utopias and the information society ws2013

Informationsphilosophie. Information und urbanes Systeme 1

Utopias andthe Information Society

Philosophy of Information (Course in English)Fakultät 13, Hochschule München, WS-2013-14

José María Díaz Nafría (Universidad de León, Spanien)

Utopias and the Information Society

I. An amalgamation of Utopias from long ago (the project of modernity)1. Social ideal2. Abstract vs concrete utopias3. Utopias of the information society4. Past, present and future utopias

II. Perdurability of the Planetary SystemIII. Security and Trust (the Island or the

Globe)1. Historical remarks2. Soft/Hard Power (lyric vs. Obsession)3. Rousseau vs. Bentham4. Liberalistic Foundations5. Utopias and Globalization

Utopias and the Information Society 2

I. An amalgamation of utopias (the project of modernity)

“Universal History is perhaps the history of a few metaphors” (J.L. Borges)

Utopia as a kind of social programme (social ideal)“You are quite right, he replied, in maintaining the general inferiority of the female sex: although many women are in many things superior to many men, yet on the whole what you say is true. And if so, my friend, I said, there is no special faculty of administration in a state which a woman has because she is a woman, or which a man has by virtue of his sex, but the gifts of nature are alike diffused in both; all the pursuits of men are the pursuits of women also, but in all of them a woman is inferior to a man… Isn’t it the best for the republic counting with the best men and the best women?...”(Plato, The Republic)

3Utopias and the Information Society

I.2 Abstract vs concrete utopias

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Ideas

Form AppearanceI

Observador

Decontextualizing: Die existing Forms belong to the otherworldliness (a-

spatial, a-temporal)


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I.2 Abstract vs concrete utopiasThe platonic model encapsulated in the understanding of

information


• From the viewpoint of the modern signal theory (Digital Transmission): Ideal of transparence

Si{S1, S2,… SN}

Noise

Si’ Compared with{S1, S2,… SN}

Si

I.3 Utopias of the information society


Utopic background Supporters Utopias of the Information Society

Supporters Dystopia

Perfect Language Lull, Wilkins Computable Language Turing, Chomsky

Borges: „The analytic language of John Wilkins“

Perfect thought Lull, Leibniz Computable Thought Babbage, Hollerith, Turing

Hesse: „The Glass Bed Game“

Perfect wisdom Bacon, Encyclopedist,Comte

Unlimited Availability of Knowledge

Outlet, La Fontaine

Borges: „The library of Babel“, „Funes the Memorius“

Perfect social order Nicholas of Cusa, Computable Social Order (Normalization)

Saint Simon, Comte, Babbage

Huxley: „Brave New World“Deleuze: „Control society“

Transparent society Rousseau,Emerson, Chevalier

Communication without borders

Mumford, Shannon, McLuhan

Orwell: „1984“

Trustful society Bentham, Tarde Security vs Trust of the Information Society

J. Nye, Orwell: „1984“

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I.3 Backgrounds of IS’ utopias


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I.3 Backgrounds of IS’ utopias


I.4 Historical utopias

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Mitified citiesImagened territoriesDystopiasConematographic utopiasUnbanistic utopiasCommunitary utopias

Green: oldYellow: XVI-XVIII C.Orange: XIX C.Red: XX-XXI C.

I.4 Idealised Cities

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Babilon

I.4 The Cristian utopia of equality and fraternity

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I.4 Utopias at the beginning of Modernity

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- Thomas More- Francis Bacon: New Atlantis

I.4 North American utopia: the conquest of liberty

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I.4 Utopias of Enlightenment

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SalinaHouse of director control and survillanceInhabitants perfect semicircle: equidistanceGardens

Bentham’s panotic: inspirator of Orwell’s“Big Brother”

Saline d’Arc-et-Senans:Industrial architecture and integrated society (1774)

I.4 The advent of citizenship

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Pragmatical approach: aprobado por la asamblea constituyente de 1989

• 83 departamentos• Tamaño del departamento: medio día a

caballo hasta el centro administrativo

Territorial search of equilityGeometrical approach (1780): R. de Hesseln, propuestopor el Abad Sieyès a la asamblea constituyente de 1989.

• 1 departamento = 9 cantones• 1 cantón = 9 comunidades• Lado del departamento: 72 Km

I.4 Schooling: a global challenge

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Late alphabetisation of the South (XVII-XX C.)

