YouTube Transcript: Deleuze - Control Societies & Cybernetic Posthumanism
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The content explores Gilles Deleuze's concept of "societies of control," arguing that technological advancements, particularly networked computing, are shifting societal control from disciplinary methods (enclosed spaces, physical discipline) to more fluid, data-driven mechanisms that modulate access and shape future possibilities.
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the time has come my dearest friends to
talk of many things
of rhizomes nomads territories and of
capitalist state machines
i delayed starting on duluz because i
needed to get a better sense of this
medium because delis is not a topic i
want to do poorly
though it is something i promised a long
time ago
thanks for your patience ender i'm
starting with a short essay here called postscript
postscript
on the societies of control now i just
got to mention real quick here that cuck
philosophy has done a video explaining
societies of control
this short essay by delis published in
the early 90s
his video is a great explainer and
because of that i'm going to avoid
covering the same ground other than some
cursory definitions
so if i rush through any bit too much
you may want to refer to his video which
is more
step by step i'm going a little
elsewhere with it
referring back to the groundwork i laid
in my video on post-humanism
deliza's thesis here is that
technological development and network
computing in particular
undermines corporeal enclosure and
individual human agency
the world is run by machines
not something like human free will
incidentally this is something
conspiracy theories almost always get
wrong now wait machines
here may not mean what you expect they
are not
just calculators cars and computers
machines more generally are systems of information
information
processing that interpret and remake the
world according to their particular
logics society is made up of many such machines
machines
social political bureaucratic the school system
system
is an education machine the legal system
is the machine of law
in that they use programs to interpret
and categorize
people a student b student
c student there call me a sucker but i
just believe he did his best work
citizen versus criminal
now here are a few things that go into defining
defining
machines a machine may be defined as a
system of interruptions
they operate along lines that vary
according to whichever aspect of them we
are considering
every machine functions as a break in
the flow
in relation to the machine to which it's
connected but at the same time is also a
flow itself
or the production of a flow a few things
to see here
first machines are not things they are processes
processes
they work on inputs and produce outputs
second they make distinctions they
process information
machines have a particular interest in
some part of the world
part that they're designed to interact
with third
the outputs of one machine can be or
usually are the inputs of another
you in this definition are a machine of machines
machines
also some of your machines perceive your
sensory systems
some digests your digestive system other
machines are unconscious such as your desire
desire
each is productive in that it receives information
information
shapes it and feed something back out
sensory feedback desire and
you're an assembly yet as a machine
you're part of social machines you're a
source of input for the education system
you're either a good student a mediocre
student or a bad student
these distinctions are made based on the
data these machines
have on you and as with all machines the
data that they have on you is based on
distinctions and differences that your
behavior has created in the environment
from which they gather their
information if you continuously do what
the system expects
you to do to be a good student you know
put effort into your assignments don't
plagiarize hand in your work on time
then you'll be considered a good student
and you'll get a mark to reflect
that this might seem really basic and
obvious right now but it does represent
a big shift if we look at
other institutions and past institutions
so stay with me
post script on the societies of control
considers the new types of machines
controlling us
and which we submit ourselves to okay
we have three types of societies laid
out first
societies of sovereignty disciplinary societies
societies
and newly or most newly societies of control
control
the distinction between these first two
was made by de lisa's sometimes friend
foucault who theorized the transition
from one to the other
whereas the last one control societies
is de liz's term for something after
disciplinary society
as an aside by the time this essay was
published foucault was already dead but
his later work had moved on
also beyond disciplinary societies to
something called biopower
societies of sovereignty keep people in
place by regulating
death your sovereign or lord has the
right to kill you if you disobey and
otherwise they don't care what you do as
long as you pay your taxes
disciplinary societies conversely
regulate your life
and your body by controlling space a
society of control however
regulates access such that you could not
defy its machines and mechanisms
even if you wanted to this is due in
large part to a high level of technological
technological
automation maybe think of a user account
password as a good example
we are going to be focusing on these two
as that is
the transition that de luz is trying to
map out
we still have disciplinary spaces with us
us
these are spaces that are defined by
enclosures of time or space
authorities and uniforms doctors guards
officers teachers
decide where you can go and where you can't
can't
where you are and what you're doing with
your body is very important
stand up sit down stay in your seat stay
in your bed
stay in your cell only take a half hour break
break
you may think of louis altazer's
ideological state apparatuses
schools in particular are the preeminent model
model
i have a video on that both your
movement and your time are enclosed
by space and schedule and restricted by
the threat of violence from authorities
including teachers prison guards or
hospital orderlies
in a disciplinary society you're given
the burden of
self-discipline that is of voluntarily
voluntarily obeying show up to the
office on time meet your deadlines don't
undermine your superiors
obey the police in each case you have
the choice
only to regulate yourself or be reprimanded
reprimanded
from getting fired to getting a beat
down you are expected to burden yourself
with responsibility to control where you sit
sit
where you stand where you walk then the
state only has to interfere
with your life when you're breaking the rules
rules
flows
yeah that's height now if you know
anything about deliz
you know that his world is not one of
striated spaces
it's a flow energies vectors
everything's always on its way to
something else and control
is no different you're no longer an
individual or a member of a mass of
individuals in a space that needs to be disciplined
disciplined
no now instead you're a dividual which means
means
you're a different source of information
depending on which system
you're interacting with so you are made
up of different flows of information to
the bank
you are your credit score to a
university you are an sat score
to your health insurer you are your genetic
genetic
risk factors to a site like the one
you're on
right now you are your watch history
so let me slow down for a minute here
what are we actually looking at
well for de las these are much more
common types of institutions in advanced capitalism
capitalism
each of these machines collects
information about you
and what happens in each case is that
