Deleuze and the digital
- In his short and often quoted essay 'Postscript on the Societies of Control', Gilles Deleuze famously describes the structures of power in the dawning twenty-first century as driven by 'machines of a third type, computers', as novel and predominantly digital infrastructures. In fact, from a Deleuzian perspective the entire ecosystem of the digital transformation can be described as a larger shift in modes of production and the political economy. This essay proposes to read this 'technological evolution' as the power of algorithms and their material substance - digital infrastructures that entail a different mode of interaction between humans and technology. In looking at these infrastructures from a materialist position, my essay reconceptualises the digital as the unfolding logic of assemblages that have been shaping a 'long now' of technological modernity. In bringing a Deleuzian reading of infrastructures to the study of technology and society, this essay seeks to shed a new light on the political function-and the increasingIn his short and often quoted essay 'Postscript on the Societies of Control', Gilles Deleuze famously describes the structures of power in the dawning twenty-first century as driven by 'machines of a third type, computers', as novel and predominantly digital infrastructures. In fact, from a Deleuzian perspective the entire ecosystem of the digital transformation can be described as a larger shift in modes of production and the political economy. This essay proposes to read this 'technological evolution' as the power of algorithms and their material substance - digital infrastructures that entail a different mode of interaction between humans and technology. In looking at these infrastructures from a materialist position, my essay reconceptualises the digital as the unfolding logic of assemblages that have been shaping a 'long now' of technological modernity. In bringing a Deleuzian reading of infrastructures to the study of technology and society, this essay seeks to shed a new light on the political function-and the increasing abstraction-of infrastructures in the realm of the digital.…
Author details: | Dennis MischkeORCiDGND |
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DOI: | https://doi.org/10.3366/dlgs.2021.0459 |
ISSN: | 2398-9777 |
ISSN: | 2398-9785 |
Title of parent work (English): | Deleuze and Guattari studies |
Subtitle (English): | on the materiality of algorithmic infrastructures |
Publisher: | Edinburgh University Press |
Place of publishing: | Edinburgh |
Publication type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Date of first publication: | 2021/11/01 |
Publication year: | 2021 |
Release date: | 2023/02/01 |
Tag: | abstract machines; algorithms; assemblages; critical infrastructure studies; culture and; digital materialism; societies of control |
Volume: | 15 |
Issue: | 4 |
Number of pages: | 17 |
First page: | 593 |
Last Page: | 609 |
Organizational units: | Philosophische Fakultät / Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik |
DDC classification: | 1 Philosophie und Psychologie / 10 Philosophie / 100 Philosophie und Psychologie |
Peer review: | Referiert |