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I suddenly remembered this video this week after reading and watching the assigned videos-- I remember watching this video a while ago and thinking how powerful she must be to escape somewhere so oppressive and rule-driven. Reading the manifesto sparked certain memories of parts of her speech.

#communism #discipline #supervision #control #societyofcontrol

On Societies of Control,

French philosopher, Gilles Deleuze’s essay titled “Society de Control’ discussed the evolution of control as a discipline that shifted from enclosed structures to entangled systems. It was a thought-provoking insight into the state of pseudo-freedom we live in.

Combined with this week's discussion of communism, this essay reminded me of China as a surveillance state and one of the last surviving communist governments in the 21st century. As of 2019, China has about 200 million CCTV cameras surveilling citizens. This “Skynet” system uses both facial recognition and big data analysis to identify and track individuals. China additionally has a system of applications that is described as “a way for residents to conduct social supervision." Both these systems have most recently been used since 2018 for the systematic capture and encampment of Turkic Muslims in concentration camps.

Additionally, this discussion reminded me of the growing influence of technology and its effect on our subconscious decision-making ability. I was reminded of the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal that happened back in 2018. This scandal revolved around how political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica illegally harvested the leaked Facebook data of millions of users and targeted the ones deemed impressionable with specific political advertisements in an attempt to sway the vote. This was most notably used during the campaign of 2016 presidential candidate Ted Cruz, current president Donald Trump, and by multiple Brexit groups.

Multiple artists have also done work addressing this state of surveillance we live in. One of the most recent ones I’ve seen is the work of Bangladesh born American artist Hasan Elahi who, on being stopped by the FBI on suspected terrorism, put his entire life on the internet for the world to see. His work being a commentary on issues of surveillance, he has more than 20,000 images documenting every waking hour of his life for the last 3 years. He also has a GPS with him at all times reporting his real-time physical locations.