ask a coworker to fill it out for me. And still ages away from engaging in a search for a physical alternative to Microsoft Authenticator. A good use of my time, right? Or a fun one, at least. Informational, playful. Techno ludens. I regret nothing.
 
Beastie Boys. “Sabotage”, Ill Communication. Grand Royal, 1994.
Žižek, Slavoj. The Sublime Object of Ideology. Verso Books, 1989.