PHILOSOPHY

The Information Regime

INFOCRACY
BYUNG-CHUL HAN
PRESENTERS:
1.Muhammad Kaif
2.Ayesha Nazir
3.Zeeshan Ahmad
4.Meeraib Fatima Shahid
 WHAT DOES THE TERM “INFORMATION REGIME” MEAN?

“ It refers to a form of domination in which information and its processing by algorithms and
artificial intelligence have a decisive influence on social, economic and political processes ”

• Under such regimes, information and data is exploited rather than bodies and energies.
• Power does not depend on possession of means of production but on access to information, which is
used for Psycho-political surveillance and control and prediction of behavior.
• This regime is tied to Information Capitalism, which develops
into surveillance capitalism. It reduces human beings to
consumer cattle that provide data. This regime does not pursue a
bio-political agenda, as it’s not interested in the body. It seizes
psyche by way of Psycho-politics.
• Body is now mainly understood in terms of aesthetics and
fitness. At least in Western information capitalism, the body has
for the most part been liberated from the disciplinary power that
drilled it to become a laboring machine. Body has instead been
seized by the beauty industry.
 WHAT IS DISCIPLINARY REGIME?

“ This regime refers to the form of domination characteristic of industrial capitalism ”

• In this each person is a “cog” (In Philosophy, it means a person functioning as a part of society, a
system where roles of various individuals are interrelated) in the disciplinary machinery of power.
Disciplinary power enters the nerves and sinews, and “out of a formless clay, an inapt body”, it
produces a machine. In short it fabricates docile ( A body is docile that may be subjected. Used,
transformed and improved) bodies, production machines.
• They are not bearers of data and information, they are bearers of energy.
• Under this regime, human beings are drilled to become laboring cattle.

INDUSTRIAL CAPITALISM: “ It refers to an economic system, where industry and trades are controlled by
private owners for profit”
 FOUCAULT’S DISCIPLINARY REGIME

“It uses “Isolation” as a means for domination”

• The Panopticon, with its isolated cells, is the ideal symbol of the disciplinary regime.
• But this Isolation cannot be transferred to the information regime, that exploits communication in
particular.
• Under the information regime, surveillance takes place via data.
• The isolated inmates of the disciplinary panopticon do not produce data because they do not
communicate.
• The target of bio-political disciplinary power is the body.
• For capitalist society, it is the bio-politics that mattered more than anything else. As this regime inserts
the body into a production and surveillance that optimizes it by way of a disciplinary orthopedics.

Bio-politics: Term refers to the intersection between power( political, economic, judicial etc) and
the individual’s bodily autonomy.
 Sovereign Regime

Every form of rule pursues a specific politics of visibility.

• For a sovereign regime, ostentatious demonstration of power is essential. The spectacle is
medium.
• The ruling power presents itself with theatrical glamor. Such glamor even legitimizes it.
• Ceremonies and symbols of power stabilize rule.
• Pageantry, symbols of violence, grim feasts and ceremonial punishments are all part of the
theatre and spectacle staged by the ruling power.
• Physical torture is publicly exhibited to achieve the greatest effect.
• The Hangman and the condemned are the actors and the public stage is the stage. The power of
sovereignty works through theatrical visibility.
• It is a power that exhibits and makes itself known, that boasts and shines. For it to flourish,
those subjected to this power have mostly to remain invisible.
 PRE-MODERN SOVEREIGN REGIME VS MODERN
DISCIPLINARY REGIME

• The Pre-modern sovereign regime is a society of spectacle.

