Infocracy

Information regimes are tied to information capitalism, which develops into surveillance capitalism and reduces human beings to consumer cattle that provide data.

Information capitalism uses communication and interconnectedness, rendering obsolete the disciplinary techniques of spatial isolation, the strict regulation of work, and physical training.

Every form of rule pursues a specific politics of visibility. For a sovereign regime, ostentatious demonstrations of power are essential.

The hangman and the condemned are actors, and the public space is a stage. The power of sovereignty works through theatrical visibility.

When freedom and surveillance coincide, domination becomes complete.

Whereas the inmates of the disciplinary panopticon try to avoid visibility, the subjects of the information regime actually desire it.

Transparency is the systemic compulsion of the information regime. The imperative of transparency is: everything has to be available as information.

The imperative of transparency is that information must circulate freely. It is not people but information that is truly free.

By communicating and producing information, they shackle themselves. The digital prison is transparent.

Transparency itself is not transparent. There is a reverse side to it. The engine room of transparency lies in the dark. We surrender to the growing power of the algorithmic black box.

Where the power technologies of the disciplinary regime worked with compulsion and prohibition, the neoliberal ones work with positive incentives. They exploit freedom instead of repressing it. They control our will at an unconscious level instead of violently breaking it.

Where the power technologies of the disciplinary regime worked with compulsion and prohibition, the neoliberal ones work with positive incentives. They exploit freedom instead of repressing it. They control our will at an unconscious level instead of violently breaking it. Repressive disciplinary power gives way to smart power, a power that does not give orders but whispers, that does not command but nudges.

Whereas people use ad-blockers to remove conventional advertisements on YouTube, they intentionally seek out the influencers’ ads.

We consume ourselves to death while realizing ourselves to death. Consumption and identity become one. Identity itself becomes a commodity.

Fingers, by themselves, are not capable of genuine action. They are only an organ for making consumer choices. Consumption and revolution exclude each other.

The highest priority is to provide entertainment, and this also becomes the priority in politics:

What counts in televised debates is not the quality of the argument but the performance. The speaking time for presidential candidates is severely limited. They change the way they speak. The candidate with the better self-presentation wins the election.