Total surveillance, brought about by the triumph of the digital paradigm, is no longer perceived as a threat to freedom, but as a service done to improve the lives and fulfil the desires of citizen-come-users. A power takeover both in the public and private spheres based on an unprecedented wilful servitude, where we ourselves give up data to the algorithm so for it to better profile and manipulate us.
The Algorithms of Politics
When we surf the web, talk on our smartphones, carry out online transactions or use social networks, we inevitably leave traces of our activity in the hands of the companies that control the web. This immense amount of data is constantly collected, processed and recombined in order to allow Big Tech and their public and private customers to profile us with ever greater precision. The algorithm is the operational function that presides over these profiling techniques. But it’s not just about commercial marketing - it’s so much more. In fact, the algorithm enables them to develop, from our online behavior, a forecast of our future conduct, activating - even in the political sphere - forms of induction and attraction towards positions that we wouldn’t otherwise consider. The public sphere thus lends itself to a kind of propaganda conditioning that the citizen is not yet equipped to critically analyze and that affects freedom itself, both as a singular and social imaginary, and as an individual and collective practice.
SALVO VACCARO teaches Political Philosophy at Università di Palermo. His lines of research focus on articulating the critical thinking of the twentieth century - especially from the French area (Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida) - and contemporary anarchist theory, in order to offer a thorough analysis of the present, as well as a libertarian narrative strengthened by heterogeneous philosophical and political inputs. He is author of numerous essays translated into various languages, among wich: Horror Vacui: between anomie and anarchy (Autonomedia 2004); Vigiar e expelir: bio-fronteiras da individuação e dispositivos de captura social (PUC-SP 2005); Critique de la grammaire politique (ACL 2017) and La pensée politique de Foucault (Kimé 2017).
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