User:Lassebosch/reading writing methodologies/Annotations

Annotation 1): 'Postscript on Societies of Control'

A postscript written by Gilles Deleuze on Michel Foucaults theory on 'societies of control'. The text explores the motion from what Foucault describes as 'disciplinary societies' towards 'societies of control'. Throughout the postscript these two mentioned types of societies are discussed by comparison on several topics, Deleuze underlining the transition of one type society to another.
The disciplinary society is characterized by constant enclosure of the individual in various spaces/institutions. The individual passes from one type of enclosure to another; from 'the family, the school (“you are no longer in your family”, the barracks (“you are no longer in school”)...'. The core of this society is to concentrate; to distribute in space; to order in time, and to master 'space-time' with a potential greater than the sum of its 'components'.
Deleuze continues to describe a crisis in relation to these spaces of enclosure; the dissolving of the traditional 'family' and misfiring attempts to reform school systems, armed forces, industries etc. Replacing this expiring system are is society of control. While the society of discipline would mold individuals, the society of control modulates individuals in a continuous changing modulation.
To support this notion a number of topics are discussed shortly ex.: the rise of corporations imposing modulations of each salary, creating internal competitions; the change in usage from machines in simple shapes to complex machines (computers). Others are mentioned as well. Collected this produces the 'man of control', surfing in a continuous network in orbit and circulation, constantly under a data-based surveillance.

Annotation 2): 'Future Map'

An essay undertaking a longer introduction of the influence of cybernetics in society. The author, Brian Holmes, describes Norbert Wieners research during WWII on the 'aircraft predictor', an anti-aircraft system (AA) that would 1) record an evasive maneuvering enemy aircraft, 2) calculate probabilities of future course based on previous behavior and 3) correct firing trough a servo-mechanism all in a continuous loop.
It is nessecary to assimilate the different parts (AA-gun (machine), gunner (human), aircraft (machine), pilot (human)) in one cybernetic system, which in both cases - aircraft-prespective/AA-perspective - operators seemed to regulate their conduct by observing patterns of the (enemy) and seeking to oppose these 'errors' tending to reduce them. Holmes uses Peter Galisons expression; “the ontology of the enemy” to describe this game of prediction. The ontology of the enemy becomes a central reference in the essay.
Predictive algorithms are applied in multiple modes: from military to marketing, and Holmes stresses the growing reliance on data to predict future scenarios. By example the term 'FutureMAP' refers to the joint military and financial-market project; a precise and yet insane readjustment of what Foucault called “the system of correlation between juridico-legal mechanisms, disciplinary mechanisms, and mechanisms of security.”
The groups goal was to map and predict the potential future for several middle-eastern countries offering precise insight into the dynamics of surveillance under cybernetic capitalism. It is not a police program, but a market instituted in such a way as to precisely condition the free behavior of its participants. It produces information while turning human actors into functional relays, or indeed, into servomechanisms; and it “consumes freedom” for a purpose.
It is the seeding of the human mind by precise yet dubious calculations and the continuous attempt to predict the minds next move (the ontology of the enemy), offering a profitable future solution, that Holmes critically arrests the cybernetic society for.