• The modern disciplinary regime is a society of surveillance.
• Glamorous celebration of sovereignty and Spectacular demonstrations of power give way to
bureaucratic surveillance.
• People are placed in the panoptic machine, turning visibility around.
• The arrangement of visibility is turned around.
• Disciplinary power makes itself invisible while
imposing permanent visibility on its subjects. In order
to give those in power constant access, the subjugated
are constantly placed in the spotlight.
• The fact of constantly being seen, maintains the
disciplined individuals in his subjection.
 THE DISCIPLINE OF CONSTANT OBSERVATION

• The disciplinary Panopticon’s efficiency lies in making inmates feel constantly observed.
• Inmates internalize their surveillance.
• The creation of “a state of conscious and permanent visibility” is essential to the
disciplinary power.
• In George Orwell’s surveillance state, it is Big Brother who ensures permanent visibility:
Big Brother is watching you.
• Under a disciplinary regime, spatial measures such as confinement and isolation guarantee
the visibility of the subjugated.
• The subjugated are assigned specific locations in space that they are not permitted to leave.
• Their mobility is severely limited so that they cannot avoid the Panopticon.

PANOPTICON: It is the architectural design of a prison wherein the guards can always see the
prisoners but prisoners cannot see the guard. And this is because of the guard towers in center and
inmate cells arranged around it.
TRANSFORMATION IN THE INFORMATION SOCIETY

• In The information society, structures of confinement dissolve into open

networks.
• Typological principles shift from discontinuities to continuities.
• Visibility is produced through interconnection, not isolation.
• Digital information technology turns communication into surveillance.
• The more data we generate and the more intensely we communicate, the more
efficient surveillance becomes.
• Mobile phone is a surveillance and subjugation apparatus that exploits freedom
and communication.

SURVEILLANCE: A watch kept over a person, group, etc. especially over a suspect or prisoner.
 PARADOX OF FREEDOM AND SURVEILLANCE
• Under the information regime people feel freedom, not under surveillance.
• Paradoxically, the feeling of freedom secures the rule of the regime.
• Freedom and surveillance coincide in the information regime.
• No need for disciplinary pressure, people willingly expose themselves.
• It does not impose panoptic visibility on people.
• People expose themselves out of an inner need-without any
external compulsion.
• People produce themselves, that is, play to the galley.
• The French verb se produire means to present oneself.
• Where the disciplinary regime imposes visibility, the
information regime relies on the fact that people seek to be
visible.
 TRANSPARENCY AND THE INFORMATION SOCIETY
• The information regime operates in the name of transparency.
• Transparency is the systematic compulsion; everything must be available as information.
• Transparency and Information are synonyms.
• People are imprisoned by information in the information society.
• By communicating and producing information, they shackle themselves. The digital prison is
transparent.
• Apple’s store in NewYork is a cube made of glass. It is a temple to transparency. ‘Kaaba’ literally
means ‘cube’. Kaaba is invisible behind a thick black curtain, only priests have access to the inside
of Kaaba.
• The innermost space in a Greek temple, which is protected against visibility, is called adyton
(literally the inaccessible). Only priests may enter the sacred place. This form of domination is based
on Arcanum.
• In contrast, an Apple’s store is open around the clock. The shop is located in the basement.
• These Kaaba with its black curtain and glass Apple store represent two forms of rule: Arcanum and
Transparency.
TRANSPARENCY AND DOMINATION

• The information regime renders people totally

transparent, but domination itself is never
transparent.
• Transparency is merely the front of a process that
is itself invisible. Transparency itself is not
transparent.
• There is a reverse side to it. The engine room of
transparency lies in the dark.
• We surrender to the growing power of the
algorithmic black box.
 RULE OF INFORMATION REGIME

• Rule of the information regime is not hidden because it is not fully incorporated into everyday
life. It hides behind the friendliness of social media, convenience of search engines, soothing
voices of virtual assistants, and courteous servility of smart apps.
• Smartphones as an efficient informant exposes us to 24/7 surveillance. Smart home turns a
whole apartment into a digital prison in which our daily lives are recorded minute by minute.
• The smart vacuum cleaner may save us from some tedious cleaning, but it also maps our home.
• The smart bed and its networked sensors continue the surveillance while we sleep.
Surveillance creeps into daily life by way of convenience. In the digital prison, this smart comfort
zone, there is no resistance to the ruling regime. The like prevents any thought of revolution.
 INFORMATION CAPITALISM
• Information capitalism appropriates neoliberal technologies of power. Where the power technologies
of the disciplinary regime worked with compulsion and prohibition, the neoliberal ones work with
positive incentives.
• They exploit freedom instead of repressing it. They control our will at an unconscious level instead of
violently breaking it.
• Repressive disciplinary power gives way to smart power, a power that does not give orders that
whispers that does not command but nudges.
• In other words, it pokes us with subtle tools that influence our behavior.
• The surveillance and punishment of Foucault’s disciplinary regime give way to motivation and
optimization.
• Under the neoliberal information regime, domination presents itself as freedom, communication and
community.
NEOLIBERALISM: It favors private enterprise and seeks to transfer the control of economic factors
from the government to the private sector.
INFORMATION CAPITALISM: “In the realm of philosophy, it refers to the conceptualization of modern
economic structures in which information and knowledge play a central role”
 INFLUENCERS AND NEOLIBERAL
TECHNOLOGIES OF POWER
• Influencers on Youtube and Instagram have internalized the neoliberal technologies of power.
• Whether they peddle travel, beauty or fitness, they constantly invoke freedom, creativity and authenticity.
• Their advertisements are not as annoying because the products are cleverly embedded in the influencers’
self-presentation. Whereas people use ad-blockers to remove conventional advertisements on YouTube,
they intentionally seek out the influencers’ ads.
• Influencers are worshiped as idols, and this gives their presentations a religious character.
• Influencers claiming to be motivational coaches present themselves as saviors, and their followers, their
disciplines, take part in the influencers’ lives by buying the products the influencers pretend to consume in
stage scenes from their everyday life-a kind of digital Eucharist.
• Social media is a church: like is ‘amen’; sharing is communication; consumption is salvation.
• The repetition that influencers use as a dramatic tool does not bore; rather, it gives the whole affair the
character of a liturgy. At the same time, influencers present consumer products as a means of self-
realization. We consume ourselves to death while realizing ourselves to death.
• Consumption and identity become one. Identity itself becomes a commodity.
 ARE WE FREE UNDER THIS
INFORMATION REGIME?
• We imagine that we are free, but in reality our entire lives are recorded so that our behavior might
be psycho-politically controlled.
• Under neo-liberal information regime, mechanisms of power function not because people are
aware of constant surveillance but because they perceive themselves to be free.
• Big brother’s Tele-screen is untouchable, but smart touch screens make everything available and
consumable, and thereby produces an illusion of freedom we have at our fingertips.
• Thus, under the information regime, being free doesn’t mean being able to act, but being able to
click, like and post. Example: like in different social media apps, Instagram, Twitter, etc.
• Fingers are not capable of genuine action, they are an only organ for making consumer choices.
Consumption and revolution exclude each other.
• For this reason, there is a little resistance to the regime. It needs no fear of revolution.

PSYCHOPOLITICS: A beautifully sculpted attempt BIG BROTHER’S TELESCREEN: In George Orwell’s

to figure out how to mean action differently, in an dystopian novel 1984, the government, known as Big
age where humans are encouraged to believe that Brother, uses Tele-screens to spy on people. The phrase
it’s possible and necessary to see everything. big brother is watching you remind people of this.
• With totalitarianism, we bid farewell to reality given
to us by five senses, behind the given, it constructs an
actual reality, which requires a six sense.
TOTALITARIANISM:
• It creates obedient, amenable masses. As its ideology
inspires the masses. So the Ideology breathes a soul
into the masses.
• Gustave Le Bon, in his The Crowd: A study of
popular mind, speaks of the soul of the masses that
unifies the actions of masses.
• The information Regime, by contrast, isolates people.
When they come together, they form not a mass but a
digital swarm(a particular way in which
technological society is configured); they follow not
one leader but many influencers.