you're automatically interpreted
then classified by that data by the data
that a machine has about you and others
like you then your access to your own future
future
is limited by what they decide for
example education
still has some disciplinary aspects to
it for sure
but more often the education machine is
not about
obedience but about filtering you if
your parents aren't rich
your s.a.t score determines which tier
of education
you will have access to which in turn
determines which kind of
jobs you have access to which in turn
decides which kinds of lifestyle you
will have access to
you're probably not punished for doing
poorly in school
but it will cut off access to possible futures
futures
your sat score may prove to be your gate
into the job market
which more or less determines your
social capital
ceiling for life but even getting to
this gate has a whole bunch of
other access gates that i haven't
mentioned like whether your parents are
educated and help you with your homework
if they have time to do that or if
they're able to pay for tutoring
for these standardized tests control
societies manage
access to each of these channels you
might be able to guess some of the
problems with these types of control
societies in perpetuating existing inequalities
inequalities
similarly these scores and this other
data determines your ability to borrow money
money
for health coverage and on social media
they prohibit you from calling me a
in the comments because your comment
will be automatically filtered out
see you're not disciplined for calling me
me
but your access to commenting on other
videos may be automatically restricted
by these machines and what's significant
here is that you're not expected to be a
good person you're not expected
to self-discipline because it's all
going to happen automatically
now i'm sure some of you are creative
enough to figure out ways to get around
it but let's
please not try to do that while we
definitely still have disciplinary
systems around us we are increasingly in
a society of control
the world is becoming more and more
automated which allows for greater and
greater control not only of the present
but of the future our personal access
as individuals with bodies become data without
without
bodies individuated traits like your name
name
body or gender are replaced with
non-individuated aggregates
such as scores and risk factors this is
why i have often referred to de las as a post-humanist
post-humanist
contrast this with disciplinary systems
where you are your body
in a space alongside other people's bodies
bodies
there you have to meet with doctors who
look at you and tell you
what you should and shouldn't be doing
instead in a control society you have a watch
watch
that tells you how many steps you should
be taking and how many calories you
should be burning per day based on your
demographic information and you can bet
your health insurer is going to pay
to buy this data to assess your category
of risk
and increase your premiums accordingly
teachers went on strike in the united
states because they're going to be
forced to wear these but those dna tests
everyone wants to take
same thing is going to be done with that
data then criminal punishment we still have
have
prisons which are disciplinary but we
also have control society punishment
where you're confined to your house by
an ankle bracelet
data rather than space you don't self
regulate you're auto regulated
here's the main difference according to
de las
enclosures are molds distinct castings
but controls are a modulation like a
self-deforming cast
that will continuously change from one
moment to the other
that is rules automatically apply
themselves to your behavior or the data
that they have about your behavior you
don't have to regulate
yourself because the options you have
within these systems
social media standardized testing dna profiles
profiles
they're controlled in advance before you
ever have to make a decision
these systems modulate your future
possibilities based on data
about you control systems
channel your access such that you're not
really free to misbehave
you don't have that option anymore in a
fully post human system
automated surveillance is going to make
this more real than we have ever
imagined there's one specialized word
i'd like to introduce you to
because it sums up how control systems
do their controlling
control machines steer your actions
qua data into channels now as soon as i
say the word steer
there's a brave new world to discover
cybernetics now i don't know
what you think cybernetics means because
there's a lot of offshoots from the
original word
the whole word family of cyberspace cyborg
cyborg
cyberpunk is a sometimes misleading
offshoot of this word
the word was actually coined first by a
guy named norbert weiner
its etymology is from the greek word
this one
kev vernale or in greek to steer
as in steering a trireme for weiner
systems are those that function by
feedback and they use
feedback loops to interpret information
and eliminate
deviation over time feedback is an
important word
it maintains a given pattern the
difference between this pattern and the
actually performed motion
is used as a new input to cause the part
regulated to move in such a way as to
bring its motion
closer to that given by the pattern
alright so this might
seem like word salad but a thermostat is
the simplest example of a cybernetic machine
machine
it gets feedback from the environment
over time
in the form of temperature if the
feedback from the environment is that
the temperature is
too cold the thermostat will turn on the
heat until it reaches the level that
it's set to
and at that point it will turn it off
the pattern it's trying to maintain here
is that temperature that you set your
thermostat to
so if a thermostat uses feedback to control
control
the temperature of a room what is it
that our social
[Music]
people steering machines behavior
steering machines
and this is what the liz is talking
about capital health information
these control societies don't force you
to do anything
but as soon as you offer them
information they offer their feedback
which is then used to
steer or adjust your behavior usually
this means placing you in a spending
demographic or a risk category
with further feedback you can refine
your placements as a dividual into these
societies of control
large-scale data mining and the
algorithms that learn from these data sets
sets
give whoever owns that data access to
the future
control societies are designed to create
the future including your
future they are future machines and they
don't just decide
what the future is they mine you channel you
you
and steer you into the future their
designers designed them to create
this is only a partial glimpse into the
operations of real forces
that are already producing what we will become
become
it's the reason that the world's most
valuable companies are data companies
that data is subject to these cybernetic mechanisms
mechanisms
and speaking of future generating
machines i'd like to thank
matt epoch philosophy jw wayne
matthew integral rising james louise
arthur noel
david antonio matthew ian and my other
patrons for their
generation of this channel's future if
you are interested in learning more
about dillas
go have a listen to our podcast this is
plastic pills
i'm glad you got channeled here and if
you're wondering what to do next
uh here's deliz's advice
there is no need to ask which is the
toughest or most tolerable regime
for it's within each of them that
liberating and enslaving forces confront
one another
there is no need to fear or hope but
only to look
for new weapons i'm experimenting with
media to do that within the epitome
of control societies the site you're on
right now
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