{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053","title":"If...Then Algorithmic Power and Politics","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"2017054909","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053","id":"1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053","uuid":"1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053","title":"If...Then Algorithmic Power and Politics","normalized_title":"ifthenalgorithmicpowerandpolitics","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"2017054909","isbns":["2017054909","9780190493042","9780190493059"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":211,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/If...Then%20Algorithmic%20Power%20and%20Politics","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053/search"},"page":{"printed_page":88,"pdf_page":98,"physical_index":98,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"2432244fda1aa57d9d7a75d2ed96c2a07cc5b20d2465b73dbd3cab128fa8a67f"},"chapter":"IF...THEN","content":"PA R T IC I PATO R Y S U B J E C T I V I T Y\n\nThe threat of invisibility on Facebook, then, is not merely a symbolical phenomenon but is also, quite literally, real. While the regime of visibility created by Facebook may difer from the one Foucault described in terms of surveillance, understood as imposing a state of permanent visibility, discipline is still part of the new diagrammatic mechanisms. While it has become commonplace to argue for the transition of a disciplinary society into a control society after the post-industrial fact described by Deleuze (1992), I do not see a necessary contradiction between the disciplinary diagram and software-mediated spaces. Discipline simply refers to a diagram that operates by making the subject the “principle of (its) own subjection” (Foucault, 1977: 203). Discipline denotes a type of power that economizes its functioning by making subjects responsible for their own behavior. This is still very much the case with the logic of feedback loops perpetuated by contemporary machine learning techniques. Contrary to the notion that we have moved away from a disciplinary society to a control society as the “Deleuzian turn” suggests, I agree with Mark Kelly (2015) in that many of the aspects ascribed to control societies were already covered by Foucault in his notion of discipline. For Foucault, “Discipline ‘makes’ individuals; it is the specific technique of a power that regards individuals both as objects and as instruments of its exercise” (Foucault, 1977: 170). It imposes a particular conduct on a particular human multiplicity (Deleuze,  2006: 29). It is important here to highlight that Foucault developed the notion of disciplinary power in order to account for the duality of power and subjectivation—efectuated by “training” subjects to think and behave in certain ways and, thus, to become the principle of their own regulation of conduct. Through the means of correct training, subjects are governed so as to reach their full potentiality as useful individuals (Foucault,  1977: 212). Foucault identified three techniques of correct training: hierarchical observation, normalizing judgment, and the examination. In this sense, we could say that the news feed algorithm exercises a form of disciplinary power since discipline, in Foucault’s words, “fixes; it arrests or regulates movements; it clears up confusion; it dissipates compact groupings of individuals wandering about the country in unpredictable ways; it establishes calculated distributions” (1977: 219).\n\nFor Facebook, a useful individual is the one who participates, communicates, and interacts. The participatory subject evidently produced by the algorithmic mechanisms in Facebook follows a similar logic to those techniques of correct training at work in sustaining disciplinary power. First, the very real possibility of becoming obsolete inscribed in the “threat of invisibility” arguably instigates a desire to participate. Here, we can see the dual logic inherent in Foucault’s understanding of power as both constraining and enabling. While visibility is constrained by the failure to conform to the inherent logic of participation, visibility is also produced and enabled by the same logic. As Foucault asserts: “What is specific to the disciplinary penalty is non-observance, that which does not measure up to the rule, that departs from it” (1977: 178). Not conforming to the rules set out by the architectural program is, thus, punishable. That is, not participating on Facebook will get you punished by making you invisible, and not seeing what may be “the most interesting” content to you.\n\n88\n\nIF . . . THEN","previous_page":87,"next_page":89}