Back to Index

1 {print $var}' temp.txt); awk
-vmaxx=$max -F' ' '{printf "%-7.7f %s\n", $1=0.5+($1/(maxx*2)), $2}' > freq.$i.txt; done && rm temp.txt

* 2\. Process the files freq.1-5.txt and produce tfidf.1-5.txt containing a list of words (out of 500 most frequent in respective lists), ordered by weight (specificity for each text):

> for j in {1..5}; do rm freq.$j.txt.temp; lines=$(wc -l freq.$j.txt) && for i
in {1..500}; do word=$(awk -vline="$i" -vfield=2 -F" " 'NR

line {print
$field}' freq.$j.txt); tf=$(awk -vline="$i" -vfield=1 -F" " 'NR

line {print
$field}' freq.$j.txt); count=$(egrep -lw $word freq.?.txt | wc -l); idf=$(echo
"1+l(5/$count)" | bc -l); tfidf=$(echo $tf*$idf | bc); echo $word $tfidf >>
freq.$j.txt.temp; done; sort -k 2nr < freq.$j.txt.temp > tfidf.$j.txt; done

* 3\. Process the files tfidf.1-5.txt and their source text, text.txt, and produce occ.txt with concordance of top 3 words from each of them:

> rm occ.txt && for j in {1..5}; do echo "$j" >> occ.txt; ptx -f -w 150
text.txt.$j > occ.$j.txt; for i in {1..3}; do word=$(awk -vline="$i" -vfield=1
-F" " 'NR

line {print $field}' tfidf.$j.txt); egrep -i
"[alpha:](/index.php?title=Alpha:&action=edit&redlink=1 "Alpha: \(page does
not exist\)") $word" occ.$j.txt >> occ.txt; done; done

Dušan Barok

_Written 23 October - 1 November 2014 in Bratislava and Stuttgart._

1. [Preface to the English Edition](#fpref)
2. [Acknowledgments](#ack)
3. [Introduction: After the End of the Gutenberg Galaxy](#cintro)
1. [Notes](#f6-ntgp-9999)
4. [I: Evolution](#c1)
1. [The Expansion of the Social Basis of Culture](#c1-sec-0002)
2. [The Culturalization of the World](#c1-sec-0006)
3. [The Technologization of Culture](#c1-sec-0009)
4. [From the Margins to the Center of Society](#c1-sec-0013)
5. [Notes](#c1-ntgp-9999)
5. [II: Forms](#c2)
1. [Referentiality](#c2-sec-0002)
2. [Communality](#c2-sec-0009)
3. [Algorithmicity](#c2-sec-0018)
4. [Notes](#c2-ntgp-9999)
6. [III: Politics](#c3)
1. [Post-democracy](#c3-sec-0002)
2. [Commons](#c3-sec-0011)
3. [Against a Lack of Alternatives](#c3-sec-0017)
4. [Notes](#c3-ntgp-9999)

[Preface to the English Edition]{.chapterTitle} {#fpref}

::: {.section}
This book posits that we in the societies of the (transatlantic) West
find ourselves in a new condition. I call it "the digital condition"
because it gained its dominance as computer networks became established
as the key infrastructure for virtually all aspects of life. However,
the emergence of this condition pre-dates computer networks. In fact, it
has deep historical roots, some of which go back to the late nineteenth
century, but it really came into being after the late 1960s. As many of
the cultural and political institutions shaped by the previous condition
-- which McLuhan called the Gutenberg Galaxy -- fell into crisis, new
forms of personal and collective orientation and organization emerged
which have been shaped by the affordances of this new condition. Both
the historical processes which unfolded over a very long time and the
structural transformation which took place in a myriad of contexts have
been beyond any deliberate influence. Although obviously caused by
social actors, the magnitude of such changes was simply too great, too
distributed, and too complex to be attributed to, or molded by, any
particular (set of) actor(s).

Yet -- and this is the core of what motivated me to write this book --
this does not mean that we have somehow moved beyond the political,
beyond the realm in which identifiable actors and their projects do
indeed shape our collective []{#Page_vii type="pagebreak"
title="vii"}existence, or that there are no alternatives to future
development already expressed within contemporary dynamics. On the
contrary, we can see very clearly that as the center -- the established
institutions shaped by the affordances of the previous condition -- is
crumbling, more economic and political projects are rushing in to fill
that void with new institutions that advance their competing agendas.
These new institutions are well adapted to the digital condition, with
its chaotic production of vast amounts of information and innovative
ways of dealing with that.

From this, two competing trajectories have emerged which are
simultaneously transforming the space of the political. First, I used
the term "post-democracy" because it expands possibilities, and even
requirements, of (personal) participation, while ever larger aspects of
(collective) decision-making are moved to arenas that are structurally
disconnected from those of participation. In effect, these arenas are
forming an authoritarian reality in which a small elite is vastly
empowered at the expense of everyone else. The purest incarnation of
this tendency can be seen in the commercial social mass media, such as
Facebook, Google, and the others, as they were newly formed in this
condition and have not (yet) had to deal with the complications of
transforming their own legacy.

For the other trajectory, I applied the term "commons" because it
expands both the possibilities of personal participation and agency, and
those of collective decision-making. This tendency points to a
redefinition of democracy beyond the hollowed-out forms of political
representation characterizing the legacy institutions of liberal
democracy. The purest incarnation of this tendency can be found in the
institutions that produce the digital commons, such as Wikipedia and the
various Free Software communities whose work has been and still is
absolutely crucial for the infrastructural dimensions of the digital
networks. They are the most advanced because, again, they have not had
to deal with institutional legacies. But both tendencies are no longer
confined to digital networks and are spreading across all aspects of
social life, creating a reality that is, on the structural level,
surprisingly coherent and, on the social and political level, full of
contradictions and thus opportunities.[]{#Page_viii type="pagebreak"
title="viii"}

I traced some aspects of these developments right up to early 2016, when
the German version of this book went into production. Since then a lot
has happened, but I resisted the temptation to update the book for the
English translation because ideas are always an expression of their
historical moment and, as such, updating either turns into a completely
new version or a retrospective adjustment of the historical record.

What has become increasingly obvious during 2016 and into 2017 is that
central institutions of liberal democracy are crumbling more quickly and
dramatically than was expected. The race to replace them has kicked into
high gear. The main events driving forward an authoritarian renewal of
politics took place on a national level, in particular the vote by the
UK to leave the EU (Brexit) and the election of Donald Trump to the
office of president of the United States of America. The main events
driving the renewal of democracy took place on a metropolitan level,
namely the emergence of a network of "rebel cities," led by Barcelona
and Madrid. There, community-based social movements established their
candidates in the highest offices. These cities are now putting in place
practical examples that other cities could emulate and adapt. For the
concerns of this book, the most important concept put forward is that of
"technological sovereignty": to bring the technological infrastructure,
and its developmental potential, back under the control of those who are
using it and are affected by it; that is, the citizens of the
metropolis.

Over the last 18 months, the imbalances between the two trajectories
have become even more extreme because authoritarian tendencies and
surveillance capitalism have been strengthened more quickly than the
commons-oriented practices could establish themselves. But it does not
change the fact that there are fundamental alternatives embedded in the
digital condition. Despite structural transformations that affect how we
do things, there is no inevitability about what we want to do
individually and, even more importantly, collectively.

::: {.poem}
::: {.lineGroup}
Zurich/Vienna, July 2017[]{#Page_ix type="pagebreak" title="ix"}
:::
:::
:::

[Acknowledgments]{.chapterTitle} {#ack}

::: {.section}
While it may be conventional to cite one person as the author of a book,
writing is a process with many collective elements. This book in
particular draws upon many sources, most of which I am no longer able to
acknowledge with any certainty. Far too often, important references came
to me in parenthetical remarks, in fleeting encounters, during trips, at
the fringes of conferences, or through discussions of things that,
though entirely new to me, were so obvious to others as not to warrant
any explication. Often, too, my thinking was influenced by long
conversations, and it is impossible for me now to identify the precise
moments of inspiration. As far as the themes of this book are concerned,
four settings were especially important. The international discourse
network "nettime," which has a mailing list of 4,500 members and which I
have been moderating since the late 1990s, represents an inexhaustible
source of internet criticism and, as a collaborative filter, has enabled
me to follow a wide range of developments from a particular point of
view. I am also indebted to the Zurich University of the Arts, where I
have taught for more than 10 years and where the students have been
willing to explain to me, again and again, what is already self-evident
to them. Throughout my time there, I have been able to observe a
dramatic shift. For today\'s students, the "new" is no longer new but
simply obvious, whereas they []{#Page_x type="pagebreak" title="x"}have
experienced many things previously regarded as normal -- such as
checking out a book from a library (instead of downloading it) -- as
needlessly complicated. In Vienna, the hub of my life, the World
Information Institute has for many years provided a platform for
conferences, publications, and interventions that have repeatedly raised
the stakes of the discussion and have brought together the most
interesting range of positions without regard to any disciplinary
boundaries. Housed in Vienna, too, is the Technopolitics Project, a
non-institutionalized circle of researchers and artists whose
discussions of techno-economic paradigms have informed this book in
fundamental ways and which has offered multiple opportunities for me to
workshop inchoate ideas.

Not everything, however, takes place in diffuse conversations and
networks. I was also able to rely on the generous support of several
individuals who, at one stage or another, read through, commented upon,
and made crucial improvements to the manuscript: Leonhard Dobusch,
Günther Hack, Katja Meier, Florian Cramer, Cornelia Sollfrank, Beat
Brogle, Volker Grassmuck, Ursula Stalder, Klaus Schönberger, Konrad
Becker, Armin Medosch, Axel Stockburger, and Gerald Nestler. Special
thanks are owed to Rebina Erben-Hartig, who edited the original German
manuscript and greatly improved its readability. I am likewise grateful
to Heinrich Greiselberger and Christian Heilbronn of the Suhrkamp
Verlag, whose faith in the book never wavered despite several delays.
Regarding the English version at hand, it has been a privilege to work
with a translator as skillful as Valentine Pakis. Over the past few
years, writing this book might have been the most import­ant project in
my life had it not been for Andrea Mayr. In this regard, I have been
especially fortunate.[]{#Page_xi type="pagebreak"
title="xi"}[]{#Page_xii type="pagebreak" title="xii"}
:::

Introduction [After the End of the Gutenberg Galaxy]{.chapterTitle} []{.chapterSubTitle} {#cintro}

::: {.section}
The show had already been going on for more than three hours, but nobody
was bothered by this. Quite the contrary. The tension in the venue was
approaching its peak, and the ratings were through the roof. Throughout
all of Europe, 195 million people were watching the spectacle on
television, and the social mass media were gaining steam. On Twitter,
more than 47,000 messages were being sent every minute with the hashtag
\#Eurovision.[^1^](#f6-note-0001){#f6-note-0001a} The outcome was
decided shortly after midnight: Conchita Wurst, the bearded diva, was
announced the winner of the 2014 Eurovision Song Contest. Cheers erupted
as the public celebrated the victor -- but also itself. At long last,
there was more to the event than just another round of tacky television
programming ("This is Ljubljana calling!"). Rather, a statement was made
-- a statement in favor of tolerance and against homophobia, for
diversity and for the right to define oneself however one pleases. And
Europe sent this message in the midst of a crisis and despite ongoing
hostilities, not to mention all of the toxic rumblings that could be
heard about decadence, cultural decay, and Gayropa. Visibly moved, the
Austrian singer let out an exclamation -- "We are unity, and we are
unstoppable!" -- as she returned to the stage with wobbly knees to
accept the trophy.

With her aesthetically convincing performance, Conchita succeeded in
unleashing a strong desire for personal []{#Page_1 type="pagebreak"
title="1"}self-discovery, for community, and for overcoming stale
conventions. And she did this through a character that mainstream
society would have considered paradoxical and deviant not long ago but
has since come to understand: attractive beyond the dichotomy of man and
woman, explicitly artificial and yet entirely authentic. This peculiar
conflation of artificiality and naturalness is equally present in
Berndnaut Smilde\'s photographic work of a real indoor cloud (*Nimbus*,
2010) on the cover of this book. Conchita\'s performance was also on a
formal level seemingly paradoxical: extremely focused and completely
open. Unlike most of the other acts, she took the stage alone, and
though she hardly moved at all, she nevertheless incited the audience to
participate in numerous ways and genuinely to act out the motto of the
contest ("Join us!"). Throughout the early rounds of the competition,
the beard, which was at first so provocative, transformed into a
free-floating symbol that the public began to appropriate in various
ways. Men and women painted Conchita-like beards on their faces,
newspapers printed beards to be cut out, and fans crocheted beards. Not
only did someone Photoshop a beard on to a painting of Empress Sissi of
Austria, but King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands even tweeted a
deceptively realistic portrait of his wife, Queen Máxima, wearing a
beard. From one of the biggest stages of all, the evening of Wurst\'s
victory conveyed an impression of how much the culture of Europe had
changed in recent years, both in terms of its content and its forms.
That which had long been restricted to subcultural niches -- the
fluidity of gender iden­tities, appropriation as a cultural technique,
or the conflation of reception and production, for instance -- was now
part of the mainstream. Even while sitting in front of the television,
this mainstream was no longer just a private audience but rather a
multitude of singular producers whose networked activity -- on location
or on social mass media -- lent particular significance to the occasion
as a moment of collective self-perception.

