Re: <nettime> Should the state use mobile phone data to monitor

[Felix Stalder <felix@openflows.com>]

On 18.03.20 20:34, Brian Holmes wrote:

> In the face of this, there seem to be two broad options for civil
> society response:
>
> -- Publicly refuse any infringement of previously existing rights,
> while privately maintaining the psycho-philosophical stance of the
> autonomous individual; or
>
> -- Participate critically in the elaboration of new population- and
> species-level norms for the being-in-common of a fully cybernetic
> society -- but on the ethical basis of what kind of "general
> intellect"????
>
> If anyone is looking for a core problem in philosophy or political
> science to work on over the next few months, maybe this is it. I
> reckon the questions above are not exclusive alternatives. Instead
> they begin to mark out the contested/consensual space in which the
> new social paradigm will emerge. No ready-made answer on the basis
> of preexisting concepts and attitudes can fill that space.

This is indeed the question. I'm putting my efforts clearly into the
second option, for a lot of reasons.

The first option, though it still holds some appeal, mainly because
of its storied history, just leads to intellectual and political
dead ends. A recent case in point? Zuboff's otherwise brilliant
study on Surveillance Capitalism. It starts with a bang and ends
with a whimper, because all she can offer is an appeal to rugged
individualism, that opens no perspectives at all. Another case
in point? Lines in front of gun stores as a response of a public
health crisis. It is this psycho-political formation ("possessive
individualism") that got us in this mess (climate change, primarily)
and it's historical potential as a progressive idea as been thoroughly
exhausted. We have known that for half a century now, wave after wave
of social theory has shown this, but what used to be abstractions
for a long time, now has penetrated the core of Western everyday
experience (I say Western, because individualism was never meant for
non-Westeners). We really should say: good riddance.

Second, and more importantly, what the current health crisis makes
visible in high-speed mode is that there are, indeed, system-level
dynamics which impact all of us, and that there is, indeed,
politics that shapes these system-level dynamics. Of course, this
system-level politics has always existed, but neoliberal ideology
has systematically denied this fact. It has been successful in this
because it moved these politics out of the arena where they used to
be performed -- the nation state -- and hid it behind the curtain, so
to speak. What was left on the stage, visible to the audience, the
political public, was just noise, spin and entertainment. Now, with
crisis being primarily a *public*, rather than an *individual* health
crisis, these politics have moved to in front of the curtain again.
This is, in principle, a good thing and an opening.

Third, as Andreas, Lars and others have pointed out. Much of this
data has already been available. Either in the private data-centers
of the "quantification sector", or in the secret data centers of
the intelligence agencies. For at least a decade, they already had
detailed, system-level knowledge and the power that derives from
that and they used to further increase their own power in order to
grab a bigger and bigger slice of the pie. What is happening now, in
my view, is that this type of knowledge is moving into an area for
which there is at least some degree of public agency: public health
(perhaps more so in Europe than in the US). Again, in principle,
this is a good thing, because allows us to have a discussion about a
cybernetic politics has existed for a long time, but only in private
or in secret.

Fourth, by now a lot of people have looked at these "flatten the
curve" diagrams [1] or stared at the social distancing simulator [2].
Both are supremely abstract, boring graphics, but they are suddenly
connected to very intimate everyday life decisions. Should hug
friend, when I meet her, do I really need to go out this afternoon,
is it a good idea to invite friends over for dinner. The affective
power of this should not be underestimated. Stuff like that changes
consciousness. Similar, but much broader, deeper and quicker, than the
Fridays For Future changed consciousness when kids started to suddenly
confront their planet-destroying parents over dinner. I think such
changes in consciousness are necessary to create large-scale political
change in a democratic way.

How will all of this play out. We cannot know. Things are moving
really fast now and it really depends how long and deep this crisis
goes.

One of the indicators, and the fights we need to prepare for, is
what happens once the immediate crisis is over. Public budgets
will be loaded with debt, much more, and in addition to, the debt
still hanging around from the 2008/9 crisis. The instincts of the
ruling classes are to use this as the argument for the next round of
austerity. They might have a harder time this time, because the crisis
laid bare the catastrophic under-funding of basic public services,
which -- as everyone can see now -- are not frivolous hand-outs to
lazy people, but essential for the functioning of society (of which
the market is but a subset). How will we pay for this debt? Perhaps
it's an opening for a wealth tax or some version of the Tobin tax.
Maybe Piketty wrote his new book at a good time.

The second indicator will be if we manage to gain some democratic
access to this system-level knowledge. We now know we need it, we know
now some people have it but how to connect it to at least some level
of democratic oversight is still very unclear. My initial post was
exactly an attempt to think about what such a use of this type of data
might require.



All the best. Felix


[1]
https://www.fastcompany.com/90476143/the-story-behind-flatten-the-curve-the-defining-chart-of-the-coronavirus
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/corona-simulator/



-- 
| |||||||||||||||||| http://felix.openflows.com |
| Open PGP | http://felix.openflows.com/pgp.txt |




#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime>  is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org
#  @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject: