Blake meets Burroughs
Durand's book is extremely relevant to show how the theoretical and political critique of the Digital Age is still rarified. There is no precise cartography of all those dodgy circuits of revenue extraction. No analysis of how do they profit from the financial casino -- especially mega investment funds that facilitate hyper-concentration. Or how do they profit from the hardcore exploitation of workers in the gig economy.
The total concentration of the digital glebe is leading to a scenario, as Durand recalls, already dreamed up by Stuart Mill, where every land in a country belonged to a single master. Our generalized dependency on the digital masters seems to be "the cannibal future of liberalism in the age of algorithms."
Is there a possible way out? The temptation is to go radical -- a Blake/Burroughs crossover. We have to expand our scope of comprehension -- and stop confusing the map (as shown in the Magna Carta) with the territory (our perception).
William Blake, in his proto-psychedelic visions, was all about liberation and subordination -- depicting an authoritarian deity imposing conformity via a sort of source code of mass influence. Looks like a proto-analysis of the Digital Age.
William Burroughs conceptualized Control -- an array of manipulations including mass media (he would be horrified by social media).To break down Control, we must be able to hack into and disrupt its core programs. Burroughs showed how all forms of Control must be rejected -- and defeated: "Authority figures are seen for what they are: dead empty masks manipulated by computers."
Here's our future: hackers or slaves.
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