It is more than half a century since Marshall McLuhan announced the end
of the Modern era, a cultural epoch that he called the Gutenberg Galaxy
in honor of the print medium by which it was so influenced. What was
once just an abstract speculation of media theory, however, now
describes []{#Page_2 type="pagebreak" title="2"}the concrete reality of
our everyday life. What\'s more, we have moved well past McLuhan\'s
diagnosis: the erosion of old cultural forms, institutions, and
certainties is not just something we affirm, but new ones have already
formed whose contours are easy to identify not only in niche sectors but
in the mainstream. Shortly before Conchita\'s triumph, Facebook thus
expanded the gender-identity options for its billion-plus users from 2
to 60. In addition to "male" and "female," users of the English version
of the site can now choose from among the following categories:

::: {.extract}
Agender, Androgyne, Androgynes, Androgynous, Asexual, Bigender, Cis, Cis
Female, Cis Male, Cis Man, Cis Woman, Cisgender, Cisgender Female,
Cisgender Male, Cisgender Man, Cisgender Woman, Female to Male (FTM),
Female to Male Trans Man, Female to Male Transgender Man, Female to Male
Transsexual Man, Gender Fluid, Gender Neutral, Gender Nonconforming,
Gender Questioning, Gender Variant, Genderqueer, Hermaphrodite,
Intersex, Intersex Man, Intersex Person, Intersex Woman, Male to Female
(MTF), Male to Female Trans Woman, Male to Female Transgender Woman,
Male to Female Transsexual Woman, Neither, Neutrois, Non-Binary, Other,
Pangender, Polygender, T\*Man, Trans, Trans Female, Trans Male, Trans
Man, Trans Person, Trans\*Female, Trans\*Male, Trans\*Man,
Trans\*Person, Trans\*Woman, Transexual, Transexual Female, Transexual
Male, Transexual Man, Transexual Person, Transexual Woman, Transgender
Female, Transgender Person, Transmasculine, T\*Woman, Two\*Person,
Two-Spirit, Two-Spirit Person.
:::

This enormous proliferation of cultural possibilities is an expression
of what I will refer to below as the digital condition. Far from being
universally welcomed, its growing presence has also instigated waves of
nostalgia, diffuse resentments, and intellectual panic. Conservative and
reactionary movements, which oppose such developments and desire to
preserve or even re-create previous conditions, have been on the rise.
Likewise in 2014, for instance, a cultural dispute broke out in normally
subdued Baden-Würtemberg over which forms of sexual partnership should
be mentioned positively in the sexual education curriculum. Its impetus
was a working paper released at the end of 2013 by the state\'s
[]{#Page_3 type="pagebreak" title="3"}Ministry of Culture. Among other
things, it proposed that adolescents "should confront their own sexual
identity and orientation \[...\] from a position of acceptance with
respect to sexual diversity."[^2^](#f6-note-0002){#f6-note-0002a} In a
short period of time, a campaign organized mainly through social mass
media collected more than 200,000 signatures in opposition to the
proposal and submitted them to the petitions committee at the state
parliament. At that point, the government responded by putting the
initiative on ice. However, according to the analysis presented in this
book, leaving it on ice creates a precarious situation.

The rise and spread of the digital condition is the result of a
wide-ranging and irreversible cultural transformation, the beginnings of
which can in part be traced back to the nineteenth century. Since the
1960s, however, this shift has accelerated enormously and has
encompassed increasingly broader spheres of social life. More and more
people have been participating in cultural processes; larger and larger
dimensions of existence have become battlegrounds for cultural disputes;
and social activity has been intertwined with increasingly complex
technologies, without which it would hardly be possible to conceive of
these processes, let alone achieve them. The number of competing
cultural projects, works, reference points, and reference systems has
been growing rapidly. This, in turn, has caused an escalating crisis for
the established forms and institutions of culture, which are poorly
equipped to deal with such an inundation of new claims to meaning. Since
roughly the year 2000, many previously independent developments have
been consolidating, gaining strength and modifying themselves to form a
new cultural constellation that encompasses broad segments of society --
a new galaxy, as McLuhan might have
said.[^3^](#f6-note-0003){#f6-note-0003a} These days it is relatively
easy to recognize the specific forms that characterize it as a whole and
how these forms have contributed to new, contradictory and
conflict-laden political dynamics.

My argument, which is restricted to cultural developments in the
(transatlantic) West, is divided into three chapters. In the first, I
will outline the *historical* developments that have given rise to this
quantitative and qualitative change and have led to the crisis faced by
the institutions of the late phase of the Gutenberg Galaxy, which
defined the last third []{#Page_4 type="pagebreak" title="4"}of the
twentieth century.[^4^](#f6-note-0004){#f6-note-0004a} The expansion of
the social basis of cultural processes will be traced back to changes in
the labor market, to the self-empowerment of marginalized groups, and to
the dissolution of centralized cultural geography. The broadening of
cultural fields will be discussed in terms of the rise of design as a
general creative discipline, and the growing significance of complex
technologies -- as fundamental components of everyday life -- will be
tracked from the beginnings of independent media up to the development
of the internet as a mass medium. These processes, which at first
unfolded on their own and may have been reversible on an individual
basis, are integrated today and represent a socially domin­ant component
of the coherent digital condition. From the perspective of cultural
studies and media theory, the second chapter will delineate the already
recognizable features of this new culture. Concerned above all with the
analysis of forms, its focus is thus on the question of "how" cultural
practices operate. It is only because specific forms of culture,
exchange, and expression are prevalent across diverse var­ieties of
content, social spheres, and locations that it is even possible to speak
of the digital condition in the singular. Three examples of such forms
stand out in particular. *Referentiality* -- that is, the use of
existing cultural materials for one\'s own production -- is an essential
feature of many methods for inscribing oneself into cultural processes.
In the context of unmanageable masses of shifting and semantically open
reference points, the act of selecting things and combining them has
become fundamental to the production of meaning and the constitution of
the self. The second feature that characterizes these processes is
*communality*. It is only through a collectively shared frame of
reference that meanings can be stabilized, possible courses of action
can be determined, and resources can be made available. This has given
rise to communal formations that generate self-referential worlds, which
in turn modulate various dimensions of existence -- from aesthetic
preferences to the methods of biological reproduction and the rhythms of
space and time. In these worlds, the dynamics of network power have
reconfigured notions of voluntary and involuntary behavior, autonomy,
and coercion. The third feature of the new cultural landscape is its
*algorithmicity*. It is characterized, in other []{#Page_5
type="pagebreak" title="5"}words, by automated decision-making processes
that reduce and give shape to the glut of information, by extracting
information from the volume of data produced by machines. This extracted
information is then accessible to human perception and can serve as the
basis of singular and communal activity. Faced with the enormous amount
of data generated by people and machines, we would be blind were it not
for algorithms.

The third chapter will focus on *political dimensions*. These are the
factors that enable the formal dimensions described in the preceding
chapter to manifest themselves in the form of social, political, and
economic projects. Whereas the first chapter is concerned with long-term
and irreversible histor­ical processes, and the second outlines the
general cultural forms that emerged from these changes with a certain
degree of inevitability, my concentration here will be on open-ended
dynamics that can still be influenced. A contrast will be made between
two political tendencies of the digital condition that are already quite
advanced: *post-democracy* and *commons*. Both take full advantage of
the possibilities that have arisen on account of structural changes and
have advanced them even further, though in entirely different
directions. "Post-democracy" refers to strategies that counteract the
enormously expanded capacity for social communication by disconnecting
the possibility to participate in things from the ability to make
decisions about them. Everyone is allowed to voice his or her opinion,
but decisions are ultimately made by a select few. Even though growing
numbers of people can and must take responsibility for their own
activity, they are unable to influence the social conditions -- the
social texture -- under which this activity has to take place. Social
mass media such as Facebook and Google will receive particular attention
as the most conspicuous manifestations of this tendency. Here, under new
structural provisions, a new combination of behavior and thought has
been implemented that promotes the normalization of post-democracy and
contributes to its otherwise inexplicable acceptance in many areas of
society. "Commons," on the contrary, denotes approaches for developing
new and comprehensive institutions that not only directly combine
participation and decision-making but also integrate economic, social,
and ethical spheres -- spheres that Modernity has tended to keep
apart.[]{#Page_6 type="pagebreak" title="6"}

Post-democracy and commons can be understood as two lines of development
that point beyond the current crisis of liberal democracy and represent
new political projects. One can be characterized as an essentially
authoritarian system, the other as a radical expansion and renewal of
democracy, from the notion of representation to that of participation.

Even though I have brought together a number of broad perspectives, I
have refrained from discussing certain topics that a book entitled *The
Digital Condition* might be expected to address, notably the matter of
copyright, for one example. This is easy to explain. As regards the new
forms at the heart of this book, none of these developments requires or
justifies copyright law in its present form. In any case, my thoughts on
the matter were published not long ago in another book, so there is no
need to repeat them here.[^5^](#f6-note-0005){#f6-note-0005a} The theme
of privacy will also receive little attention. This is not because I
share the view, held by proponents of "post-privacy," that it would be
better for all personal information to be made available to everyone. On
the contrary, this position strikes me as superficial and naïve. That
said, the political function of privacy -- to safeguard a degree of
personal autonomy from powerful institutions -- is based on fundamental
concepts that, in light of the developments to be described below,
urgently need to be updated. This is a task, however, that would take me
far beyond the scope of the present
book.[^6^](#f6-note-0006){#f6-note-0006a}

Before moving on to the first chapter, I should first briefly explain my
somewhat unorthodox understanding of the central concepts in the title
of the book -- "condition" and "digital." In what follows, the term
"condition" will be used to designate a cultural condition whereby the
processes of social meaning -- that is, the normative dimension of
existence -- are explicitly or implicitly negotiated and realized by
means of singular and collective activity. Meaning, however, does not
manifest itself in signs and symbols alone; rather, the practices that
engender it and are inspired by it are consolidated into artifacts,
institutions, and lifeworlds. In other words, far from being a symbolic
accessory or mere overlay, culture in fact directs our actions and gives
shape to society. By means of materialization and repetition, meaning --
both as claim and as reality -- is made visible, productive, and
negotiable. People are free to accept it, reject it, or ignore
[]{#Page_7 type="pagebreak" title="7"}it altogether. Social meaning --
that is, meaning shared by multiple people -- can only come about
through processes of exchange within larger or smaller formations.
Production and reception (to the extent that it makes any sense to
distinguish between the two) do not proceed linearly here, but rather
loop back and reciprocally influence one another. In such processes, the
participants themselves determine, in a more or less binding manner, how
they stand in relation to themselves, to each other, and to the world,
and they determine the frame of reference in which their activity is
oriented. Accordingly, culture is not something static or something that
is possessed by a person or a group, but rather a field of dispute that
is subject to the activities of multiple ongoing changes, each happening
at its own pace. It is characterized by processes of dissolution and
constitution that may be collaborative, oppositional, or simply
operating side by side. The field of culture is pervaded by competing
claims to power and mechanisms for exerting it. This leads to conflicts
about which frames of reference should be adopted for different fields
and within different social groups. In such conflicts,
self-determination and external determination interact until a point is
reached at which both sides are mutually constituted. This, in turn,
changes the conditions that give rise to shared meaning and personal
identity.

In what follows, this broadly post-structuralist perspective will inform
my discussion of the causes and formational conditions of cultural
orders and their practices. Culture will be conceived throughout as
something heterogeneous and hybrid. It draws from many sources; it is
motivated by the widest possible variety of desires, intentions, and
compulsions; and it mobilizes whatever resources might be necessary for
the constitution of meaning. This emphasis on the materiality of culture
is also reflected in the concept of the digital. Media are relational
technologies, which means that they facilitate certain types of
connection between humans and
objects.[^7^](#f6-note-0007){#f6-note-0007a} "Digital" thus denotes the
set of relations that, on the infrastructural basis of digital networks,
is realized today in the production, use, and transform­ation of
material and immaterial goods, and in the constitution and coordination
of personal and collective activity. In this regard, the focus is less
on the dominance of a certain class []{#Page_8 type="pagebreak"
title="8"}of technological artifacts -- the computer, for instance --
and even less on distinguishing between "digital" and "analog,"
"material" and "immaterial." Even in the digital condition, the analog
has not gone away. Rather, it has been re-evaluated and even partially
upgraded. The immaterial, moreover, is never entirely without
materiality. On the contrary, the fleeting impulses of digital
communication depend on global and unmistakably material infrastructures
that extend from mines beneath the surface of the earth, from which rare
earth metals are extracted, all the way into outer space, where
satellites are circling around above us. Such things may be ignored
because they are outside the experience of everyday life, but that does
not mean that they have disappeared or that they are of any less
significance. "Digital" thus refers to historically new possibilities
for constituting and connecting various human and non-human actors,
which is not limited to digital media but rather appears everywhere as a
relational paradigm that alters the realm of possibility for numerous
materials and actors. My understanding of the digital thus approximates
the concept of the "post-digital," which has been gaining currency over
the past few years within critical media cultures. Here, too, the
distinction between "new" and "old" media and all of the ideological
baggage associated with it -- for instance, that the new represents the
future while the old represents the past -- have been rejected. The
aesthetic projects that continue to define the image of the "digital" --
immateriality, perfection, and virtuality -- have likewise been
discarded.[^8^](#f6-note-0008){#f6-note-0008a} Above all, the
"post-digital" is a critical response to this techno-utopian aesthetic
and its attendant economic and political perspectives. According to the
cultural theorist Florian Cramer, the concept accommodates the fact that
"new ethical and cultural conventions which became mainstream with
internet communities and open-source culture are being retroactively
applied to the making of non-digital and post-digital media
products."[^9^](#f6-note-0009){#f6-note-0009a} He thus cites the trend
that process-based practices oriented toward open interaction, which
first developed within digital media, have since begun to appear in more
and more contexts and in an increasing number of
materials.[^10[]{#Page_9 type="pagebreak"
title="9"}^](#f6-note-0010){#f6-note-0010a}

For the historical, cultural-theoretical, and political perspectives
developed in this book, however, the concept of the post-digital is
somewhat problematic, for it requires the narrow context of media art
and its fixation on technology in order to become a viable
counter-position. Without this context, certain misunderstandings are
impossible to avoid. The prefix "post-," for instance, is often
interpreted in the sense that something is over or that we have at least
grasped the matters at hand and can thus turn to something new. The
opposite is true. The most enduringly relevant developments are only now
beginning to adopt a specific form, long after digital infrastructures
and the practices made popular by them have become part of our everyday
lives. Or, as the communication theorist and consultant Clay Shirky puts
it, "Communication tools don\'t get socially interesting until they get
technologically boring."[^11^](#f6-note-0011){#f6-note-0011a} For it is
only today, now that our fascination for this technology has waned and
its promises sound hollow, that culture and society are being defined by
the digital condition in a comprehensive sense. Before, this was the
case in just a few limited spheres. It is this hybridization and
solidification of the digital -- the presence of the digital beyond
digital media -- that lends the digital condition its dominance. As to
the concrete realities in which these things will materialize, this is
currently being decided in an open and ongoing process. The aim of this
book is to contribute to our understanding of this process.[]{#Page_10
type="pagebreak" title="10"}
:::

::: {.section .notesSet type="rearnotes"}
[]{#notesSet}Notes {#f6-ntgp-9999}
------------------

::: {.section .notesList}
[1](#f6-note-0001a){#f6-note-0001}  Dan Biddle, "Five Million Tweets for
\#Eurovision 2014," *Twitter UK* (May 11, 2014), online.

