User:Thalia de Jong/Synopsis Societies of Control: Difference between revisions

Latest revision as of 17:54, 14 October 2012

A postscript written by Gilles Deleuze on Michel Foucaults theory on 'Societies of Control'.

Our society was once a societey of vast controlled spaces, where people would push from one environment to another in the cycle of growing up and growing old. Foucault calls them disciplinary societies and describes how in the 18th and 19th century we were all brought up within a strict order of institutions. Starting with family, then school, then the military, the factory and eventually the hospital, with a possible detour along the way where one was most obivously in a disciplined environment: prison.

Todays liberal society is no longer directly controlled like that. These days, we are being steered by a more free floating "society of control". The factory is now a corporation and the fellow labourer a new colleague. A collegue that we are always competing with. And in order to do so, we have to continue improving ourselves and our skills, so that nowadays school is never out. In the "society of control", one is never finished with anything.

The shift in control is visble in all parts of our society. In justice, it becomes harder and harder to pinpoint crimes to the individual, since we are all part of an ever changing and ongoing mass. And it is extremely visible in money, that once was valued in the worth of gold. Now we have floating rates of exchange that are becoming harder and harder to follow.

The very computerized "society of control" thrives because it is able to work with abstract data, instead of tangible material. Production can be done in the third world, while the real money is made in selling and marketing the product.

It's hard to really see the way that our society is shifting, even though it has such a great impact on our lives. Control is no longer a shape that is static and unionizing like our elders once did, will probably not be durable.

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+A postscript written by Gilles Deleuze on Michel Foucaults theory on 'Societies of Control'.
-Chapter 1: Historical
+Our society was once a societey of vast controlled spaces, where people would push from one environment to another in the cycle of growing up and growing old. Foucault calls them ''disciplinary societies'' and describes how in the 18th and 19th century we were all brought up within a strict order of institutions. Starting with family, then school, then the military, the factory and eventually the hospital, with a possible detour along the way where one was most obivously in a disciplined environment: prison.
-Foucault has concluded that the individual living in the beginning of the 20th century was controlled in vast spaces of enclosure such as the family, school, the military, the factory, the hospital and most obviously prison. But these institutions will soon be replaced by others that are not so clearly enclosed.  We are moving towards different societies of control that might be equally confining and we need to find ways to fight against that.
-Chapter 2: Logic
+Todays liberal society is no longer directly controlled like that. These days, we are being steered by a more free floating "society of control". The factory is now a corporation and the fellow labourer a new colleague. A collegue that we are always competing with. And in order to do so, we have to continue improving ourselves and our skills, so that nowadays school is never out. In the "society of control", one is never finished with anything.
-The new of control consist of independent variables, that are ever changing. As the vast space of a factory has changed to a corporate situation, so has the way that salary is earned. The individual is now ever competing with its colleagues. Therefore also he does not move from the vast space of school to factory, but receives a perpetual education, in order to keep rivaling the co-worker. Examination at the end of an education no longer exists, but is ongoing. In the societies of control, one is never finished with anything.
-The shifts are visible in many more systems such as the justice system, and the economic system. Control is of short-term and of rapid rates of turnover, but also continuous and without limit, while discipline was of long duration, infinite and discontinuous. Man is no longer man enclosed, but man in debt.
-Chapter 3: Program
+The shift in control is visble in all parts of our society. In justice, it becomes harder and harder to pinpoint crimes to the individual, since we are all part of an ever changing and ongoing mass. And it is extremely visible in money, that once was valued in the worth of gold. Now we have floating rates of exchange that are becoming harder and harder to follow.
-The mechanisms of control, that are already replacing the enclosed spaces need to be studied. Perhaps adjusted methods will again take their place, from older societies as the sovereign ones.
-''What will the youngsters do?  I don’t know! I don’t understand the last bit about the ‘joys of marketing’ and kids that proclaim to be motivated, though I am slightly curious if I myself am being addressed here…''
+The very computerized "society of control" thrives because it is able to work with abstract data, instead of tangible material. Production can be done in the third world, while the real money is made in selling and marketing the product.
+It's hard to really see the way that our society is shifting, even though it has such a great impact on our lives. Control is no longer a shape that is static and unionizing like our elders once did, will probably not be durable.