User:Menno Harder/Annotations
Postscript on the Societies of Control * Gilles Deleuze *
Foucault located the disciplinary societies in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; they reach their height at the outset of the twentieth. In this society the individual passes from one closed environment to the other. These are (in order of time) the family, the school, the barracks, the factory, sometimes the hospital and maybe a prison. Each of these environments has it's own laws. Foucault realised the change of society: from a society of sovereignty (to tax rather than organising production, to rule on death rather than to administer life) to a society of discipline. Napoleon seemed to have great effect on this change. After WWII there was another shift of society. The environments (prison, hospital, factory, school, family) are constantly being reformed but the institutions themselves are actually known and in a finished state. When new people arrive in these environments changes can be made. These are called the societies of control, and they are replacing the disciplinary societies.
The spaces of enclosure through which an individual passes are analogical (previous concepts/ideas are being compared to the new, providing information and understanding for it). The enclosures change from within but stay the shape as we know them. In a society of control the corporation replaces the factory. The corporation modulates each salary by having contests, challenges, giving bonuses to certain individuals etc. In disciplinary societies you would start from the beginning while switching enclosures, in a society of control you are never finished. There are two stages in both societies that are fearsome: The apparent acquittal stage in the disciplinary society (being in-between enclosures) and the limitless postponements in the society of control. Control is continuously changing and evolving into new shapes, while discipline was of longer duration, infinite and discontinuing.
For each system examples are giving of the change from disciplinary to control. Prison system: new ways of punishment, wearing electronic collars or doing tasks for the municipality. School system: Abandonment of university research, never-ending training, introduction of the corporation in school. Hospital system: New medicines without the need for a doctor or patient. Corporate system: (see logic)
Future Map * Brian Holmes *
The scientist Norbert Wiener ask himself the question: can any creator play a game with his own creature? Example: A computer program for playing checkers.
Feedback loops are a model of learning for both animals and machines. This is called cybernetics, where the machine (or animal) can learn by action as to improve himself the more he operates. Von Neumann, a mathematical expert, tried to explore rational strategies for any two-player game by calculating all the next moves the other player can do. Wiener thought this was outdated and preferred statistical analysis, and learning from mistakes instead of absolute certainty.
Negative feedback is done by observing errors that are made in a certain pattern of behaviour, and learning to reduce these actions continuously.
Can we as humans play a game with the cybernetic society that has created us, as we too are actually programmed by a society of control. Serving as targets for products, services, political slogans or interventions of the police.
Surveillance systems rely on predictive algorithms and are constantly expanded and improved. This is completely reshaping our world, it is no longer based on debate and democracy but on electronic identification, statistical prediction and environmental seduction. The environment is over-coded with an optimising algorithm, with data coming directly from yourself.
The panopticon society is outdated but has things in common with today's society: the functionary watching the prisoner is compared to the professional reforming and training the individual in society, and the prisoner being this individual. Today's society is being controlled by the constant flow of data that is statistically treated. It is not a society that transforms, punishes or saves individuals (as in a disciplinary society) but a society of control, where the machine is being optimised.
An imaginary future can be explored by understanding what might happen because of prediction. A paste chain of events might happen again when you realise first steps have been taken. One of the problems about future maps is that it wants to eradicate deviant behaviour, thus shaping the participants in it. Our society wants to control the future, and this has consequences. Anticipated desires are fulfilled by predicting the future, eliminating desire at that moment. The removal of individuals who oppose against this way of control is another problem.