[2](#f6-note-0002a){#f6-note-0002}  Ministerium für Kultus, Jugend und
Sport -- Baden-Württemberg, "Bildungsplanreform 2015/2016 -- Verankerung
von Leitprinzipien," online \[--trans.\].

[3](#f6-note-0003a){#f6-note-0003}  As early as 1995, Wolfgang Coy
suggested that McLuhan\'s metaphor should be supplanted by the concept
of the "Turing Galaxy," but this never caught on. See his introduction
to the German edition of *The Gutenberg Galaxy*: "Von der Gutenbergschen
zur Turingschen Galaxis: Jenseits von Buchdruck und Fernsehen," in
Marshall McLuhan, *Die Gutenberg Galaxis: Das Ende des Buchzeitalters*,
(Cologne: Addison-Wesley, 1995), pp. vii--xviii.[]{#Page_176
type="pagebreak" title="176"}

[4](#f6-note-0004a){#f6-note-0004}  According to the analysis of the
Spanish sociologist Manuel Castells, this crisis began almost
simultaneously in highly developed capitalist and socialist societies,
and it did so for the same reason: the paradigm of "industrialism" had
reached the limits of its productivity. Unlike the capitalist societies,
which were flexible enough to tame the crisis and reorient their
economies, the socialism of the 1970s and 1980s experienced stagnation
until it ultimately, in a belated effort to reform, collapsed. See
Manuel Castells, *End of Millennium*, 2nd edn (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell,
2010), pp. 5--68.

[5](#f6-note-0005a){#f6-note-0005}  Felix Stalder, *Der Autor am Ende
der Gutenberg Galaxis* (Zurich: Buch & Netz, 2014).

[6](#f6-note-0006a){#f6-note-0006}  For my preliminary thoughts on this
topic, see Felix Stalder, "Autonomy and Control in the Era of
Post-Privacy," *Open: Cahier on Art and the Public Domain* 19 (2010):
78--86; and idem, "Privacy Is Not the Antidote to Surveillance,"
*Surveillance & Society* 1 (2002): 120--4. For a discussion of these
approaches, see the working paper by Maja van der Velden, "Personal
Autonomy in a Post-Privacy World: A Feminist Technoscience Perspective"
(2011), online.

[7](#f6-note-0007a){#f6-note-0007}  Accordingly, the "new social" media
are mass media in the sense that they influence broadly disseminated
patterns of social relations and thus shape society as much as the
traditional mass media had done before them.

[8](#f6-note-0008a){#f6-note-0008}  Kim Cascone, "The Aesthetics of
Failure: 'Post-Digital' Tendencies in Contemporary Computer Music,"
*Computer Music Journal* 24/2 (2000): 12--18.

[9](#f6-note-0009a){#f6-note-0009}  Florian Cramer, "What Is
'Post-Digital'?" *Post-Digital Research* 3 (2014), online.

[10](#f6-note-0010a){#f6-note-0010}  In the field of visual arts,
similar considerations have been made regarding "post-internet art." See
Artie Vierkant, "The Image Object Post-Internet,"
[jstchillin.org](http://jstchillin.org) (December 2010), online; and Ian
Wallace, "What Is Post-Internet Art? Understanding the Revolutionary New
Art Movement," *Artspace* (March 18, 2014), online.

[11](#f6-note-0011a){#f6-note-0011}  Clay Shirky, *Here Comes Everybody:
The Power of Organizing without Organizations* (New York: Penguin,
2008), p. 105.
:::
:::

[I]{.chapterNumber} [Evolution]{.chapterTitle} {#c1}

=

::: {.section}
Many authors have interpreted the new cultural realities that
characterize our daily lives as a direct consequence of technological
developments: the internet is to blame! This assumption is not only
empirically untenable; it also leads to a problematic assessment of the
current situation. Apparatuses are represented as "central actors," and
this suggests that new technologies have suddenly revolutionized a
situation that had previously been stable. Depending on one\'s point of
view, this is then regarded as "a blessing or a
curse."[^1^](#c1-note-0001){#c1-note-0001a} A closer examination,
however, reveals an entirely different picture. Established cultural
practices and social institutions had already been witnessing the
erosion of their self-evident justification and legitimacy, long before
they were faced with new technologies and the corresponding demands
these make on individuals. Moreover, the allegedly new types of
coordination and cooperation are also not so new after all. Many of them
have existed for a long time. At first most of them were totally
separate from the technologies for which, later on, they would become
relevant. It is only in retrospect that these developments can be
identified as beginnings, and it can be seen that much of what we regard
today as novel or revolutionary was in fact introduced at the margins of
society, in cultural niches that were unnoticed by the dominant actors
and institutions. The new technologies thus evolved against a
[]{#Page_11 type="pagebreak" title="11"}background of processes of
societal transformation that were already under way. They could only
have been developed once a vision of their potential had been
formulated, and they could only have been disseminated where demand for
them already existed. This demand was created by social, political, and
economic crises, which were themselves initiated by changes that were
already under way. The new technologies seemed to provide many differing
and promising answers to the urgent questions that these crises had
prompted. It was thus a combination of positive vision and pressure that
motivated a great variety of actors to change, at times with
considerable effort, the established processes, mature institutions, and
their own behavior. They intended to appropriate, for their own
projects, the various and partly contradictory possibilities that they
saw in these new technologies. Only then did a new technological
infrastructure arise.

This, in turn, created the preconditions for previously independent
developments to come together, strengthening one another and enabling
them to spread beyond the contexts in which they had originated. Thus,
they moved from the margins to the center of culture. And by
intensifying the crisis of previously established cultural forms and
institutions, they became dominant and established new forms and
institutions of their own.
:::

::: {.section}
The Expansion of the Social Basis of Culture {#c1-sec-0002}
--------------------------------------------

Watching television discussions from the 1950s and 1960s today, one is
struck not only by the billows of cigarette smoke in the studio but also
by the homogeneous spectrum of participants. Usually, it was a group of
white and heteronormatively behaving men speaking with one
another,[^2^](#c1-note-0002){#c1-note-0002a} as these were the people
who held the important institutional positions in the centers of the
West. As a rule, those involved were highly specialized representatives
from the cultural, economic, scientific, and political spheres. Above
all, they were legitimized to appear in public to articulate their
opinions, which were to be regarded by others as relevant and worthy of
discussion. They presided over the important debates of their time. With
few exceptions, other actors and their deviant opinions -- there
[]{#Page_12 type="pagebreak" title="12"}has never been a time without
them -- were either not taken seriously at all or were categorized as
indecent, incompetent, perverse, irrelevant, backward, exotic, or
idiosyncratic.[^3^](#c1-note-0003){#c1-note-0003a} Even at that time,
the social basis of culture was beginning to expand, though the actors
at the center of the discourse had failed to notice this. Communicative
and cultural pro­cesses were gaining significance in more and more
places, and excluded social groups were self-consciously developing
their own language in order to intervene in the discourse. The rise of
the knowledge economy, the increasingly loud critique of
heteronormativity, and a fundamental cultural critique posed by
post-colonialism enabled a greater number of people to participate in
public discussions. In what follows, I will subject each of these three
phenomena to closer examin­ation. In order to do justice to their
complexity, I will treat them on different levels: I will depict the
rise of the knowledge economy as a structural change in labor; I will
reconstruct the critique of heteronormativity by outlining the origins
and transformations of the gay movement in West Germany; and I will
discuss post-colonialism as a theory that introduced new concepts of
cultural multiplicity and hybridization -- concepts that are now
influencing the digital condition far beyond the limits of the
post-colonial discourse, and often without any reference to this
discourse at all.

::: {.section}
### The growth of the knowledge economy {#c1-sec-0003}

At the beginning of the 1950s, the Austrian-American economist Fritz
Machlup was immersed in his study of the polit­ical economy of
monopoly.[^4^](#c1-note-0004){#c1-note-0004a} Among other things, he was
concerned with patents and copyright law. In line with the neo-classical
Austrian School, he considered both to be problematic (because
state-created) monopolies.[^5^](#c1-note-0005){#c1-note-0005a} The
longer he studied the monopoly of the patent system in particular, the
more far-reaching its consequences seemed to him. He maintained that the
patent system was intertwined with something that might be called the
"economy of invention" -- ultimately, patentable insights had to be
produced in the first place -- and that this was in turn part of a much
larger economy of knowledge. The latter encompassed government agencies
as well as institutions of education, research, and development
[]{#Page_13 type="pagebreak" title="13"}(that is, schools, universities,
and certain corporate laboratories), which had been increasing steadily
in number since Roosevelt\'s New Deal. Yet it also included the
expanding media sector and those industries that were responsible for
providing technical infrastructure. Machlup subsumed all of these
institutions and sectors under the concept of the "knowledge economy," a
term of his own invention. Their common feature was that essential
aspects of their activities consisted in communicating things to other
people ("telling anyone anything," as he put it). Thus, the employees
were not only recipients of information or instructions; rather, in one
way or another, they themselves communicated, be it merely as a
secretary who typed up, edited, and forwarded a piece of shorthand
dictation. In his book *The Production and Distribution of Knowledge in
the United States*, published in 1962, Machlup gathered empirical
material to demonstrate that the American economy had entered a new
phase that was distinguished by the production, exchange, and
application of abstract, codified
knowledge.[^6^](#c1-note-0006){#c1-note-0006a} This opinion was no
longer entirely novel at the time, but it had never before been
presented in such an empirically detailed and comprehensive
manner.[^7^](#c1-note-0007){#c1-note-0007a} The extent of the knowledge
economy surprised Machlup himself: in his book, he concluded that as
much as 43 percent of all labor activity was already engaged in this
sector. This high number came about because, until then, no one had put
forward the idea of understanding such a variety of activities as a
single unit.

Machlup\'s categorization was indeed quite innovative, for the dynamics
that propelled the sectors that he associated with one another not only
were very different but also had originated as an integral component in
the development of the industrial production of goods. They were more of
an extension of such production than a break with it. The production and
circulation of goods had been expanding and accelerating as early as the
nineteenth century, though at highly divergent rates from one region or
sector to another. New markets were created in order to distribute goods
that were being produced in greater numbers; new infrastructure for
transportation and communication was established in order to serve these
large markets, which were mostly in the form of national territories
(including their colonies). This []{#Page_14 type="pagebreak"
title="14"}enabled even larger factories to be built in order to
exploit, to an even greater extent, the cost advantages of mass
production. In order to control these complex processes, new professions
arose with different types of competencies and working conditions. The
office became a workplace for an increasing number of people -- men and
women alike -- who, in one form or another, had something to do with
information processing and communication. Yet all of this required not
only new management techniques. Production and products also became more
complex, so that entire corporate sectors had to be restructured.
Whereas the first decisive inventions of the industrial era were still
made by more or less educated tinkerers, during the last third of the
nineteenth century, invention itself came to be institutionalized. In
Germany, Siemens (founded in 1847 as the Telegraphen-Bauanstalt von
Siemens & Halske) exemplifies this transformation. Within 50 years, a
company that began in a proverbial workshop in a Berlin backyard became
a multinational high-tech corporation. It was in such corporate
laboratories, which were established around the year 1900, that the
"industrialization of invention" or the "scientification of industrial
production" took place.[^8^](#c1-note-0008){#c1-note-0008a} In other
words, even the processes employed in factories and the goods that they
produced became knowledge-intensive. Their invention, planning, and
production required a steadily growing expansion of activities, which
today we would refer to as research and development. The informatization
of the economy -- the acceleration of mass production, the comprehensive
application of scientific methods to the organization of labor, and the
central role of research and development in industry -- was hastened
enormously by a world war that was waged on an industrial scale to an
extent that had never been seen before.