I.4 The anarchist utopia: The dream of a society without lords and states

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Theoretical precursors

Press experiences

Rotative board of European anarquist

Will of developing an anarchist international:

Londres 1864Ginebra 1866Congr. Bruselas 1868Congr. Bâle 1869Saint-Imier (Suiza) 1872Amsterdam 1904Congreso Anarquista

Internacional de Amsterdam 1907

I.4 The great bifurcationFrom social to communication utopias

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Making something together… Too much? Perfect communication

In mid 19th Century the social utopias are

abandoned (rift between Sant-Simon

school)

I.4 Esperanto: the linguistic utopia

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Members of national esperantist associations

EuropeanEsperantistDemocracyMovement (EDE): in the Europanelections 2009

I.4 The utopia of the species improvement

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Birth selection: from utopia to taboode la utopía al

EE.UU. and national-socialismy: developments of the eugenesic project

I.4 The creative utopia (Bauhaus)

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Global vision of the artistic disciplines

International influences through its scholars

I.4 The panarrab utopia

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The cultural community keep on being a warranty of continuity

I.4 The tragic universe of utopias

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“1984” world according to G. Orwell

DisputedFluctuating alliances (unfounded character of warfare)

Final victory of Oceania which ensures its dominancy

I.4 The end of waste: recycling, recovering

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Improvement of the Industrial scheme for a radical change of the flow of materials:

I.4 Save the planet: biospherical limits

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The elusive global governability of environment

Expression of the relations of geopolitical forces:

AdversariesSupportersUndecided

Three pillars of the lasting development:

I.4 Other world is possible

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Alter-globalisation movement and Indignants Movement reject neoliberalism

Mediatic birth of the alter-globalisation movement

World Social Summits

Peasant Movement, debt cancellation, against financial specualtion

Manifestations (18/11/2011 & 13/05/2012)National claims (unemployment, austerity, education…)

I.4 A world without growth

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El decrecimiento se convierte en utopía concreta frente al agotamiento de los recursos naturales:

creditorstate: biocapacity > ecologicalfootprint

Indebted state: ecological footprint > biocapacity

I.4 Utopic Communities – 20th Century

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I.4 Eco-utopias

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Longo-Maï NetworkSelf-managed (alternative, laic, autogestionadas rural and anti-capitalist ideology)

SelfsufficientSolidary-pacifistMediatic MovilisationCommodity and Ideas exchange

I.4 Rights and Dignity: an step towards democracy

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Squares, symbol of a democratic wind?Confrontation among peoples and real powers. (squares represented by its surface)

I.4 Restorative Justice

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Aleternative to the penal system:Restoring better than sanctioningThe individum who has commited a crime has a debt with the victim and with the community

Dystopic justiceMinority Report

I.4 Nature is reasserted in the city

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Habitable-tree: organic structure self-climaticed(Belgian arquitect and designer Luc Schuiten)

SeaOrbiter: flotting lab, 51 m. height(French architect Jacques Rougerie)

I.4 The end of the north-south divide?

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NGB per inhabitant in 2010:Triad (former economic dominancy, decline in growth and trust)

Post-comunistcountries (integrated in the market economy)

BRICS bridgehead of the emerging world

The inequality among rich and poor is globally increasing

rol

I.4 The new interactive and free world

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Digital paradise? The new space keep on being strongly unequal

Parte de la población con acceso a internet en 2011

- Cyberattackguvernmentalprivate

- Liberty under control- States which are enemy

of Internet (according to Journalist without Borders)

I.4. 100% renewable (Green energy)

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Global awareness raising: sceneries for a more prosperous future

Initiatives at urban scale, aiming at:- CO2 reduction- Renewal energy- Efficiency

Ongoing politcs: - Public financing- Urbanistic planning- Building regulations- Infrastructures and

public transport

Renewable energy rate in the final energy per country

II. Perdurability of the Planetary System (Laplace)

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I. Newton (1642-1727)P.S. Laplace (1749-1827)


II. Perdurability of the Planetary System (Laplace)

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• Subjective vs. Objective Sense (certitude vs. Stability of the system)


Self-realisation necessity: to be useful to others without effort

Self-esteem necessity:community acknowledgment

Necessity of belonging-to:being part of a community

Security Necessity: by group validation

Functional Necessities: finding a place to eat, sleep, drink

III. Security and trust (the inseland the globe)

• 1990s: Information Society (transparent and borderless) – September 11th

• Security vs. Trust (Boundary Conditions vs. Inner Conditions)

• Contradictions in the liberalist discourses with respect to protectionism and interventionism

• Pendulum with respect to the awareness of threats.


