Universal modulation
From Capitalism and Schizophrenia
Modulating an analogue signal to a digital signal is basically dividing a more continuous flow into measurable (the latin word 'modus' means "measure") quantifications - "modules". The modulated signal is therefore an approximation of the original signal, much more manageble but at the same time less expressive.
In his 1990 essay Postscript on the societies of control Gilles Deleuze identifies a "universal modulation" - a modulation mechanism generally applied to the flows of human action, desire, motion - as the instrument of the State apparatus in societies of control.
Deleuze starts off from Foucault's analysis of societies of discipline and their instruments, that once replaced societies of souvereignty and now in turn is being replaced by societies of control. One society is replaced by another largely through evolution of new technologies: "Types of machines are easily matched with each type of society — not that machines are determining, but because they express those social forms capable of generating them and using them", Deleuze writes in Postscript on the Societies of Control.
The continuous flow of human activity is not just objectively registrered in societies of control, since an analogue flow has to be modulated before it can be digitally registered. The modulation means dividing flow into standard size modules - the dividual that Deleuze refers to is such a module.
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[edit] Examples
"Man is no longer man enclosed, but man in debt." (Postscript on the Societies of Control)
- Our "Universal modulation" makes the dividual ask for the privilege to sell his/her future and put it in the hands of banks and would-be employers. This "would be soon to come" world of interest rates and student loan payments far exceedes every other form of social control. Why spend effort on herding the flocks of sheep when they can be teached to walk in perfect lines by themselves?
- During the change from industrial capitalism to our self-controlled now universal modulation is the very essence of our constrained now. Instead of a society with mass-movements of angry mobs we turn to a society of dividuals in extreme stress of economic disaster, failure and death.
- By enforcing the uniformed consumption of GPSs, mobile phones and subway-passes the movements and intensities of dividuals become controlled before they even appear in the concious mind. The dividual preformats (much like when you format a harddrive on a computer) his/her behavior without the gaze of the factory owner's foreman.
- New emerging social networks such as Facebook, Myspace, as well as web mail services such as Gmail, use your online behavoiour to generate knowledge, which can be translated into both means for profit within a capitalist mode of production, but also for general surveillance. This surveillance, however, is not panoptic in its mode of operation, since it is too distant to be conscious and operates reactively rather than as active surveillance (as in cameras, foremen, windows). As these online services may collect enormous quantities of data, the dividual is not only in many pieces, but form molar aggregates of mass behaviour. For example, statistics can be used to target commercials for a specific taste in music or religios views. Or, by scanning through e-mails using Data mining there might be ways of predicting a terrorist strike.
[edit] Quotes on 'universal modulation'
"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 neighborhood, 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." (Postscript on the societies of control)
[edit] Full text links
- Postscript on the societies of control (Watson institute)
- Postscript on the societies of control (Libcom)
- Postskriptum om kontrollsamhällena