Another important factor for the increasing significance of the
knowledge economy was the development of the consumer society. Over the
course of the last third of the nineteenth century, despite dramatic
regional and social disparities, an increasing number of people profited
from the economic growth that the Industrial Revolution had instigated.
Wages increased and basic needs were largely met, so that a new social
stratum arose, the middle class, which was able to spend part of its
income on other things. But on what? First, []{#Page_15 type="pagebreak"
title="15"}new needs had to be created. The more production capacities
increased, the more they had to be rethought in terms of consumption.
Thus, in yet another way, the economy became more knowledge-intensive.
It was now necessary to become familiar with, understand, and stimulate
the interests and preferences of consumers, in order to entice them to
purchase products that they did not urgently need. This knowledge did
little to enhance the material or logistical complexity of goods or
their production; rather, it was reflected in the increasingly extensive
communication about and through these goods. The beginnings of this
development were captured by Émile Zola in his 1883 novel *The Ladies\'
Paradise*, which was set in the new world of a semi-fictitious
department store bearing that name. In its opening scene, the young
protagonist Denise Baudu and her brother Jean, both of whom have just
moved to Paris from a provincial town, encounter for the first time the
artfully arranged women\'s clothing -- exhibited with all sorts of
tricks involving lighting, mirrors, and mannequins -- in the window
displays of the store. The sensuality of the staged goods is so
overwhelming that both of them are not only struck dumb, but Jean even
"blushes."

It was the economy of affects that brought blood to Jean\'s cheeks. At
that time, strategies for attracting the attention of customers did not
yet have a scientific and systematic basis. Just as the first inventions
in the age of industrialization were made by amateurs, so too was the
economy of affects developed intuitively and gradually rather than as a
planned or conscious paradigm shift. That it was possible to induce and
direct affects by means of targeted communication was the pioneering
discovery of the Austrian-American Edward Bernays. During the 1920s, he
combined the ideas of his uncle Sigmund Freud about unconscious
motivations with the sociological research methods of opinion surveys to
form a new discipline: market
research.[^9^](#c1-note-0009){#c1-note-0009a} It became the scientific
basis of a new field of activity, which he at first called "propa­ganda"
but then later referred to as "public
relations."[^10^](#c1-note-0010){#c1-note-0010a} Public communication,
be it for economic or political ends, was now placed on a systematic
foundation that came to distance itself more and more from the pure
"conveyance of information." Communication became a strategic field for
corporate and political disputes, and the mass media []{#Page_16
type="pagebreak" title="16"}became their locus of negotiation. Between
1880 and 1917, for instance, commercial advertising costs in the United
States increased by more than 800 percent, and the leading advertising
firms, using the same techniques with which they attracted consumers to
products, were successful in selling to the American public the idea of
their nation entering World War I. Thus, a media industry in the modern
sense was born, and it expanded along with the rapidly growing market
for advertising.[^11^](#c1-note-0011){#c1-note-0011a}

In his studies of labor markets conducted at the beginning of the 1960s,
Machlup brought these previously separ­ate developments together and
thus explained the existence of an already advanced knowledge economy in
the United States. His arguments fell on extremely fertile soil, for an
intellectual transformation had taken place in other areas of science as
well. A few years earlier, for instance, cybernetics had given the
concepts "information" and "communication" their first scientifically
precise (if somewhat idiosyncratic) definitions and had assigned to them
a position of central importance in all scientific disciplines, not to
mention life in general.[^12^](#c1-note-0012){#c1-note-0012a} Machlup\'s
investigation seemed to confirm this in the case of the economy, given
that the knowledge economy was primarily concerned with information and
communication. Since then, numerous analyses, formulas, and slogans have
repeated, modified, refined, and criticized the idea that the
knowledge-based activities of the economy have become increasingly
important. In the 1970s this discussion was associated above all with
the notion of the "post-industrial
society,"[^13^](#c1-note-0013){#c1-note-0013a} in the 1980s the guiding
idea was the "information society,"[^14^](#c1-note-0014){#c1-note-0014a}
and in the 1990s the debate revolved around the "network
society"[^15^](#c1-note-0015){#c1-note-0015a} -- to name just the most
popular concepts. What these approaches have in common is that they each
diagnose a comprehensive societal transformation that, as regards the
creation of economic value or jobs, has shifted the balance from
productive to communicative activ­ities. Accordingly, they presuppose
that we know how to distinguish the former from the latter. This is not
unproblematic, however, because in practice the two are usually tightly
intertwined. Moreover, whoever maintains that communicative activities
have taken the place of industrial production in our society has adopted
a very narrow point of []{#Page_17 type="pagebreak" title="17"}view.
Factory jobs have not simply disappeared; they have just been partially
relocated outside of Western economies. The assertion that communicative
activities are somehow of "greater value" hardly chimes with the reality
of today\'s new "service jobs," many of which pay no more than the
minimum wage.[^16^](#c1-note-0016){#c1-note-0016a} Critiques of this
sort, however, have done little to reduce the effectiveness of this
analysis -- especially its political effectiveness -- for it does more
than simply describe a condition. It also contains a set of political
instructions that imply or directly demand that precisely those sectors
should be promoted that it considers economically promising, and that
society should be reorganized accordingly. Since the 1970s, there has
thus been a feedback loop between scientific analysis and political
agendas. More often than not, it is hardly possible to distinguish
between the two. Especially in Britain and the United States, the
economic transformation of the 1980s was imposed insistently and with
political calculation (the weakening of labor unions).

There are, however, important differences between the developments of
the so-called "post-industrial society" of the 1970s and those of the
so-called "network society" of the 1990s, even if both terms are
supposed to stress the increased significance of information, knowledge,
and communication. With regard to the digital condition, the most
important of these differences are the greater flexibility of economic
activity in general and employment relations in particular, as well as
the dismantling of social security systems. Neither phenomenon played
much of a role in analyses of the early 1970s. The development since
then can be traced back to two currents that could not seem more
different from one another. At first, flexibility was demanded in the
name of a critique of the value system imposed by bureaucratic-bourgeois
society (including the traditional organization of the workforce). It
originated in the new social movements that had formed in the late
1960s. Later on, toward the end of the 1970s, it then became one of the
central points of the neoliberal critique of the welfare state. With
completely different motives, both sides sang the praises of autonomy
and spontaneity while rejecting the disciplinary nature of hierarchical
organization. They demanded individuality and diversity rather than
conformity to prescribed roles. Experimentation, openness to []{#Page_18
type="pagebreak" title="18"}new ideas, flexibility, and change were now
established as fundamental values with positive connotations. Both
movements operated with the attractive idea of personal freedom. The new
social movements understood this in a social sense as the freedom of
personal development and coexistence, whereas neoliberals understood it
in an economic sense as the freedom of the market. In the 1980s, the
neoliberal ideas prevailed in large part because some of the values,
strategies, and methods propagated by the new social movements were
removed from their political context and appropriated in order to
breathe new life -- a "new spirit" -- into capitalism and thus to rescue
industrial society from its crisis.[^17^](#c1-note-0017){#c1-note-0017a}
An army of management consultants, restructuring experts, and new
companies began to promote flat hierarchies, self-responsibility, and
innovation; with these aims in mind, they set about reorganizing large
corporations into small and flexible units. Labor and leisure were no
longer supposed to be separated, for all aspects of a given person could
be integrated into his or her work. In order to achieve economic success
in this new capitalism, it became necessary for every individual to
identify himself or herself with his or her profession. Large
corporations were restructured in such a way that entire departments
found themselves transformed into independent "profit centers." This
happened in the name of creating more leeway for decision-making and of
optimizing the entrepreneurial spirit on all levels, the goals being to
increase value creation and to provide management with more fine-grained
powers of intervention. These measures, in turn, created the need for
computers and the need for them to be networked. Large corporations
reacted in this way to the emergence of highly specialized small
companies which, by networking and cooperating with other firms,
succeeded in quickly and flexibly exploiting niches in the expanding
global markets. In the management literature of the 1980s, the
catchphrases for this were "company networks" and "flexible
specialization."[^18^](#c1-note-0018){#c1-note-0018a} By the middle of
the 1990s, the sociologist Manuel Castells was able to conclude that the
actual productive entity was no longer the individual company but rather
the network consisting of companies and corporate divisions of various
sizes. In Castells\'s estimation, the decisive advantage of the network
is its ability to customize its elements and their configuration
[]{#Page_19 type="pagebreak" title="19"}to suit the rapidly changing
requirements of the "project" at
hand.[^19^](#c1-note-0019){#c1-note-0019a} Aside from a few exceptions,
companies in their trad­itional forms came to function above all as
strategic control centers and as economic and legal units.

This economic structural transformation was already well under way when
the internet emerged as a mass medium around the turn of the millennium.
As a consequence, change became more radical and penetrated into an
increasing number of areas of value creation. The political agenda
oriented itself toward the vision of "creative industries," a concept
developed in 1997 by the newly elected British government under Tony
Blair. A Creative Industries Task Force was established right away, and
its first step was to identify "those activities which have their
origins in individual creativity, skill and talent and which have the
potential for wealth and job creation through the generation and
exploit­ation of intellectual
property."[^20^](#c1-note-0020){#c1-note-0020a} Like Fritz Machlup at
the beginning of the 1960s, the task force brought together existing
areas of activity into a new category. Such activities included
advertising, computer games, architecture, music, arts and antique
markets, publishing, design, software and computer services, fashion,
television and radio, and film and video. The latter were elevated to
matters of political importance on account of their potential to create
wealth and jobs. Not least because of this clever presentation of
categories -- no distinction was made between the BBC, an almighty
public-service provider, and fledgling companies in precarious
circumstances -- it was possible to proclaim not only that the creative
industries were contributing a relevant portion of the nation\'s
economic output, but also that this sector was growing at an especially
fast rate. It was reported that, in London, the creative industries were
already responsible for one out of every five new jobs. When compared
with traditional terms of employment as regards income, benefits, and
prospects for advancement, however, many of these positions entailed a
considerable downgrade for the employees in question (who were now
treated as independent contractors). This fact was either ignored or
explicitly interpreted as a sign of the sector\'s particular
dynamism.[^21^](#c1-note-0021){#c1-note-0021a} Around the turn of the
new millennium, the idea that individual creativity plays a central role
in the economy was given further traction by []{#Page_20
type="pagebreak" title="20"}the sociologist and consultant Richard
Florida, who argued that creativity was essential to the future of
cities and even announced the rise of the "creative class." As to the
preconditions that have to be met in order to tap into this source of
wealth, he devised a simple formula that would be easy for municipal
bureaucrats to understand: "technology, tolerance and talent." Talent,
as defined by Florida, is based on individual creativity and education
and manifests itself in the ability to generate new jobs. He was thus
able to declare talent a central element of economic
growth.[^22^](#c1-note-0022){#c1-note-0022a} In order to "unleash" these
resources, what we need in addition to technology is, above all,
tolerance; that is, "an open culture -- one that does not discriminate,
does not force people into boxes, allows us to be ourselves, and
validates various forms of family and of human
identity."[^23^](#c1-note-0023){#c1-note-0023a}

The idea that a public welfare state should ensure the social security
of individuals was considered obsolete. Collective institutions, which
could have provided a degree of stability for people\'s lifestyles, were
dismissed or regarded as bureaucratic obstacles. The more or less
directly evoked role model for all of this was the individual artist,
who was understood as an individual entrepreneur, a sort of genius
suitable for the masses. For Florida, a central problem was that,
according to his own calculations, only about a third of the people
living in North American and European cities were working in the
"creative sector," while the innate creativity of everyone else was
going to waste. Even today, the term "creative industry," along with the
assumption that the internet will provide increased opportunities,
serves to legitimize the effort to restructure all areas of the economy
according to the needs of the knowledge economy and to privilege the
network over the institution. In times of social cutbacks and empty
public purses, especially in municipalities, this message was warmly
received. One mayor, who as the first openly gay top politician in
Germany exemplified tolerance for diverse lifestyles, even adopted the
slogan "poor but sexy" for his city. Everyone was supposed to exploit
his or her own creativity to discover new niches and opportunities for
monet­ization -- a magic formula that was supposed to bring about a new
urban revival. Today there is hardly a city in Europe that does not
issue a report about its creative economy, []{#Page_21 type="pagebreak"
title="21"}and nearly all of these reports cite, directly or indirectly,
Richard Florida.

As already seen in the context of the knowledge economy, so too in the
case of creative industries do measurable social change, wishful
thinking, and political agendas blend together in such a way that it is
impossible to identify a single cause for the developments taking place.
The consequences, however, are significant. Over the last two
generations, the demands of the labor market have fundamentally changed.
Higher education and the ability to acquire new knowledge independently
are now, to an increasing extent, required and expected as
qualifications and personal attributes. The desired or enforced ability
to be flexible at work, the widespread cooperation across institutions,
the uprooted nature of labor, and the erosion of collective models for
social security have displaced many activities, which once took place
within clearly defined institutional or personal limits, into a new
interstitial space that is neither private nor public in the classical
sense. This is the space of networks, communities, and informal
cooperation -- the space of sharing and exchange that has since been
enabled by the emergence of ubiquitous digital communication. It allows
an increasing number of people, whether willingly or otherwise, to
envision themselves as active producers of information, knowledge,
capability, and meaning. And because it is associated in various ways
with the space of market-based exchange and with the bourgeois political
sphere, it has lasting effects on both. This interstitial space becomes
all the more important as fewer people are willing or able to rely on
traditional institutions for their economic security. For, within it,
personal and digital-based networks can and must be developed as
alternatives, regardless of whether they prove sustainable for the long
term. As a result, more and more actors, each with their own claims to
meaning, have been rushing away from the private personal sphere into
this new interstitial space. By now, this has become such a normal
practice that whoever is *not* active in this ever-expanding
interstitial space, which is rapidly becoming the main social sphere --
whoever, that is, lacks a publicly visible profile on social mass media
like Facebook, or does not number among those producing information and
meaning and is thus so inconspicuous online as []{#Page_22
type="pagebreak" title="22"}to yield no search results -- now stands out
in a negative light (or, in far fewer cases, acquires a certain prestige
on account of this very absence).
:::

::: {.section}
### The erosion of heteronormativity {#c1-sec-0004}

In this (sometimes more, sometimes less) public space for the continuous
production of social meaning (and its exploit­ation), there is no
question that the professional middle class is
over-represented.[^24^](#c1-note-0024){#c1-note-0024a} It would be
short-sighted, however, to reduce those seeking autonomy and the
recognition of individuality and social diversity to the role of poster
children for the new spirit of
capitalism.[^25^](#c1-note-0025){#c1-note-0025a} The new social
movements, for instance, initiated a social shift that has allowed an
increasing number of people to demand, if nothing else, the right to
participate in social life in a self-determined manner; that is,
according to their own standards and values.

