The conspiracy theory craze of the 1990s–criticized and largely explored in some of Steve Beard’s journalism from his collections Logic Bomb: Transmissions from the Edge of Style Culture and Aftershocks: The End of Style Culture–helped further open up and prime the public’s willing desire to believe that the forces that seemed to control their bank accounts, governments, food packaging, and religions were actually in league with other, more nefarious masters. Oliver Stone’s JFK (1994) and the popularization of Area 51 in television and video games show how powerful these representations were. Of course, conspiracy theories had been around for far longer. The seeds of modern antisemitism come from one of Europe’s most long-lived and debated conspiracies, the supposed creation, perpetuation, and malicious intention of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in 1920 and 1921. Here, antisemites fabricated a global conspiracy that placed the Jewish people at the center of problems that were manifest at other locations (and on other levels) of the social order.
Or, another example. Utopian and dystopian science fiction has long been a breeding ground for more extreme forms of speculation. Beyond UFOs, alternative histories, and “steam punk” are books that imagine prescient disruptions in the total world system (all sci-fi does this at one level or another, but some seem to be read more universally). I am thinking, in particular, of George Orwell’s famous 1984 (1948), a text that has been championed by Left and Right as a warning for the disappearance of civil liberties, against uncritically listening to corrupt government, and for the problems associated with the total (de)mystification of culture.
1984 never really leaves the collective consciousness, but is instantly remembered at the first threat of totalitarian power struggles. The book has spawned a list of imitators and admirers in film and television. From the glossy (Ultraviolet [2004], Equilibrium [2003]) to the gritty (Children of Men [2004], Brazil [1985]), the warnings have rung true.
The reason that I bring up these pop cultural precedents to potential civil disruptions is that there is a major initiative currently under consideration in Britain that could move the world one step closer (though that step may have already been taken, as I discuss below) to problematic control. That initiative, already defensively called the “Big Brother” database, is a centralized collection of all telephone calls, emails, and web site visits in the United Kingdom. The possible benefits (the ability to monitor terrorist and illegal activity; behavior tracking records that could be utilized in civil and criminal court cases; a large “receipt” for a year’s worth of social and cultural activity) and the certain side effects (almost guaranteed violations of civil liberties; a disruption to the processes of fair trail; potential security breaches) are evident.
Beyond those speculative and literary associations, I would like to take this possible occasion for control policy as a means of discussing some ideas from Alexander Galloway’s excellent book Protocol: How Control Exists After Decentralization (2004, MIT Press). Though I am currently only about halfway through, I have taken a keen interest in Galloway’s discussions of periodization theory as a means of mapping historical change over large expanses of time. Galloway is interested in setting up the technical, cultural and historical actions that lead to the invention and development of computing protocols that function to both enable and control the essence of decentralized internet and network discourse. The specifics of how protocol works are not as essential for the issue under consideration here. Rather, I am referring to his chart “Control Matrix” (Table 3.1, 114-15), which is a shorthand summary/synthesis of how control works (in largely materialist dimensions) in various historical periods. For example, the feudal/early modern period in Europe was characterized–though Galloway provides more examples than I am about to give– by certain disciplinary modes (tithe, tribute), different machines (levels, pulleys), virtues (loyalty), and active threats (armed revolt, sedition).
Our current era, perhaps a later instantiation of postmodernity, is governed by the computer and its associated logics (energy as information and immaterial, discipline as debugging, control as protocol, virtue as pattern and algorithm, all marked by strategies of security and containment across dispersed fields). Galloway continues by explaining how computer protocols have cultural analogs in how decentralized societies are controlled in other, sometimes physical and visible, realms.
My point with all this, without sticking too closely to Galloway’s argument, is that this latest piece of news from Britain is the sort of thing that shows the degree to which periodization theory works. It illustrates, in pretty terrifying terms, how the stuff of dystopic fiction becomes the lifeblood of mundane policy. Control will at once be “invisible” (carried out by machinic code that works without moral judgment, is immaterial, and does not reveal its apparatus), decentralized (it will take place across whole nations, over shifting servers and floating IPs, under constant surveillance from intelligent humans and from pattern-spotting artificial intelligence), and still strangely, almost nostalgically centralized (there will, no doubt, be some menacing building like the Ministry of Information that will invoke physical discipline and massive presence). This is the kind of notice that cannot be buried under the glitz and dazzle of summer movie premieres, professional sports, or Presidential weddings. The future is almost here, and we hardly have the perspective, let alone vocabulary and sense of understanding, to discuss it.