Societies of Control

'The conception of a control mechanism, giving the position of any element within an open environment at any given instant (whether animal in a reserve or human in a corporation, as with an electronic collar), is not necessarily one of science fiction. Felix Guattari has imagined a city where one would be able to leave one's apartment, one's street, one's neighbourhood, thanks to one's (dividual) electronic card that raises a given barrier; but the card could just as easily be rejected on a given day or between certain hours; what counts is not the barrier but the computer that tracks each person's position - licit or illicit - and effects a universal modulation' 


Just a few observations...
- Everyday life becoming codified and regulated, controlling, not as a material force, but through different and new forms of technology.
- Interesting to think that there is longer these distinct zones in which we enter and leave, we are constantly and perpetually occupying several zones in contemporary society - we never finish working, we never finish socializing, we never finish learning - it is perpetual and constant, and they over-lap and over-lay:


In the disciplinary societies one was always starting again (from school to the barracks, from the barracks to the factory), while in the societies of control one is never finished with anything--the corporation, the educational system, the armed services being metastable states coexisting in one and the same modulation, like a universal system of deformation.

And even looking at an image from a mobile phone, you can begin to see how within even a menu it encapsulates this collapsing of disciplinary socities, with work, education and socila work co-existing (to name a few):

- But in the end new technoliges impose new forms of control and regulation on our lives - e-mail - for example - we can always be contacted outside work - do you ever finish working? and these new forms of technology in turn change how you live your life and go about living your everyday.
- These codifed technolgies in a sense impose and regulate you, and in a sense collapse the differences between different sections of life - we no longer live in disciplinary socities (where we are controlled by seperate institutions) - but socities of control - where new technologies lead to multiple sources of control, which are constant.


'The disciplinary man was a discontinuous producer of energy, but the man of control is undulatory, in orbit, in a continuous network. Everywhere surfing has already replaced the older sports.'

Key thing to look at now: how could I visualize this?

People to read:

http://www.humanities.uci.edu/mposter/writings/internet.html