III.1 Historical Notes

“It is a very common clever device that when anyone has attained the summit of greatness, he kicks away the ladder by which he has climbed up, to deprive others of the means of climbing up after him […]Any nation which by means of protective duties and restrictions on navigation has raised her manufacturing power and her navigation to such a degree of development that no other nation can sustain free competition with her, can do nothing wiser than to throw away these ladders of her greatness, to preach to other nations the benefits of free trade”

(List 1885, pp. 295-296).


III.1 Historical NotesIII.2 Soft/Hard Power (lyric vs. obsession)

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a) Beginings of freetrading | s.XXI: Famine in Ireland (1846-48) vs. Opium Wars (1842, 1858)Opium Wars (s.XIX) vs. Iraq Wars (s.XX)

i) False arguments, ii) effect of previous wariii) de facto Colonialism, iv) hindered long term development, v) Losses of historical and artistic assests, vi) separatist, ethnic and religious rebellions favored

b) Hard Power vs. Soft Power (Joseph Nye) Global Information Dominance (Echelon, NationalImagery and Mapping Agency, Future ImageryArchitecture)


III.3 Rousseau vs. Bentham

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M.Foucault (The eye of the power): „Bentham was the complement to Rousseau. What in fact was the Rousseauist dream that motivated many of the revolutionaries? It was the dream of a transparent society, visible and legible in each of its parts, the dream of there no longer existing any zones of darkness [...] It was the dream that each individual, whatever portion he occupied, might be able to see the whole society…”


III.3 Rousseau vs. Bentham

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M. Foucault (The eye of the power): “[Bentham] effects the project of a universal visibility which exists to serve a rigorous, meticulous power. Thus Bentham’s obsession, the technical idea of the exercise of an ‘all-seeing’ power, is grafted on to the great Rousseauist theme which is in some sense the lyrical note of the Revolution… When the Revolution poses the question of a new justice, what does it envisage as its principle? Opinion. The new aspect of the problem of justice, for the Revolution, was not so much to punish wrongdoers as to prevent even the possibility of wrongdoing, by immersing people in a field of total visibility where the opinion, observation and discourse of others would restrain them from harmful acts”


III.3 Rousseau vs. Bentham (Soft/Hard Power)

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• G. Tarde (Sociologist and criminologist)“All the improvements of social organization… have the consequence of enabling that one meditated, coherent, individual project arrives purer, lesser polluted, deeper, and through the safer and shorter means into the minds of all the associated” (Tarde, Public opinion and the crowd. 1690, §107).

• Public Opinion (co-optionn) ~ Control Society (Deleuze) “The material and economic aspects of opinion were not acknowledged. They believed it “is fair by nature, it disseminates by itself, and it is a sort of democratic surveillance […]” (Foucault)

• Decolonisation and reaction (1950-1970s)• New International Economic Order (1974), New

World Inf. and Comm. Order (1974), C. MacBride


III.4 Liberal Foundations

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• John Locke"those, who like one another so well as to join into society, cannot but be supposed to have some acquaintance and friendship together, and some trust one in another; they could not but have greater apprehensions of others, than of one another: and therefore their first care and thought cannot but be supposed to be, how to secure themselves against foreign force. It was natural for them to put themselves under a frame of government which might best serve to that end…"

(Second Treatise on Government. 1690, §107).

• Liberal Foundations (J. Locke, A. Smith, J. Bentham, Burke)


III.4 Liberal Foundations(a new difference)

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Differences in the objective of each position:• The transparency/trustworthiness, hence the communications

without borders is at the groundings of many utopias of the Information Society (MacLuhan, Etzioni, Toffles, Barlow, etc) as well as of other technical utopias as Kropotkin’s, advocating the dissolution of (concentrated) power.

• There is a close connection with the various foundations of liberalism, in which different approaches are present:– Degree of Free-will vs Authoritarianism (Rousseau / Bentham)– Degree of Fairness/equality vs Unfairness/Unequality

(Bentham/conservative Liberals)


III.5 Utopias and Globalisation


utopias and the information society ws2013

Education

social utopias

communication utopias

republic utopias

amalgamation of utopias

understanding of information

information societyj

information society5

information society2