Especially effective was the critique of patriarchal and heteronormative
power relations, modes of conduct, and
identities.[^26^](#c1-note-0026){#c1-note-0026a} In the context of the
political upheavals at the end of the 1960s, the new women\'s and gay
movements developed into influential actors. Their greatest achievement
was to establish alternative cultural forms, lifestyles, and strategies
of action in or around the mainstream of society. How this was done can
be demonstrated by tracing, for example, the development of the gay
movement in West Germany.

In the fall of 1969, the liberalization of Paragraph 175 of the German
Criminal Code came into effect. From then on, sexual activity between
adult men was no longer punishable by law (women were not mentioned in
this context). For the first time, a man could now express himself as a
homosexual outside of semi-private space without immediately being
exposed to the risk of criminal prosecution. This was a necessary
precondition for the ability to defend one\'s own rights. As early as
1971, the struggle for the recognition of gay life experiences reached
the broader public when Rosa von Praunheim\'s film *It Is Not the
Homosexual Who Is Perverse, but the Society in Which He Lives* was
screened at the Berlin International Film Festival and then, shortly
thereafter, broadcast on public television in North Rhine-Westphalia.
The film, which is firmly situated in the agitprop tradition,
[]{#Page_23 type="pagebreak" title="23"}follows a young provincial man
through the various milieus of Berlin\'s gay subcultures: from a
monogamous relationship to nightclubs and public bathrooms until, at the
end, he is enlightened by a political group of men who explain that it
is not possible to lead a free life in a niche, as his own emancipation
can only be achieved by a transformation of society as a whole. The film
closes with a not-so-subtle call to action: "Out of the closets, into
the streets!" Von Praunheim understood this emancipation to be a process
that encompassed all areas of life and had to be carried out in public;
it could only achieve success, moreover, in solidarity with other
freedom movements such as the Black Panthers in the United States and
the new women\'s movement. The goal, according to this film, is to
articulate one\'s own identity as a specific and differentiated identity
with its own experiences, values, and reference systems, and to anchor
this identity within a society that not only tolerates it but also
recognizes it as having equal validity.

At first, however, the film triggered vehement controversies, even
within the gay scene. The objection was that it attacked the gay
subculture, which was not yet prepared to defend itself publicly against
discrimination. Despite or (more likely) because of these controversies,
more than 50 groups of gay activists soon formed in Germany. Such
groups, largely composed of left-wing alternative students, included,
for instance, the Homosexuelle Aktion Westberlin (HAW) and the Rote
Zelle Schwul (RotZSchwul) in Frankfurt am
Main.[^27^](#c1-note-0027){#c1-note-0027a} One focus of their activities
was to have Paragraph 175 struck entirely from the legal code (which was
not achieved until 1994). This cause was framed within a general
struggle to overcome patriarchy and capitalism. At the earliest gay
demonstrations in Germany, which took place in Münster in April 1972,
protesters rallied behind the following slogan: "Brothers and sisters,
gay or not, it is our duty to fight capitalism." This was understood as
a necessary subordination to the greater struggle against what was known
in the terminology of left-wing radical groups as the "main
contradiction" of capitalism (that between capital and labor), and it
led to strident differences within the gay movement. The dispute
escalated during the next year. After the so-called *Tuntenstreit*, or
"Battle of the Queens," which was []{#Page_24 type="pagebreak"
title="24"}initiated by activists from Italy and France who had appeared
in drag at the closing ceremony of the HAW\'s Spring Meeting in West
Berlin, the gay movement was divided, or at least moving in a new
direction. At the heart of the matter were the following questions: "Is
there an inherent (many speak of an autonomous) position that gays hold
with respect to the issue of homosexuality? Or can a position on
homosexuality only be derived in association with the traditional
workers\' movement?"[^28^](#c1-note-0028){#c1-note-0028a} In other
words, was discrimination against homosexuality part of the social
divide caused by capitalism (that is, one of its "ancillary
contradictions") and thus only to be overcome by overcoming capitalism
itself, or was it something unrelated to the "essence" of capitalism, an
independent conflict requiring different strategies and methods? This
conflict could never be fully resolved, but the second position, which
was more interested in overcoming legal, social, and cultural
discrimination than in struggling against economic exploitation, and
which focused specifically on the social liberation of gays, proved to
be far more dynamic in the long term. This was not least because both
the old and new left were themselves not free of homophobia and because
the entire radical student movement of the 1970s fell into crisis.

Over the course of the 1970s and 1980s, "aesthetic self-empowerment" was
realized through the efforts of artistic and (increasingly) commercial
producers of images, texts, and
sounds.[^29^](#c1-note-0029){#c1-note-0029a} Activists, artists, and
intellectuals developed a language with which they could speak
assertively in public about topics that had previously been taboo.
Inspired by the expression "gay pride," which originated in the United
States, they began to use the term *schwul* ("gay"), which until then
had possessed negative connotations, with growing confidence. They
founded numerous gay and lesbian cultural initiatives, theaters,
publishing houses, magazines, bookstores, meeting places, and other
associations in order to counter the misleading or (in their eyes)
outright false representations of the mass media with their own
multifarious media productions. In doing so, they typically followed a
dual strategy: on the one hand, they wanted to create a space for the
members of the movement in which it would be possible to formulate and
live different identities; on the other hand, they were fighting to be
accepted by society at large. While []{#Page_25 type="pagebreak"
title="25"}a broader and broader spectrum of gay positions, experiences,
and aesthetics was becoming visible to the public, the connection to
left-wing radical contexts became weaker. Founded as early as 1974, and
likewise in West Berlin, the General Homosexual Working Group
(Allgemeine Homosexuelle Arbeitsgemeinschaft) sought to integrate gay
politics into mainstream society by defining the latter -- on the basis
of bourgeois, individual rights -- as a "politics of
anti-discrimination." These efforts achieved a milestone in 1980 when,
in the run-up to the parliamentary election, a podium discussion was
held with representatives of all major political parties on the topic of
the law governing sexual offences. The discussion took place in the
Beethovenhalle in Bonn, which was the largest venue for political events
in the former capital. Several participants considered the event to be a
"disaster,"[^30^](#c1-note-0030){#c1-note-0030a} for it revived a number
of internal conflicts (not least that between revolutionary and
integrative positions). Yet the fact remains that representatives were
present from every political party, and this alone was indicative of an
unprecedented amount of public awareness for those demanding equal
rights.

The struggle against discrimination and for social recognition reached
an entirely new level of urgency with the outbreak of HIV/AIDS. In 1983,
the magazine *Der Spiegel* devoted its first cover story to the disease,
thus bringing it to the awareness of the broader public. In the same
year, the non-profit organization Deutsche Aids-Hilfe was founded to
prevent further cases of discrimination, for *Der Spiegel* was not the
only publication at the time to refer to AIDS as a "homosexual
epidemic."[^31^](#c1-note-0031){#c1-note-0031a} The struggle against
HIV/AIDS required a comprehensive mobilization. Funding had to be raised
in order to deal with the social repercussions of the epidemic, to teach
people about safe sexual practices for everyone and to direct research
toward discovering causes and developing potential cures. The immediate
threat that AIDS represented, especially while so little was known about
the illness and its treatment remained a distant hope, created an
impetus for mobilization that led to alliances between the gay movement,
the healthcare system, and public authorities. Thus, the AIDS Inquiry
Committee, sponsored by the conservative Christian Democratic Union,
concluded in 1988 that, in the fight against the illness, "the
homosexual subculture is []{#Page_26 type="pagebreak"
title="26"}especially important. This informal structure should
therefore neither be impeded nor repressed but rather, on the contrary,
recognized and supported."[^32^](#c1-note-0032){#c1-note-0032a} The AIDS
crisis proved to be a catalyst for advancing the integration of gays
into society and for expanding what could be regarded as acceptable
lifestyles, opinions, and cultural practices. As a consequence,
homosexuals began to appear more frequently in the media, though their
presence would never match that of hetero­sexuals. As of 1985, the
television show *Lindenstraße* featured an openly gay protagonist, and
the first kiss between men was aired in 1987. The episode still provoked
a storm of protest -- Bayerische Rundfunk refused to broadcast it a
second time -- but this was already a rearguard action and the
integration of gays (and lesbians) into the social mainstream continued.
In 1993, the first gay and lesbian city festival took place in Berlin,
and the first Rainbow Parade was held in Vienna in 1996. In 2002, the
Cologne Pride Day involved 1.2 million participants and attendees, thus
surpassing for the first time the attendance at the traditional Rose
Monday parade. By the end of the 1990s, the sociologist Rüdiger Lautmann
was already prepared to maintain: "To be homosexual has become
increasingly normalized, even if homophobia lives on in the depths of
the collective disposition."[^33^](#c1-note-0033){#c1-note-0033a} This
normalization was also reflected in a study published by the Ministry of
Justice in the year 2000, which stressed "the similarity between
homosexual and heterosexual relationships" and, on this basis, made an
argument against discrimination.[^34^](#c1-note-0034){#c1-note-0034a}
Around the year 2000, however, the classical gay movement had already
passed its peak. A profound transformation had begun to take place in
the middle of the 1990s. It lost its character as a new social movement
(in the style of the 1970s) and began to splinter inwardly and
outwardly. One could say that it transformed from a mass movement into a
multitude of variously networked communities. The clearest sign of this
transformation is the abbreviation "LGBT" (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and
transgender), which, since the mid-1990s, has represented the internal
heterogeneity of the movement as it has shifted toward becoming a
network.[^35^](#c1-note-0035){#c1-note-0035a} At this point, the more
radical actors were already speaking against the normalization of
homosexuality. Queer theory, for example, was calling into question the
"essentialist" definition of gender []{#Page_27 type="pagebreak"
title="27"}-- that is, any definition reducing it to an immutable
essence -- with respect to both its physical dimension (sex) and its
social and cultural dimension (gender
proper).[^36^](#c1-note-0036){#c1-note-0036a} It thus opened up a space
for the articulation of experiences, self-descriptions, and lifestyles
that, on every level, are located beyond the classical attributions of
men and women. A new generation of intellectuals, activists, and artists
took the stage and developed -- yet again through acts of aesthetic
self-empowerment -- a language that enabled them to import, with
confidence, different self-definitions into the public sphere. An
example of this is the adoption of inclusive plural forms in German
(*Aktivist\_innen* "activists," *Künstler\_innen* "artists"), which draw
attention to the gaps and possibilities between male and female
identities that are also expressed in the language itself. Just as with
the terms "gay" or *schwul* some 30 years before, in this case, too, an
important element was the confident and public adoption and semantic
conversion of a formerly insulting word ("queer") by the very people and
communities against whom it used to be
directed.[^37^](#c1-note-0037){#c1-note-0037a} Likewise observable in
these developments was the simultaneity of social (amateur) and
artistic/scientific (professional) cultural production. The goal,
however, was less to produce a clear antithesis than it was to oppose
rigid attributions by underscoring mutability, hybridity, and
uniqueness. Both the scope of what could be expressed in public and the
circle of potential speakers expanded yet again. And, at least to some
extent, the drag queen Conchita Wurst popularized complex gender
constructions that went beyond the simple woman/man dualism. All of that
said, the assertion by Rüdiger Lautmann quoted above -- "homophobia
lives on in the depths of the collective dis­position" -- continued to
hold true.

If the gay movement is representative of the social liber­ation of the
1970s and 1980s, then it is possible to regard its transformation into
the LGBT movement during the 1990s -- with its multiplicity and fluidity
of identity models and its stress on mutability and hybridity -- as a
sign of the reinvention of this project within the context of an
increasingly dominant digital condition. With this transformation,
however, the diversification and fluidification of cultural practices
and social roles have not yet come to an end. Ways of life that were
initially subcultural and facing existential pressure []{#Page_28
type="pagebreak" title="28"}are gradually entering the mainstream. They
are expanding the range of readily available models of identity for
anyone who might be interested, be it with respect to family forms
(e.g., patchwork families, adoption by same-sex couples), diets (e.g.,
vegetarianism and veganism), healthcare (e.g., anti-vaccination), or
other principles of life and belief. All of them are seeking public
recognition for a new frame of reference for social meaning that has
originated from their own activity. This is necessarily a process
characterized by conflicts and various degrees of resistance, including
right-wing populism that seeks to defend "traditional values," but many
of these movements will ultimately succeed in providing more people with
the opportunity to speak in public, thus broadening the palette of
themes that are considered to be important and legitimate.
:::

::: {.section}
### Beyond center and periphery {#c1-sec-0005}

In order to reach a better understanding of the complexity involved in
the expanding social basis of cultural production, it is necessary to
shift yet again to a different level. For, just as it would be myopic to
examine the multiplication of cultural producers only in terms of
professional knowledge workers from the middle class, it would likewise
be insufficient to situate this multiplication exclusively in the
centers of the West. The entire system of categories that justified the
differentiation between the cultural "center" and the cultural
"periphery" has begun to falter. This complex and multilayered process
has been formulated and analyzed by the theory of "post-colonialism."
Long before digital media made the challenge of cultural multiplicity a
quotidian issue in the West, proponents of this theory had developed
languages and terminologies for negotiating different positions without
needing to impose a hierarchical order.

