Brief reflections on nowadays surveillance

September 03, 2024

By Christian Arteaga, Professor in the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences at Universidad Central del Ecuador

The contemporary world is characterized, especially, by two issues. The first is a type of post-Fordist production, where goods are dematerialized and their value is found in the immaterial, mediated by a perpetual fluidity that is unfathomable. And the second is that the meaning of reality has been radically modified as a correlate of technological advances and uses. The result of this is that the subject itself is involved in new ways of thinking, feeling and interacting.

Although the first could define the latter, it is clear that certain technologies would have been substantially improved, as a deepening of the latter. This means that it’s no secret that the new capitalism is not necessarily governed by industrial dynamics and labor force invested in the production of material goods. It’s sui generis how the emergence of technological mechanisms and devices, not only operates as an extension of capital, but it is also responsible for distributing, ordering and managing populations on a planetary scale.

In this context, the forms of control over populations not only involve repressive and coercive regimes, but also sensitive and entertainment-related dynamics. The latter does not rule out under any precept that the rationality of said dynamics is produced for the enjoyment of the subject, but, as we know, they respond to rationalities that are closely linked to military technologies. In this spectrum we have everything from digital social networks to video games, where users are tested as if they were the State itself and their way of ordering is excluding, eliminating or dismissing objectives that the dominant logic poses as a threat or danger.

This, that could be seen as an anecdote from the present, really has societal implications. Technological devices that seem to shorten distances, improve communications and articulate communities of subjects, are part of a rationality of control and surveillance. The latter, let’s say, is not inscribed as part of a planetary State policy, but has become absolutely subjective. This means that human beings are an extensive part of the devices and not the other way around. Therefore, each subject limits and self-manages themselves based on technological rationality. Thus, not only are there surveillance mechanisms located on the streets through cameras for facial recognition and a series of devices that seek to standardize subjects such as fingerprints, eye iris recognition, bank codes, among others. but also the algorithmic dynamics of social media platforms are other means of subjection and surveillance, since the subjects act based on what the algorithm imposes and on a type of censorship policy.

For this reason, surveillance in the present works on a double standard: on the one hand, one that becomes planetary, intervenes and locates the threat to the system, especially if it comes from critical and anti-hegemonic sectors; and another that acts at the level of the subject’s sensibilities, locating and disciplining their practices, their movements and the ways in which they must act so that the algorithm doesn’t censor or suspend them. In short, the issue of privacy should not be understood as a factor of will, but as a right and a form of resistance to the control and administration mechanisms of corporations. Without a doubt, this is complicated because of what it entails, but it is also urgent because of what we are experiencing and what’s yet to come.