[HN Gopher] Postscript on the Societies of Control (1990)
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Postscript on the Societies of Control (1990)
Author : fogus
Score : 67 points
Date : 2022-01-13 15:28 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (theanarchistlibrary.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (theanarchistlibrary.org)
| Animats wrote:
| (1990)
| dang wrote:
| Added. Thanks!
| just_steve_h wrote:
| This is fantastic. I must quote from the conclusion:
|
| "Can we already grasp the rough outlines of these coming forms,
| capable of threatening the joys of marketing? Many young people
| strangely boast of being 'motivated'; they re-request
| apprenticeships and permanent training. It's up to them to
| discover what they're being made to serve..."
| steveklabnik wrote:
| This essay had a tremendous impact on me when I first read it.
| Deleuze died in 1995, and so didn't really get to see the rise of
| the web, but I've always wondered what he'd write about it...
| motohagiography wrote:
| To me, I saw it as "Bentham's panopticon reified" and the rest
| was flourish. I'd be interested in someones view of the hidden
| depth of it. What grabbed you about it at the time?
| nomadpenguin wrote:
| "Bentham's panopticon reified" is more characteristic of
| Foucault's concept of disciplinary societies, which defined
| the 20th century. Deleuze's project here is to extend it into
| the 21st century, where the disciplinary society changes into
| "societies of control". While both disciplinary and control
| societies rely on surveillance, disciplinary societies create
| compliance through the threat (if not the execution) of
| punishment, while control societies create compliance through
| nudges and dark patterns. Disciplinary societies have
| centralized locations of power (the factory, the school, and
| the barracks), while in control societies, power is
| decentralized -- both everywhere and nowhere at once
| (algorithms, workplace encouraged education and health
| initiatives, etc).
|
| Furthermore, while disciplinary power creates classes of
| individuals to control and marginalize (based on race, class,
| etc.), under neoliberal control societies, all individuals
| are prima facie accepted. This is not because the control
| society is less coercive, but because control is exerted at
| the sub-individual level -- think how advertising algorithms
| assign each person a constellation of tags which are used to
| structure their online experience.
| steveklabnik wrote:
| I mean, in one sense, a significant amount of philosophy is
| "some other person's work but with a twist." "All of Western
| philosophy is but a footnote to Plato." and all that.
|
| But sure, Bentham is a huge influence here; Deleuze is moving
| forward Foucault's "disciplinary society" concept into the
| "control society" concept presented here, and Foucault's use
| of the panopticon is such a meme that even folks who aren't
| particularly into this stuff often know that it exists.
|
| My sibling commentor has it exactly right:
|
| > disciplinary societies create compliance through the threat
| (if not the execution) of punishment, while control societies
| create compliance through nudges and dark patterns.
|
| There's like, a thousand different reasons that this essay
| meant something to me at the time, but one of them was that I
| happened to come across this at the time that the industry
| was getting really into gamification.
|
| To continue to piggyback off of nomadpenguin:
|
| > in control societies, power is decentralized -- both
| everywhere and nowhere at once (algorithms, workplace
| encouraged education and health initiatives, etc).
|
| I didn't really appreciate the increasing amount (in both
| number and degree) of algorithmic control over our lives
| until reading this essay. I mean, on some level I saw it
| happening, but I really, truly started seeing it after this.
| hsavit1 wrote:
| This video on Deleuze and control societies feels particularly
| relevant https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hu4Cq_-
| bLlY&ab_channel=Plast...
| steveklabnik wrote:
| Thanks for sharing, I enjoyed this quite a bit. It's probably
| more conceptually accessible for hn's audience too.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| The one piece that had the most impact on me on the topic of
| control societies is Nick Land's Meltdown, and a lot of his
| CCRU stuff from his academic days explicitly deals with Deleuze
| after all.
|
| http://www.ccru.net/swarm1/1_melt.htm
|
| It's incredible to me that this was published in 1995 rereading
| it today.
| steveklabnik wrote:
| I'm... more familiar with Land's more recent works, but in my
| understanding that is a more recent turn, and the CCRU stuff
| I'd find more agreeable, but I haven't gotten around to it.
| I'll read this later, thank you.
| hidudeurcool wrote:
| carapace wrote:
| edit: I was wrong, see below.
|
| - - - -
|
| I have since misplaced it, but there's a book on the history of
| the computer wherein a conversation with Babbage was quoted. He
| was asked something like, "So the engine is the perfection of the
| executive?", and he agreed. That phrase, "the perfection of the
| executive", has stayed with me.
|
| The "executive" in this sense means the "part of government that
| enforces law, and has responsibility for the governance of a
| state." ~https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_(government) In
| other words _control_. Babbage and his interlocutor saw the
| computer as the perfection of control in the political sense, and
| I think we 're seeing that unfold today before our eyes.
| cafard wrote:
| He was -- or rather his correspondent was--speaking of
| mathematics:
|
| """
|
| In 1840 I received from my friend M. Plana a letter pressing me
| strongly to visit Turin at the then approaching meeting of
| Italian philosophers. In that letter M. Plana stated that he
| had inquired anxiously of many of my countrymen about the power
| and mechanism of the Analytical Engine. He remarked that from
| all the information he could collect the case seemed to stand
| thus:--
|
| "Hitherto the _legislative_ department of our analysis has been
| all powerful--the _executive_ all feeble.
|
| "Your engine seems to give us the same control over the
| executive which we have hitherto only possessed over the
| legislative department."
|
| """
|
| _Passages From the Life of a Philosopher_
| (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/57532/57532-0.txt)
| carapace wrote:
| Ah! Thank you for clearing that up. Cheers!
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| That extra historical context provides some fascinating depth
| to setting of The Difference Engine (1990).
| uberdru wrote:
| The rhizome will set you free.
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