Since the 1970s, the theoretical current of post-colonialism has been
examining the cultural and epistemic dimensions of colonialism that,
even after its end as a territorial system, have remained responsible
for the continuation of dependent relations and power differentials. For
my purposes -- which are to develop a European perspective on the
factors ensuring that more and more people are able to participate in
cultural []{#Page_29 type="pagebreak" title="29"}production -- two
points are especially relevant because their effects reverberate in
Europe itself. First is the deconstruction of the categories "West" (in
the sense of the center) and "East" (in the sense of the periphery). And
second is the focus on hybridity as a specific way for non-Western
actors to deal with the dominant cultures of former colonial powers,
which have continued to determine significant portions of globalized
culture. The terms "West" and "East," "center" and "periphery," do not
simply describe existing conditions; rather, they are categories that
contribute, in an important way, to the creation of the very conditions
that they presume to describe. This may sound somewhat circular, but it
is precisely from this circularity that such cultural classifications
derive their strength. The world that they illuminate is immersed in
their own light. The category "East" -- or, to use the term of the
literary theorist Edward Said,
"orientalism"[^38^](#c1-note-0038){#c1-note-0038a} -- is a system of
representation that pervades Western thinking. Within this system,
Europe or the West (as the center) and the East (as the periphery)
represent asymmetrical and antithetical concepts. This construction
achieves a dual effect. As a self-description, on the one hand, it
contributes to the formation of our own identity, for Europeans
attrib­ute to themselves and to their continent such features as
"rationality," "order," and "progress," while on the other hand
identifying the alternative with "superstition," "chaos," or
"stagnation." The East, moreover, is used as an exotic projection screen
for our own suppressed desires. According to Said, a representational
system of this sort can only take effect if it becomes "hegemonic"; that
is, if it is perceived as self-evident and no longer as an act of
attribution but rather as one of description, even and precisely by
those against whom the system discriminates. Said\'s accomplishment is
to have worked out how far-reaching this system was and, in many areas,
it remains so today. It extended (and extends) from scientific
disciplines, whose researchers discussed (until the 1980s) the theory of
"oriental despotism,"[^39^](#c1-note-0039){#c1-note-0039a} to literature
and art -- the motif of the harem was especially popular, particularly
in paintings of the late nineteenth
century[^40^](#c1-note-0040){#c1-note-0040a} -- all the way to everyday
culture, where, as of 1913 in the United States, the cigarette brand
Camel (introduced to compete with the then-leading brand, Fatima) was
meant to evoke the []{#Page_30 type="pagebreak" title="30"}mystique and
sensuality of the Orient.[^41^](#c1-note-0041){#c1-note-0041a} This
system of representation, however, was more than a means of describing
oneself and others; it also served to legitimize the allocation of all
knowledge and agency on to one side, that of the West. Such an order was
not restricted to culture; it also created and legitimized a sense of
domination for colonial projects.[^42^](#c1-note-0042){#c1-note-0042a}
This cultural legitimation, as Said points out, also persists after the
end of formal colonial domination and continues to marginalize the
postcolonial subjects. As before, they are unable to speak for
themselves and therefore remain in the dependent periphery, which is
defined by their subordinate position in relation to the center. Said
directed the focus of critique to this arrangement of center and
periphery, which he saw as being (re)produced and legitimized on the
cultural level. From this arose the demand that everyone should have the
right to speak, to place him- or herself in the center. To achieve this,
it was necessary first of all to develop a language -- indeed, a
cultural landscape -- that can manage without a hegemonic center and is
thus oriented toward multiplicity instead of
uniformity.[^43^](#c1-note-0043){#c1-note-0043a}

A somewhat different approach has been taken by the literary theorist
Homi K. Bhabha. He proceeds from the idea that the colonized never fully
passively adopt the culture of the colonialists -- the "English book,"
as he calls it. Their previous culture is never simply wiped out and
replaced by another. What always and necessarily occurs is rather a
process of hybridization. This concept, according to Bhabha,

::: {.extract}
suggests that all of culture is constructed around negotiations and
conflicts. Every cultural practice involves an attempt -- sometimes
good, sometimes bad -- to establish authority. Even classical works of
art, such as a painting by Brueghel or a composition by Beethoven, are
concerned with the establishment of cultural authority. Now, this poses
the following question: How does one function as a negotiator when
one\'s own sense of agency is limited, for instance, on account of being
excluded or oppressed? I think that, even in the role of the underdog,
there are opportunities to upend the imposed cultural authorities -- to
accept some aspects while rejecting others. It is in this way that
symbols of authority are hybridized and made into something of one\'s
own. For me, hybridization is not simply a mixture but rather a
[]{#Page_31 type="pagebreak" title="31"}strategic and selective
appropriation of meanings; it is a way to create space for negotiators
whose freedom and equality are
endangered.[^44^](#c1-note-0044){#c1-note-0044a}
:::

Hybridization is thus a cultural strategy for evading marginality that
is imposed from the outside: subjects, who from the dominant perspective
are incapable of doing so, appropriate certain aspects of culture for
themselves and transform them into something else. What is decisive is
that this hybrid, created by means of active and unauthorized
appropriation, opposes the dominant version and the resulting speech is
thus legitimized from another -- that is, from one\'s own -- position.
In this way, a cultural engagement is set under way and the superiority
of one meaning or another is called into question. Who has the right to
determine how and why a relationship with others should be entered,
which resources should be appropriated from them, and how these
resources should be used? At the heart of the matter lie the abilities
of speech and interpretation; these can be seized in order to create
space for a "cultural hybridity that entertains difference without an
assumed or imposed hierarchy."[^45^](#c1-note-0045){#c1-note-0045a}

At issue is thus a strategy for breaking down hegemonic cultural
conditions, which distribute agency in a highly uneven manner, and for
turning one\'s own cultural production -- which has been dismissed by
cultural authorities as flawed, misconceived, or outright ignorant --
into something negotiable and independently valuable. Bhabha is thus
interested in fissures, differences, diversity, multiplicity, and
processes of negotiation that generate something like shared meaning --
culture, as he defines it -- instead of conceiving of it as something
that precedes these processes and is threatened by them. Accordingly, he
proceeds not from the idea of unity, which is threatened whenever
"others" are empowered to speak and needs to be preserved, but rather
from the irreducible multiplicity that, through laborious processes, can
be brought into temporary and limited consensus. Bhabha\'s vision of
culture is one without immutable authorities, interpretations, and
truths. In theory, everything can be brought to the table. This is not a
situation in which anything goes, yet the central meaning of
negotiation, the contextuality of consensus, and the mutability of every
frame of reference []{#Page_32 type="pagebreak" title="32"}-- none of
which can be shared equally by everyone -- are always potentially
negotiable.

Post-colonialism draws attention to the "disruptive power of the
excluded-included third," which becomes especially virulent when it
"emerges in the middle of semantic
structures."[^46^](#c1-note-0046){#c1-note-0046a} The recognition of
this power reveals the increasing cultural independence of those
formerly colonized, and it also transforms the cultural self-perception
of the West, for, even in Western nations that were not significant
colonial powers, there are multifaceted tensions between dominant
cultures and those who are on the defensive against discrimination and
attributions by others. Instead of relying on the old recipe of
integration through assimilation (that is, the dissolution of the
"other"), the right to self-determined difference is being called for
more emphatically. In such a manner, collective identities, such as
national identities, are freed from their questionable appeals to
cultural homogeneity and essentiality, and reconceived in terms of the
experience of immanent difference. Instead of one binding and
unnegotiable frame of reference for everyone, which hierarchizes
individual pos­itions and makes them appear unified, a new order without
such limitations needs to be established. Ultimately, the aim is to
provide nothing less than an "alternative reading of
modernity,"[^47^](#c1-note-0047){#c1-note-0047a} which influences both
the construction of the past and the modalities of the future. For
European culture in particular, such a project is an immense challenge.

Of course, these demands do not derive their everyday relevance
primarily from theory but rather from the experiences of
(de)colonization, migration, and globalization. Multifaceted as it is,
however, the theory does provide forms and languages for articulating
these phenomena, legitimizing new positions in public debates, and
attacking persistent mechanisms of cultural marginalization. It helps to
empower broader societal groups to become actively involved in cultural
processes, namely people, such as migrants and their children, whose
identity and experience are essentially shaped by non-Western cultures.
The latter have been giving voice to their experiences more frequently
and with greater confidence in all areas of public life, be it in
politics, literature, music, or
art.[^48^](#c1-note-0048){#c1-note-0048a} In Germany, for instance, the
films by Fatih Akin (*Head-On* from 2004 and *Soul Kitchen* from 2009,
to []{#Page_33 type="pagebreak" title="33"}name just two), in which the
experience of immigration is represented as part of the German
experience, have reached a wide public audience. In 2002, the group
Kanak Attak organized a series of conferences with the telling motto *no
integración*, and these did much to introduce postcolonial positions to
the debates taking place in German-speaking
countries.[^49^](#c1-note-0049){#c1-note-0049a} For a long time,
politicians with "migration backgrounds" were considered to be competent
in only one area, namely integration policy. This has since changed,
though not entirely. In 2008, for instance, Cem Özdemir was elected
co-chair of the Green Party and thus shares responsibility for all of
its political positions. Developments of this sort have been enabled
(and strengthened) by a shift in society\'s self-perception. In 2014,
Cemile Giousouf, the integration commissioner for the conservative
CDU/CSU alliance in the German Parliament, was able to make the
following statement without inciting any controversy: "Over the past few
years, Germany has become a modern land of
immigration."[^50^](#c1-note-0050){#c1-note-0050a} A remarkable
proclamation. Not ten years earlier, her party colleague Norbert Lammert
had expressed, in his function as parliamentary president, interest in
reviving the debate about the term "leading culture." The increasingly
well-educated migrants of the first, second, or third gener­ation no
longer accept the choice of being either marginalized as an exotic
representative of the "other" or entirely assimilated. Rather, they are
insisting on being able to introduce their specific experience as a
constitutive contribution to the formation of the present -- in
association and in conflict with other contributions, but at the same
level and with the same legitimacy. It is no surprise that various forms
of discrimin­ation and violence against "foreigners" not only continue
in everyday life but have also been increasing in reaction to this new
situation. Ultimately, established claims to power are being called into
question.

To summarize, at least three secular historical tendencies or movements,
some of which can be traced back to the late nineteenth century but each
of which gained considerable momentum during the last third of the
twentieth (the spread of the knowledge economy, the erosion of
heteronormativity, and the focus of post-colonialism on cultural
hybridity), have greatly expanded the sphere of those who actively
negotiate []{#Page_34 type="pagebreak" title="34"}social meaning. In
large part, the patterns and cultural foundations of these processes
developed long before the internet. Through the use of the internet, and
through the experiences of dealing with it, they have encroached upon
far greater portions of all societies.
:::
:::

::: {.section}
The Culturalization of the World {#c1-sec-0006}
--------------------------------

The number of participants in cultural processes, however, is not the
only thing that has increased. Parallel to that development, the field
of the cultural has expanded as well -- that is, those areas of life
that are not simply characterized by unalterable necessities, but rather
contain or generate competing options and thus require conscious
decisions.

The term "culturalization of the economy" refers to the central position
of knowledge-based, meaning-based, and affect-oriented processes in the
creation of value. With the emergence of consumption as the driving
force behind the production of goods and the concomitant necessity of
having not only to satisfy existing demands but also to create new ones,
the cultural and affective dimensions of the economy began to gain
significance. I have already discussed the beginnings of product
staging, advertising, and public relations. In addition to all of the
continuities that remain with us from that time, it is also possible to
point out a number of major changes that consumer society has undergone
since the late 1960s. These changes can be delineated by examining the
greater role played by design, which has been called the "core
discipline of the creative
economy."[^51^](#c1-note-0051){#c1-note-0051a}

As a field of its own, design originated alongside industrialization,
when, in collaborative processes, the activities of planning and
designing were separated from those of carrying out
production.[^52^](#c1-note-0052){#c1-note-0052a} It was not until the
modern era that designers consciously endeavored to seek new forms for
the logic inherent to mass production. With the aim of economic
efficiency, they intended their designs to optimize the clearly defined
functions of anonymous and endlessly reproducible objects. At the end of
the nineteenth century, the architect Louis Sullivan, whose buildings
still distinguish the skyline of Chicago, condensed this new attitude
into the famous axiom []{#Page_35 type="pagebreak" title="35"}"form
follows function." Mies van der Rohe, working as an architect in Chicago
in the middle of the twentieth century, supplemented this with a pithy
and famous formulation of his own: "less is more." The rationality of
design, in the sense of isolating and improving specific functions, and
the economical use of resources were of chief importance to modern
(industrial) designers. Even the ten design principles of Dieter Rams,
who led the design division of the consumer products company Braun from
1965 to 1991 -- one of the main sources of inspiration for Jonathan Ive,
Apple\'s chief design officer -- aimed to make products "usable,"
"understandable," "honest," and "long-lasting." "Good design," according
to his guiding principle, "is as little design as
possible."[^53^](#c1-note-0053){#c1-note-0053a} This orientation toward
the technical and functional promised to solve problems for everyone in
a long-term and binding manner, for the inherent material and design
qual­ities of an object were supposed to make it independent from
changing times and from the tastes of consumers.

