We could say that cybernetics is the age when the prophets died and algorithms took their place
A machine is capable of learning.
A few days ago a great event was held at the bookstore Cobrawhich was organized by the bookstore and Editions Colleagues. The event was about the presentation of the book The government case by the Tiqqun collective translated by Christos Pallas. The text is important for several reasons, but we will focus mainly on the theorists. Not because they are the most painless but because they allow a deeper understanding of the proposition left by the collective.
THE cybernetic as a concept refers to computer science. However, reference does not imply understanding of its content. THE cybernetic it is not just a method. It is a complex process that includes, in addition to classifications, modeling and mathematical relationships, control and power relations. It is a profound political act through which the governance of entire systems is organized, which penetrate the digital condition that allows them to have a material existence and are transformed into real political acts and social behaviors. THE cybernetic it belongs to the realm of the real and as such underdetermines its way of organization. Before talking about how to organize, it is important to say what is cybernetic.
The concept originated with Norbert Wiener, who coined it from the Greek word cyberan, which means to rule. It is the art of the helmsman. The historical circumstances that led to cybernetic they were nothing more than some problems Wiener found during World War II. One of these was the use of the anti-aircraft gun, where the operator had to accurately predict the position of a moving plane in order to succeed. It is quite a complex calculation. The crux of the problem was that the calculation had to be done in advance, incorporated into instruments that could collect the plane’s observations, and combine them in such a way as to accurately target the weapon. That is, to be able to predict the position that will be found and to throw the projectile further ahead of the position that the plane has at that moment. To have a glimpse of the future.
As Wiener says, the actual fire control mechanism is a system that includes human beings and machines at the same time. And the key word is the system. Cybernetics, as Alexandros Georgiou notes in the excellent introduction to the text, studies the processes where their result at any given moment in time is affected by their results at previous technical moments. Everything should be viewed as a system or a collection of communicating and interacting systems. However, this process of systems management is also surrounded by a remarkable historical condition, the shift from certainty to the management of uncertainty.
How can we govern a world full of uncertainties? If we have prepared the calculation and control systems for any situation, then we can have decisions and solutions for every condition that will present itself. It is no longer important to know what will happen but to have answers for whatever happens. We could say that the cybernetic it is the time when the prophets died and algorithms took their place. And algorithms don’t look at the heavens like Nostradamus but make new heavens full of stars that organize them in a certain way.
What is this way of organizing? The Tiqqun text has an answer. It is the neoliberal way of organizing. We are quite familiar with the metaphysical narratives of self-regulating markets, equilibrium, risk management and a return to normality. Have we asked ourselves what its essence is? self-regulation; Which is the actual in which refers and from which resulting; These are not purely philosophical questions but also political ones. These questions arise through real causes and real actions that, in retrospect, are theorized and studied. About the cyberneticas Alexandros Georgiou notes, risk management means establishing control mechanisms that will always restore the dynamic balance. Power takes the form of management, usually technocratic in nature. Self-regulation it means that in times of crisis the parameters of the system are readjusted in such a way that a new equilibrium occurs. In this context, crisis is an aberration, the result of a bug or a virus (digital or not), and the answer is always automation. That is, to set the appropriate parameters that will allow us to manage the new uncertainty.
If all systems are self-regulating, then the entities that make them up are nothing more than automatic subjects, which may be active but, at the same time, move within an event horizon that they cannot transcend. The algorithm has set the moral parameters of each subject. It is freedom within the limits of the real, as it is defined by cybernetic and its neoliberal context. A basic tenet of neoliberalism is the search for balance and self-regulation in the economy. The Tiqqun show us the power that surrounds neoliberalism. They overturn the myth of non-intervention of the state in society and the economy and point out that governance is an active condition, a permanent project from power to power.
After the presentation of the book, the screening of the documentary followed Machines in Flames by Andrew Culp and Thomas Dekeyser. It chronicled the activities of an organization, called CLODO, which carried out attacks on computer companies in the late 1970s and early 1980s. An interesting conclusion drawn from the documentary, which could be described as a critical-philosophical essay , is that the attacks were not technophobic. That is, they were not attacks because companies provided new technologies but because they provided new modes of governance and control. Reading this reminded me of a quote by Paul Feyerabend: And of course it is not true that we must follow the truth. Human life is directed by many ideas. Truth is one of them. Freedom and intellectual independence are different. If truth, as perceived by some ideologues, conflicts with freedom, then we have a choice. We can give up freedom. But we can also abandon the truth.
References:
- Tiqqun (2023), The government case, translated by Christos Pallas, Athens: Colleagues Publications.
- Wiener N. (2020), “Humans, machines and the world around them”, translation: Konstantinos Kandiloros, in Introduction to Digital Studies (ed. Manolis Patiniotis), Torque Publications.
- Feyerabend P. (1975), “How to defend society against science”, Radical Philosophy 11, Vol.1.