EXAMPLE:
Regime of Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union.
 DATAISM:
● Dataism in contrast to totalitarianism, doesn’t
need a six sense, it also doesn’t transcend
immanence of the given, that is the Data. The
literal meaning of Latin “datum”, derived from
dare(to give), is the given.
● Dataism does not paint a second reality behind
the given, behind the data; “It is Totalitarianism
without Ideology”.

EXAMPLE:
A company collects a lot of data about people,
with dataism they can use this to make
predictions about those people’s buying
interests.
 TOTALITARIANISM DATAISM
• An important characteristic of it as a secular • Dataism of the information regime also has
political religion, is that it makes a claim to characteristics of totalitarianism. Its aim is
total explanation. total knowledge.
• Its ideology provides a narrative that promises • But the total knowledge in it is achieved not
to explain all historical happenings, total through ideological narration, but through
knowledge of past, total knowledge of algorithmic operations. Aim of dataism is to
present, and reliable prediction of future. compute all there is and all there will be.
• It is a system that is centralized and dictatorial • Big data doesn’t count. Recounting gives
and requires complete subservience to the ways to algorithmic counting. Information
state. It does not permit individual freedom. regime replaces all that is narrative with
• So, as a total explanation of the World, this numerical.
ideology removes any experience of • So, however intelligent they may be,
contingency. algorithms are not as effective as ideological
narratives at excluding the possibility of the
experience of contingency.

BIG DATA: It is larger, complex data sets, especially from new data
 Mass Media and the Digital Media

• Electronic media is mass media in the sense that it creates mass man:
“ Mass Man” is the electronic occupant of the globe, simultaneously involved in all
other people as if he were a spectator in the global ballpark.
• Mass body has no identity-he is a “nobody”.
• But now digital media brings the age of man to a close. The occupant of the
digital globe is not a “nobody”. He is someone with a profile-in the age of the
masses, the only people with profiles were criminals.
• By creating the individual’s behavioral profile, the information regime ensnares
him.

GLOBAL BALLPARK: It is used metaphorically to refer to an approximation or an estimate on a global

scale, particularly when discussing numbers, figures, or values that might not be precise but are within a
reasonable range.
Walter Benjamin
Walter Benjamin was a German Jewish Philosopher, cultural critic, media theorist, and essayist.
• According to him, the movie camera provides access to a special form of the unconscious: “the optical
unconscious”. Close-ups and slow motion render visible minute movements and actions that would
have escaped the naked eye.
• An unconscious space appears: It is through the camera that we first discover the instinctual
unconscious through psychoanalysis.
• Benjamin’s reflections on the optical unconscious can be applied to the information regime.
• Big data and AI represent a digital magnifying glass through which
is revealed an unconscious space behind conscious activity that is
usually hidden to actors. We may call it digital unconsciousness.
• Big data and AI enable the information regime to influence our
behavior at a level that lies below the threshold of consciousness.
• The information regime takes hold of those pre-reflexive,
instinctual, emotive layers of behavior that precede conscious
actions. Its data-driven Psychopolitics intervenes in our behavior
without us being aware of it.
ELECTRONIC REVOLUTION AND POWER:
“ It is a shift from mechanical and analogue electronic technology to digital electronics as a means
of storing, transferring and utilizing information”
• Every shift towards a new major medium brings about a new regime of rule. The medium is the form of
rule.
• Faced with electronic revolution, Carl Schmitt, felt that he needed to change his definition of sovereignty:
After WWI (Sovereign is he who decides the exception).
After WWII facing death he said (Sovereign is he who controls the waves in space).
• Digital brings about the rule of information. The waves of electronic mass media decline to importance.
Power now depends on the procession of information.
• Domination is secured not by propaganda in mass media but by the information.
• In the face of the digital revolution, Schmitt would probably reformulate his statement on sovereignty yet
again: ( Sovereign is he who has control over the information on the Web).

Thus, in conclusion, information regime illuminates the dynamic interplay

CONCLUSION: between knowledge, power, contemporary digital realm and human
experience, which examines the complexities of our modern digital landscape .
THANK YOU!
ANY
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