::: {.section}
### Beyond the object {#c1-sec-0007}

At the end of the 1960s, a new generation of designers rebelled against
this industrial and instrumental rationality, which was now felt to be
authoritarian, soulless, and reductionist. In the works associated with
"anti-design" or "radical design," the objectives of the discipline were
redefined and a new formal language was developed. In the place of
tech­nical and functional optimization, recombination -- ecological
recycling or the postmodern interplay of forms -- emerged as a design
method and aesthetic strategy. Moreover, the aspiration of design
shifted from the individual object to its entire social and material
environment. The processes of design and production, which had been
closed off from one another and restricted to specialists, were opened
up precisely to encourage the participation of non-designers, be it
through interdisciplinary cooperation with other types of professions or
through the empowerment of laymen. The objectives of design were
radically expanded: rather than ending with the completion of an
individual product, it was now supposed to engage with society. In the
sense of cybernetics, this was regarded as a "system," controlled by
feedback processes, []{#Page_36 type="pagebreak" title="36"}which
connected social, technical, and biological dimensions to one
another.[^54^](#c1-note-0054){#c1-note-0054a} Design, according to this
new approach, was meant to be a "socially significant
activity."[^55^](#c1-note-0055){#c1-note-0055a}

Embedded in the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s, this new
generation of designers was curious about the social and political
potential of their discipline, and about possibilities for promoting
flexibility and autonomy instead of rigid industrial efficiency. Design
was no longer expected to solve problems once and for all, for such an
idea did not correspond to the self-perception of an open and mutable
society. Rather, it was expected to offer better opportun­ities for
enabling people to react to continuously changing conditions. A radical
proposal was developed by the Italian designer Enzo Mari, who in 1974
published his handbook *Autoprogettazione* (Self-Design). It contained
19 simple designs with which people could make, on their own,
aesthetically and functionally sophisticated furniture out of pre-cut
pieces of wood. In this case, the designs themselves were less important
than the critique of conventional design as elitist and of consumer
society as alienated and wasteful. Mari\'s aim was to reconceive the
relations among designers, the manufacturing industry, and users.
Increasingly, design came to be understood as a holistic and open
process. Victor Papanek, the founder of ecological design, took things a
step further. For him, design was "basic to all human activity. The
planning and patterning of any act towards a desired, foreseeable end
constitutes the design process. Any attempt to separate design, to make
it a thing-by-itself, works counter to the inherent value of design as
the primary underlying matrix of
life."[^56^](#c1-note-0056){#c1-note-0056a}

Potentially all aspects of life could therefore fall under the purview
of design. This came about from the desire to oppose industrialism,
which was blind to its catastrophic social and ecological consequences,
with a new and comprehensive manner of seeing and acting that was
unrestricted by economics.

Toward the end of the 1970s, this expanded notion of design owed less
and less to emancipatory social movements, and its socio-political goals
began to fall by the wayside. Three fundamental patterns survived,
however, which go beyond design and remain characteristic of the
culturalization []{#Page_37 type="pagebreak" title="37"}of the economy:
the discovery of the public as emancipated users and active
participants; the use of appropriation, transformation, and
recombination as methods for creating ever-new aesthetic
differentiations; and, finally, the intention of shaping the lifeworld
of the user.[^57^](#c1-note-0057){#c1-note-0057a}

As these patterns became depoliticized and commercialized, the focus of
designing the "lifeworld" shifted more and more toward designing the
"experiential world." By the end of the 1990s, this had become so
normalized that even management consultants could assert that
"\[e\]xperiences represent an existing but previously unarticulated
*genre of economic output*."[^58^](#c1-note-0058){#c1-note-0058a} It was
possible to define the dimensions of the experiential world in various
ways. For instance, it could be clearly delimited and product-oriented,
like the flagship stores introduced by Nike in 1990, which, with their
elaborate displays, were meant to turn shopping into an experience. This
experience, as the company\'s executives hoped, radiated outward and
influenced how the brand was perceived as a whole. The experiential
world could also, however, be conceived in somewhat broader terms, for
instance by design­ing entire institutions around the idea of creating a
more attractive work environment and thereby increasing the commitment
of employees. This approach is widespread today in creative industries
and has become popularized through countless stories about ping-pong
tables, gourmet cafeterias, and massage rooms in certain offices. In
this case, the process of creativity is applied back to itself in order
to systematize and optimize a given workplace\'s basis of operation. The
development is comparable to the "invention of invention" that
characterized industrial research around the end of the nineteenth
century, though now the concept has been re­located to the field of
knowledge production.

Yet the "experiential world" can be expanded even further, for instance
when entire cities attempt to make themselves attractive to
international clientele and compete with others by building spectacular
museums or sporting arenas. Displays in cities, as well as a few other
central locations, are regularly constructed in order to produce a
particular experience. This also entails, however, that certain forms of
use that fail to fit the "urban
script"[^59^](#c1-note-0059){#c1-note-0059a} are pushed to the margins
or driven away.[^60^](#c1-note-0060){#c1-note-0060a} Thus, today, there
is hardly a single area of life to []{#Page_38 type="pagebreak"
title="38"}which the strategies and methods of design do not have
access, and this access occurs at all levels. For some time, design has
not been a purely visible matter, restricted to material objects; it
rather forms and controls all of the senses. Cities, for example, have
come to be understood increasingly as "sound spaces" and have
accordingly been reconfigured with the goal of modulating their various
noises.[^61^](#c1-note-0061){#c1-note-0061a} Yet design is no longer
just a matter of objects, processes, and experiences. By now, in the
context of reproductive medicine, it has even been applied to the
biological foundations of life ("designer babies"). I will revisit this
topic below.
:::

::: {.section}
### Culture everywhere {#c1-sec-0008}

Of course, design is not the only field of culture that has imposed
itself over society as a whole. A similar development has occurred in
the field of advertising, which, since the 1970s, has been integrated
into many more physical and social spaces and by now has a broad range
of methods at its disposal. Advertising is no longer found simply on
billboards or in display windows. In the form of "guerilla marketing" or
"product placement," it has penetrated every space and occupied every
discourse -- by blending with political messages, for instance -- and
can now even be spread, as "viral marketing," by the addressees of the
advertisements themselves. Similar processes can be observed in the
fields of art, fashion, music, theater, and sports. This has taken place
perhaps most radically in the field of "gaming," which has drawn upon
technical progress in the most direct possible manner and, with the
spread of powerful computers and mobile applications, has left behind
the confines of the traditional playing field. In alternate reality
games, the realm of the virtual and fictitious has also been
transcended, as physical spaces have been overlaid with their various
scripts.[^62^](#c1-note-0062){#c1-note-0062a}

This list could be extended, but the basic trend is clear enough,
especially as the individual fields overlap and mutually influence one
another. They are blending into a single interdependent field for
generating social meaning in the form of economic activity. Moreover,
through digitalization and networking, many new opportunities have
arisen for large-scale involvement by the public in design processes.
Thanks []{#Page_39 type="pagebreak" title="39"}to new communication
technologies and flexible production processes, today\'s users can
personalize and create products to suit their wishes. Here, the spectrum
extends from tiny batches of creative-industrial products all the way to
global processes of "mass customization," in which factory-based mass
production is combined with personalization. One of the first
applications of this was introduced in 1999 when, through its website, a
sporting-goods company allowed customers to design certain elements of a
shoe by altering it within a set of guidelines. This was taken a step
further by the idea of "user-centered innovation," which relies on the
specific knowledge of users to enhance a product, with the additional
hope of discovering unintended applications and transforming these into
new areas of business.[^63^](#c1-note-0063){#c1-note-0063a} It has also
become possible for end users to take over the design process from the
beginning, which has become considerably easier with the advent of
specialized platforms for exchanging knowledge, alongside semi-automated
production tools such as mechanical mills and 3D printers.
Digitalization, which has allowed all content to be processed, and
networking, which has created an endless amount of content ("raw
material"), have turned appropriation and recombination into general
methods of cultural production.[^64^](#c1-note-0064){#c1-note-0064a}
This phenomenon will be examined more closely in the next chapter.

Both the involvement of users in the production process and the methods
of appropriation and recombination are extremely information-intensive
and communication-intensive. Without the corresponding technological
infrastructure, neither could be achieved efficiently or on a large
scale. This was evident in the 1970s, when such approaches never made it
beyond subcultures and conceptual studies. With today\'s search engines,
every single user can trawl through an amount of information that, just
a generation ago, would have been unmanageable even by professional
archivists. A broad array of communication platforms (together with
flexible production capacities and efficient logistics) not only weakens
the contradiction between mass fabrication and personalization; it also
allows users to network directly with one another in order to develop
specialized knowledge together and thus to enable themselves to
intervene directly in design processes, both as []{#Page_40
type="pagebreak" title="40"}willing participants in and as critics of
flexible global production processes.
:::
:::

::: {.section}
The Technologization of Culture {#c1-sec-0009}
-------------------------------

That society is dependent on complex information technologies in order
to organize its constitutive processes is, in itself, nothing new.
Rather, this began as early as the late nineteenth century. It is
directly correlated with the expansion and acceleration of the
circulation of goods, which came about through industrialization. As the
historian and sociologist James Beniger has noted, this led to a
"control crisis," for administrative control centers were faced with the
problem of losing sight of what was happening in their own factories,
with their suppliers, and in the important markets of the time.
Management was in a bind: decisions had to be made either on the basis
of insufficient information or too late. The existing administrative and
control mechanisms could no longer deal with the rapidly increasing
complexity and time-sensitive nature of extensively organized production
and distribution. The office became more important, and ever more people
were needed there to fulfill a growing number of functions. Yet this was
not enough for the crisis to subside. The old administrative methods,
which involved manual information processing, simply could no longer
keep up. The crisis reached its first dramatic peak in 1889 in the
United States, with the realization that the census data from the year
1880 had not yet been analyzed when the next census was already
scheduled to take place during the subsequent year. In the same year,
the Secretary of the Interior organized a conference to investigate
faster methods of data processing. Two methods were tested for making
manual labor more efficient, one of which had the potential to achieve
greater efficiency by means of novel data-processing machines. The
latter system emerged as the clear victor; developed by an engineer
named Hermann Hollerith, it mechanically processed and stored data on
punch cards. The idea was based on Hollerith\'s observations of the
coup­ling and decoupling of railroad cars, which he interpreted as
modular units that could be combined in any desired order. The punch
card transferred this approach to information []{#Page_41
type="pagebreak" title="41"}management. Data were no longer stored in
fixed, linear arrangements (tables and lists) but rather in small units
(the punch cards) that, like railroad cars, could be combined in any
given way. The increase in efficiency -- with respect to speed *and*
flexibility -- was enormous, and nearly a hundred of Hollerith\'s
machines were used by the Census
Bureau.[^65^](#c1-note-0065){#c1-note-0065a} This marked a turning point
in the history of information processing, with technical means no longer
being used exclusively to store data, but to process data as well. This
was the only way to avoid the impending crisis, ensuring that
bureaucratic management could maintain centralized control. Hollerith\'s
machines proved to be a resounding success and were implemented in many
more branches of government and corporate administration, where
data-intensive processes had increased so rapidly they could not have
been managed without such machines. This growth was accompanied by that
of Hollerith\'s Tabulating Machine Company, which he founded in 1896 and
which, after a number of mergers, was renamed in 1924 as the
International Business Machines Corporation (IBM). Throughout the
following decades, dependence on information-processing machines only
deepened. The growing number of social, commercial, and military
processes could only be managed by means of information technology. This
largely took place, however, outside of public view, namely in the
specialized divisions of large government and private organizations.
These were the only institutions in command of the necessary resources
for operating the complex technical infrastructure -- so-called
mainframe computers -- that was essential to automatic information
processing.

::: {.section}
### The independent media {#c1-sec-0010}

As with so much else, this situation began to change in the 1960s. Mass
media and information-processing technologies began to attract
criticism, even though all of the involved subcultures, media activists,
and hackers continued to act independently from one another until the
1990s. The freedom-oriented social movements of the 1960s began to view
the mass media as part of the political system against which they were
struggling. The connections among the economy, politics, and the media
were becoming more apparent, not []{#Page_42 type="pagebreak"
title="42"}least because many mass media companies, especially those in
Germany related to the Springer publishing house, were openly inimical
to these social movements. Critical theor­ies arose that, borrowing
Louis Althusser\'s influential term, regarded the media as part of the
"ideological state apparatus"; that is, as one of the authorities whose
task is to influence people to accept social relations to such a degree
that the "repressive state apparatuses" (the police, the military, etc.)
form a constant background in everyday
life.[^66^](#c1-note-0066){#c1-note-0066a} Similarly influential,
Antonio Gramsci\'s theory of "cultural hegemony" emphasized the
condition in which the governed are manipulated to form a cultural
consensus with the ruling class; they accept the latter\'s
presuppositions (and the politics which are thus justified) even though,
by doing so, they are forced to suffer economic
disadvantages.[^67^](#c1-note-0067){#c1-note-0067a} Guy Debord and the
Situationists attributed to the media a central role in the new form of
rule known as "the spectacle," the glittery surfaces and superficial
manifestations of which served to conceal society\'s true
relations.[^68^](#c1-note-0068){#c1-note-0068a} In doing so, they
aligned themselves with the critique of the "culture industry," which
had been formulated by Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno at the
beginning of the 1940s and had become a widely discussed key text by the
1960s.

