In recent months I have become what you could describe as a Cyberfl\u00e2neur. Escaping the prison of my desk-bound workplace by indulging in daily digital drifts. My drifts take place not in the streets but in the distorted, glitchie and copywritten representation of urban life that is Google Street View. Unlike the fl\u00e2neurs of 19th century Paris, I am neither a dandy nor a man of leisure. My drifts are an act of theft, of subversion and escape. I steal time back from a system that enslaves me to work for poverty wages in what has become one of the most expensive cities on Earth, London. Condemned to confining my body to the same two metre squared space day after day, repeating the same banal digital tasks. Repetitive data entry causes permanent strain in my right wrist and shoulder. My back is contorted, a continual source of discomfort. My mind is dull, a permanent haze of depression hangs thick throughout the office. This is not some personal affliction; it is a collective flattening of mood than can be sensed as you enter the four digit security code that grants access. While you may initially attempt to protect yourself from the melancholy, it seeps into your very being. This is the emergent affect that arises from an open plan design within which the openness and visibility is used as a form of discipline. Office workers have become adept at covering their mental wanderings. The shift from Facebook, online shopping or some other distraction to a work related screen can be achieved in a blink. My distraction, my escape, has become the digital drift.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"