Processed World


Processed World is an anarchist magazine about the absurdity of modern office work. The magazine was founded by Chris Carlsson in 1981. No new issues have been produced since 2005.
The print magazine was widely distributed to and read by office workers in Downtown San Francisco during the years the print magazine was published from 1981 to 1994.

Publication history

Processed World began publication in April 1981 and was printed on an irregular basis, approximately quarterly to semi-annually until Winter 1992. There were 32 published printed issues.
There have subsequently been three more issues published on the Internet — number 33 in 1995, and two more issues, one in 2000 and one in 2005. These last two issues are numbered 2.001 and 2.005. All of the issues of the magazine are now available online.

Themes

The magazine is about the absurdity and futility of modern employment practices in which a large number of college-educated people are often forced to seek temporary work with no employee benefits. The magazine details the subversive attitudes and sense of humor required for workers to be able to get through the day when forced to perform dull, degrading and boring work as wage slaves doing modern office work such as working as a computer programmer, word processor, call center operator, data entry operator, telemarketer or file clerk.

Contributors

Writers that have had work published by the magazine include founder Carlsson, Greg Williamson, Jim Swanson, Fred Rinne, Adam Cornford, John Norton, Jesse Drew, and Donna Kossy. The magazine featured cartoons by artists such as Tom Tomorrow, Melinda Gebbie, Ted Rall, Jay Kinney, and Paul Mavrides.
Many of the magazine's contributors adopted pseudonyms to avoid retribution from potential employers.