User:Jules/hybridtext

Foucault defined his use of the term dispositif (apparatus) in 1977:

What I’m trying to pick out with this term is, firstly, a thoroughly heterogenous ensemble consisting of discourses, institutions, architectural forms, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative measures, scientific statements, philosophical, moral and philanthropic propositions–in short, the said as much as the unsaid. Such are the elements of the apparatus. The apparatus itself is the system of relations that can be established between these elements.
Secondly, what I am trying to identify in this apparatus is precisely the nature of the connection that can exist between these heterogenous elements. Thus, a particular discourse can figure at one time as the programme of an institution, and at another it can function as a means of justifying or masking a practice which itself remains silent, or as a secondary re-interpretation of this practice, opening out for it a new field of rationality.
In short, between these elements, whether discursive or non-discursive, there is a sort of interplay of shifts of position and modifications of function which can also vary very widely.
Thirdly, I understand by the term “apparatus” a sort of–shall we say–formation which has as its major function at a given historical moment that of responding to an urgent need. The apparatus thus has a dominant strategic function. This may have been, for example, the assimilation of a floating population found to be burdensome for an essentially mercantilist economy: there was a strategic imperative acting here as the matrix for an apparatus which gradually undertook the control or subjection of madness, sexual illness and neurosis.

“The Confession of the Flesh” (1977) interview. In Power/Knowledge Selected Interviews and Other Writings (ed Colin Gordon), 1980: pp. 194-228. This interview was conducted by a round-table of historians.

I think that this explanation by Foucault himself of the concept of an apparatus is a good starting point to review what we have been analysing over the last few weeks. What links the dots all together is the question on how the means of observing the individuals have reshaped authority. We can see a relation between observation, authority and the social infrastructures of their own time. An infrastructure is defined by all the interconnected elements composing the frame that will support the organisation of the elements of a system between themselves. It enables the system to function in such a way. Like a performative cast. “We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us” - Father John Culkin

In the means of correct training, Michel Foucault Describes the infrastructure supporting a model of society based on Discipline. Discipline evokes the notion of teaching (discere), the authority trained the citizens to regulate their behaviour. In this society model, observation was hierarchical, implying linearity, levelage (elements are subordinated to another). This can be traced in the architectural constructions revealing that model of functioning. Schools, Factories, military camp and others were planed to enable a certain control and training of the citizens. “Public” buildings had to enable the circulation of the humans and of the eye of the observer together. The most famous example is the structure of the Panopticon, designed by Jeremy Bentham in the XVIII's century. The design enabled one single watcher to observe all the prisoners at a time, while they could not see their inmates nor if they were being watched. Within those structures and according to them, judgement would be normalised through the methods of punishment and rewarding. These assets had to be relevant to the perimeter of enclosure and encourage people to behave according to the protocol.

Following the work engaged by Foucault, Gilles Deleuze points that Disciplinary society model has stopped prevailing with the mutation of capitalism. The frontiers of the enclosed systems defined by Foucault have started crumbling. This is an important point as economy is an important factor (Economy comes from the Grec Oikonomia, household management). It establishes the conditions of the circulation of the eye of the viewer in accordance with it.
Sovereign models implied trade with the outside, the structures had to be seen and to see the outside as the exchanges were happening at the frontier between the in and out of the structures. The disciplinary model corresponds to industrial revolution, capitalism of production. The products started to be manufactured implying that the citizens had to assmilate a "savoir faire". The architecture had to relocate the eye of the viewer to the inside the states to ensure the production of capital goods.

New media have changed the spatio temporal dimensions within the life of the individuals. Within the society of discipline, reality still had to be experienced through transportation, everything was still more or less physically embodied or at least linear and fairly local (in the production). The pace of displacement of a human body was prevailing. And even the telephone, radio or tv broadcasts were enclosed into national territories. What happens with networked telecommunication is a reconfiguration of the social space. We got given the possibility of extending our action spectrum in a multidirectional way, on a wider scale. We can therefore establish connections with things depending on our immediate needs, as they are all available everywhere, all the time. (that's probably why Pseudo didn't work, people might establish their own program schedule not just pick a channel as if they were watching tv)

"At first, no doubt, only the reproduction and transmission of works of art will be affected. It will be possible to send anywhere or to re-create anywhere a system of sensations, or more precisely a system of stimuli, provoked by some object or event in any given place. Works of art will acquire a kind of ubiquity. We shall only have to summon them and there they will be…They will not merely exist in themselves but will exist wherever someone with a certain apparatus happens to be. (...) Just as water, gas and electricity are brought into our houses from far off to satisfy our needs in response to a minimal effort, so we shall be supplied with visual or auditory images, which will appear and disappear at a simple movement of the hand, hardly more than a sign. (...) Just as we are accustomed, if not enslaved, to the various forms of energy that pour into our homes, we shall find it perfectly natural to receive the ultrarapid variations or oscillations that our sense organs gather in and integrate to form all we know. I do not know whether a philosopher has ever dreamed of a company engaged in the home delivery of Sensory Reality" Paul Valery, the Conquest of Ubiquity, 1928

As Paul Valery's prediction highlights it here, we don't need to go to things anymore but we can bring things to us. -TO COMMENT MOAAR_ We can bring them into the place in time we have established individually and not have to adapt to a compromising schedule. We are not creating a whole body with the others through which we individualise ourselves. -BLABLABLA- The very infrastructure is a Network of Networks, which doesn't put up walls around the individuals but rather flattens out all the institutions which had their particularities as the authority was head of nations.

FLATTENING IN PRACTICE - AUTHORITY'S LANDSCAPE The 3rd episode of Black Mirror's 2nd seasons “The Waldo Effect”, of a flattening of the political representation around the world. -BLABLA-_ The way nations have started to implement international organisations after the second world war, like networks of nations (EU, NATO, IMF, OCDE). Cryptocurrencies seem to prefigure the future of money transactions. English is also the language of the Internet, as it is a vector of World Wide interpersonal communication but also appears to be one material of its infrastructure. We can perfect our knowledge on various topics like through Coursera's free online classes, which will deliver a certificate in the end of the training. - obviously this links with Deleuze's idea that perpetual training would be the “surrest way of delivering the school over to the corporation" - By hiding behind Waldo, corporations can affect people's behaviour without the need of one established representative of a political party.
The interesting thing with the term corporation is the evocation of the formation of “into a corps/body”. It doesn't have to be just one person but an association of a composition that can organically evolve.

WHAT ENABLES PRACTISE OF AUTHORITY/ HOW SURVEILLANCE IS BEING OPERATED
By giving the means for creating
The eye of the citizen is constrained to what the interfaces surrounding him want to show about themselves. Which is to say that we know how to make good use of them but not aware of the way

WHO PRACTISES AUTHORITY - THE OBSERVER(S)
Respecting the word's etymology, if authority is now being practised by corporations, it is therefore the result of collaboration of individuals as an entity.

Wikipedia example
White bear punishing collectively
Paranoia roleplay
We live in public

perhaps

Dystopia and speculation. In French there is the appellation “anticipation” as a genre which would encompass 1984, Blade Runner , A.I. – Black mirror, parano. Be Parano.be is a belgian social network started in 2003, still in . The concept was taken from a roleplaying game called paranoia. Coursera is a “for-profit” educational technology company.

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