Ben Russell discusses the idea of inside and outside the human body, or the notion of internal and external reality. He also questions why reality should even be separated in this way? What he seems to suggest is that the last 30 years in particular of network, computer, drug and electronic media culture have enabled and highlighted like never before, a circuit of learning where internalities have become externally tangible and then re-input as an internality. Russell explains it thus, 'we are beginning to see agile manifestations of our internal models moving and tangible in front of our eyes...pliable and manipulable...change them and take it back inside.' Russell seems to distinguish here from alternative circuits where humans internalise or embody external phenomena process this data, then externalise the data in order to produce an altered external reality. Where this second circuit of external embodiement seems to 'fill' our internal reality, the former circuit seems to empty us but rather fill the external world.
Circuits which focus on how we embody external phenomena would be indicative of Michel Foucault's disciplinary society. Foucault outlines the process of self surveillance and that of surveilling each other. Although this process was traditionally the work of the government and police, citizen surveillance marks a freedom that comes with responsibility. Ultimately, to surveil ourselves reduces the need for regulation, and although we internalise the rules, the act of reproducing those rules 'voluntarily' in effect gives us power. But were we more free and more in contact with reality within the sovereign model of the walled city? Can discipline also be looked at as a burden that we carry for the State?
In societies of control, however, discipline becomes the burden without fruit. Not only do we carry the burden for the State, but also our act of voluntary responsibility in a digital age operates differently to that within previous models. Rather than assigning us power, disciplined surveillance now turns on us as we become the authors of our own pervasive data mining, marketing, advertising and future surveillance.
Sociology and Digital seem to be telling the same story but from two different 'levels' and subsequently referring to two different 'realities'. Sociology seems to speak from an epistemological level where reality may be conceptualised as our 'safehouse', a representation of reality, an objective reality outside of us where 'reality' itself is the point of reference. Digital seems to speak from an ontological level and conceptualises reality as both prior to and after representation, rather in terms of our awareness of objective reality. Both speak the truth but 'progress' in different ways, both have a different focus and as such, opposing directions, or orientations, through time and space, or what constitutes past, present and future. Direction is what becomes the variable in all of this, direction is the very thing which is not assumed when we view reality in this way alternately as either objective or subjective, or from the perspective of time or space itself.
But we can't assume this direction to move only along a horizontal plane. From a God's Eye perspective, Digital sits on the same 'point' in time (reality) but slowly peels away the layers of ideology to recover and expose the truth just for a single moment while time stops and a single snapshot or image is taken at surface level. Both Sociology and Digital 'move' but Sociology moves horizontally 'through time' from left to right like Western text, while Digital moves down, mining, digging away the dirt through space within a single moment. But these orientations seem only to be indicative of the perspective of the 'wave', time or horizontal movement. When viewed from the point of reference of the single point or position (particle), 'space', Sociology seems to turn its back and looks into the past while travelling in reverse (with its back toward the future) and to look somehow toward the past both vertically and deeply. Meanwhile Digital, from the perspective of the single position or moment where time has stopped, moves forward into the future through the clouds on a broad horizontal plane. Is this angular momentum, or Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle??? Is this time looking at space and space looking at time?
The question is, I guess, to what extent should people be paternalised and regulated, and to what extent should people be free to make their own choices? But how can people make their own choices when they have been 'minded' for so long? This transition cannot occur spontaneously nor immediately, people will need a crutch to bridge this gap for a while. But what if people become educated of their options over time but actually choose the 'safehouse' option perchance? Hypothetically, would this still be an option? Should we be free to choose this option if we wish? Is it oppressive to disallow people to choose oppression or to try and shield people from such a way of being without their knowledge? Further still, what of the likelihood of 'equality of opportunity' among all people in this brave new world? Who will benefit and who will wilt? Upon what criteria and definition will human value rest? And how will this effect how we define what it is to be human?
Baudrillard does outline four stages of human change over a period of time. He maps a gradual reduction of 'reality' which he defines as a movement through time from the past to the present with a layering of continual representation. But to conceptualise Baudrillard's idea in reverse we need to think of reality in a more static sense, without movement, and to imagine a gradual uncovering of a reality which has been obfuscated within four layers like a geologist or archeologist, rather than like an historian. In terms of ideology and representation, Baudrillard's idea builds on top of and adds to everything that was previous, whereas a reversal of Baudrillard deconstructs representation and casts the 'excess' aside in order to discover only the 'real'. TOR operates in this way, peeling back the layers of the onion to expose the truth! I guess this is what the online news site, The Onion, also refers to.
So the next challenge is to relate all of this to surveillance and the various forms of surveillance over time such as sovereign, disciplinary and control societies. I want to start thinking about these ideas in terms of power and identity. I also want to look at how and why the pursuit for privacy can turn to a pursuit for attention.
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