Their differences aside, these perspectives were united in that they no
longer understood the "public" as a neutral sphere, in which citizens
could inform themselves freely and form their opinions, but rather as
something that was created with specific intentions and consequences.
From this grew an interest in "counter-publics"; that is, in forums
where other actors could appear and negotiate theories of their own. The
mass media thus became an important instrument for organizing the
bourgeois--capitalist public, but they were also responsible for the
development of alternatives. Media, according to one of the core ideas
of these new approaches, are less a sphere in which an external reality
is depicted; rather, they are themselves a constitutive element of
reality.
:::

::: {.section}
### Media as lifeworlds {#c1-sec-0011}

Another branch of new media theories, that of Marshall McLuhan and the
Toronto School of Communication,[^69^](#c1-note-0069){#c1-note-0069a}
[]{#Page_43 type="pagebreak" title="43"}reached a similar conclusion on
different grounds. In 1964, McLuhan aroused a great deal of attention
with his slogan "the medium is the message." He maintained that every
medium of communication, by means of its media-specific characteristics,
directly affected the consciousness, self-perception, and worldview of
every individual.[^70^](#c1-note-0070){#c1-note-0070a} This, he
believed, happens independently of and in addition to whatever specific
message a medium might be conveying. From this perspective, reality does
not exist outside of media, given that media codetermine our personal
relation to and behavior in the world. For McLuhan and the Toronto
School, media were thus not channels for transporting content but rather
the all-encompassing environments -- galaxies -- in which we live.

Such ideas were circulating much earlier and were intensively developed
by artists, many of whom were beginning to experiment with new
electronic media. An important starting point in this regard was the
1963 exhibit *Exposition of Music -- Electronic Television* by the
Korean artist Nam June Paik, who was then collaborating with Karlheinz
Stockhausen in Düsseldorf. Among other things, Paik presented 12
television sets, the screens of which were "distorted" by magnets. Here,
however, "distorted" is a problematic term, for, as Paik explicitly
noted, the electronic images were "a beautiful slap in the face of
classic dualism in philosophy since the time of Plato. \[...\] Essence
AND existence, essentia AND existentia. In the case of the electron,
however, EXISTENTIA IS ESSENTIA."[^71^](#c1-note-0071){#c1-note-0071a}
Paik no longer understood the electronic image on the television screen
as a portrayal or representation of anything. Rather, it engendered in
the moment of its appearance an autonomous reality beyond and
independent of its representational function. A whole generation of
artists began to explore forms of existence in electronic media, which
they no longer understood as pure media of information. In his work
*Video Corridor* (1969--70), Bruce Nauman stacked two monitors at the
end of a corridor that was approximately 10 meters long but only 50
centimeters wide. On the lower monitor ran a video showing the empty
hallway. The upper monitor displayed an image captured by a camera
installed at the entrance of the hall, about 3 meters high. If the
viewer moved down the corridor toward the two []{#Page_44
type="pagebreak" title="44"}monitors, he or she would thus be recorded
by the latter camera. Yet the closer one came to the monitor, the
farther one would be from the camera, so that one\'s image on the
monitor would become smaller and smaller. Recorded from behind, viewers
would thus watch themselves walking away from themselves. Surveillance
by others, self-surveillance, recording, and disappearance were directly
and intuitively connected with one another and thematized as fundamental
issues of electronic media.

Toward the end of the 1960s, the easier availability and mobility of
analog electronic production technologies promoted the search for
counter-publics and the exploration of media as comprehensive
lifeworlds. In 1967, Sony introduced its first Portapak system: a
battery-powered, self-contained recording system -- consisting of a
camera, a cord, and a recorder -- with which it was possible to make
(black-and-white) video recordings outside of a studio. Although the
recording apparatus, which required additional devices for editing and
projection, was offered at the relatively expensive price of \$1,500
(which corresponds to about €8,000 today), it was still affordable for
interested groups. Compared with the situation of traditional film
cameras, these new cameras considerably lowered the initial hurdle for
media production, for video tapes were not only much cheaper than film
reels (and could be used for multiple recordings); they also made it
possible to view recorded material immediately and on location. This
enabled the production of works that were far more intuitive and
spontaneous than earlier ones. The 1970s saw the formation of many video
groups, media workshops, and other initiatives for the independent
production of electronic media. Through their own distribution,
festivals, and other channels, such groups created alternative public
spheres. The latter became especially prominent in the United States
where, at the end of the 1960s, the providers of cable networks were
legally obligated to establish public-access channels, on which citizens
were able to operate self-organized and non-commercial television
programs. This gave rise to a considerable public-access movement there,
which at one point extended across 4,000 cities and was responsible for
producing programs from and for these different
communities.[^72[]{#Page_45 type="pagebreak"
title="45"}^](#c1-note-0072){#c1-note-0072a}

What these initiatives shared in common, in Western Europe and the
United States, was their attempt to close the gap between the
consumption and production of media, to activate the public, and at
least in part to experiment with the media themselves. Non-professional
producers were empowered with the ability to control who told their
stories and how this happened. Groups that previously had no access to
the medial public sphere now had opportunities to represent themselves
and their own interests. By working together on their own productions,
such groups demystified the medium of television and simultaneously
equipped it with a critical consciousness.

Especially well received in Germany was the work of Hans Magnus
Enzensberger, who in 1970 argued (on the basis of Bertolt Brecht\'s
radio theory) in favor of distinguishing between "repressive" and
"emancipatory" uses of media. For him, the emancipatory potential of
media lay in the fact that "every receiver is \[...\] a potential
transmitter" that can participate "interactively" in "collective
production."[^73^](#c1-note-0073){#c1-note-0073a} In the same year, the
first German video group, Telewissen, debuted in public with a
demonstration in downtown Darmstadt. In 1980, at the peak of the
movement for independent video production, there were approximately a
hundred such groups throughout (West) Germany. The lack of distribution
channels, however, represented a nearly insuperable obstacle and ensured
that many independent productions were seldom viewed outside of
small-scale settings. Tapes had to be exchanged between groups through
the mail, and they were mainly shown at gatherings and events, and in
bars. The dynamic of alternative media shifted toward a small subculture
(though one networked throughout all of Europe) of pirate radio and
television broadcasters. At the beginning of the 1980s and in the space
of Radio Dreyeckland in Freiburg, which had been founded in 1977 as
Radio Verte Fessenheim, operations began at Germany\'s first pirate or
citizens\' radio station, which regularly broadcast information about
the political protest movements that had arisen against the use of
nuclear power in Fessenheim (France), Wyhl (Germany), and Kaiseraugst
(Switzerland). The epicenter of the scene, however, was located in
Amsterdam, where the group known as Rabotnik TV, which was an offshoot
[]{#Page_46 type="pagebreak" title="46"}of the squatter scene there,
would illegally feed its signal through official television stations
after their programming had ended at night (many stations then stopped
broadcasting at midnight). In 1988, the group acquired legal
broadcasting slots on the cable network and reached up to 50,000 viewers
with their weekly experimental shows, which largely consisted of footage
appropriated freely from elsewhere.[^74^](#c1-note-0074){#c1-note-0074a}
Early in 1990, the pirate television station Kanal X was created in
Leipzig; it produced its own citizens\' television programming in the
quasi-lawless milieu of the GDR before
reunification.[^75^](#c1-note-0075){#c1-note-0075a}

These illegal, independent, or public-access stations only managed to
establish themselves as real mass media to a very limited extent.
Nevertheless, they played an important role in sensitizing an entire
generation of media activists, whose opportunities expanded as the means
of production became both better and cheaper. In the name of "tactical
media," a new generation of artistic and political media activists came
together in the middle of the
1990s.[^76^](#c1-note-0076){#c1-note-0076a} They combined the "camcorder
revolution," which in the late 1980s had made video equipment available
to broader swaths of society, stirring visions of democratic media
production, with the newly arrived medium of the internet. Despite still
struggling with numerous technical difficulties, they remained constant
in their belief that the internet would solve the hitherto intractable
problem of distributing content. The transition from analog to digital
media lowered the production hurdle yet again, not least through the
ongoing development of improved software. Now, many stages of production
that had previously required professional or semi-professional expertise
and equipment could also be carried out by engaged laymen. As a
consequence, the focus of interest broadened to include not only the
development of alternative production groups but also the possibility of
a flexible means of rapid intervention in existing structures. Media --
both television and the internet -- were understood as environments in
which one could act without directly representing a reality outside of
the media. Television was analyzed down to its own legalities, which
could then be manipulated to affect things beyond the media.
Increasingly, culture jamming and the campaigns of so-called
communication guerrillas were blurring the difference between media and
political activity.[^77[]{#Page_47 type="pagebreak"
title="47"}^](#c1-note-0077){#c1-note-0077a}

This difference was dissolved entirely by a new generation of
politically motivated artists, activists, and hackers, who transferred
the tactics of civil disobedience -- blockading a building with a
sit-in, for instance -- to the
internet.[^78^](#c1-note-0078){#c1-note-0078a} When, in 1994, the
Zapatista Army of National Liberation rose up in the south of Mexico,
several media projects were created to support its mostly peaceful
opposition and to make the movement known in Europe and North America.
As part of this loose network, in 1998 the American artist collective
Electronic Disturbance Theater developed a relatively simple computer
program called FloodNet that enabled networked sympathizers to shut down
websites, such as those of the Mexican government, in a targeted and
temporary manner. The principle was easy enough: the program would
automatic­ally reload a certain website over and over again in order to
exhaust the capacities of its network
servers.[^79^](#c1-note-0079){#c1-note-0079a} The goal was not to
destroy data but rather to disturb the normal functioning of an
institution in order to draw attention to the activities and interests
of the protesters.
:::

::: {.section}
### Networks as places of action {#c1-sec-0012}

What this new generation of media activists shared in common with the
hackers and pioneers of computer networks was the idea that
communication media are spaces for agency. During the 1960s, these
programmers were also in search of alternatives. The difference during
the 1960s is that they did not pursue these alternatives in
counter-publics, but rather in alternative lifestyles and communication.
The rejection of bureaucracy as a form of social organization played a
significant role in the critique of industrial society formulated by
freedom-oriented social movements. At the beginning of the previous
century, Max Weber had still regarded bureaucracy as a clear sign of
progress toward a rational and method­ical
organization.[^80^](#c1-note-0080){#c1-note-0080a} He based this
assessment on processes that were impersonal, rule-bound, and
transparent (in the sense that they were documented with files). But
now, in the 1960s, bureaucracy was being criticized as soulless,
alienated, oppressive, non-transparent, and unfit for an increasingly
complex society. Whereas the first four of these points are in basic
agreement with Weber\'s thesis about "disenchanting" []{#Page_48
type="pagebreak" title="48"}the world, the last point represents a
radical departure from his analysis. Bureaucracies were no longer
regarded as hyper-efficient but rather as inefficient, and their size
and rule-bound nature were no longer seen as strengths but rather as
decisive weaknesses. The social bargain of offering prosperity and
security in exchange for subordination to hierarchical relations struck
many as being anything but attractive, and what blossomed instead was a
broad interest in alternative forms of coexistence. New institutions
were expected to be more flexible and more open. The desire to step away
from the system was widespread, and many (mostly young) people set about
doing exactly that. Alternative ways of life -- communes, shared
apartments, and cooperatives -- were explored in the country and in
cities. They were meant to provide the individual with greater autonomy
and the opportunity to develop his or her own unique potential. Despite
all of the differences between these concepts of life, they nevertheless
shared something of a common denominator: the promise of
reconceptualizing social institutions and the fundamentals of
coexistence, with the aim of reformulating them in such a way as to
allow everyone\'s personal potential to develop fully in the here and
now.

According to critics of such alternatives, bureaucracy was necessary in
order to organize social life as it radically reduced the world\'s
complexity by forcing it through the bottleneck of official procedures.
However, the price paid for such efficiency involved the atrophying of
human relationships, which had to be subordinated to rigid processes
that were incapable of registering unique characteristics and
differences and were unable to react in a timely manner to changing
circumstances.

In the 1960s, many countercultural attempts to find new forms of
organization placed personal and open communication at the center of
their efforts. Each individual was understood as a singular person with
untapped potential rather than a carrier of abstract and clearly defined
functions. It was soon realized, however, that every common activity and
every common decision entailed processes that were time-intensive and
communication-intensive. As soon as a group exceeded a certain size, it
became practically impossible for it to reach any consensus. As a result
of these experiences, an entire worldview emerged that propagated
"smallness" as a central []{#Page_49 type="pagebreak" title="49"}value
("small is beautiful"). It was thought that in this way society might
escape from bureaucracy with its ostensibly disastrous consequences for
humanity and the environment.[^81^](#c1-note-0081){#c1-note-0081a} But
this belief did not last for long. For, unlike the majority of European
alternative movements, the counterculture in the United States was not
overwhelmingly critical of technology. On the contrary, many actors
there sought suitable technologies for solving the practical problems of
social organization. At the end of the 1960s, a considerable amount of
attention was devoted to the field of basic technological research. This
field brought together the interests of the military, academics,
businesses, and activists from the counterculture. The common ground for
all of them was a cybernetic vision of institutions, or, in the words of
the historian Fred Turner:

::: {.extract}
a picture of humans and machines as dynamic, collaborating elements in a
single, highly fluid, socio-technical system. Within that system,
control emerged not from the mind of a commanding officer, but from the
complex, probabilistic interactions of humans, machines and events
around them. Moreover, the mechanical elements of the system in question
-- in this case, the predictor -- enabled the human elements to achieve
what all Americans would agree was a worthwhile goal. \[...\] Over the
coming decades, this second vision of benevolent man-machine systems, of
circular flows of information, would emerge as a driving force in the
establishment of the military--industrial--academic complex and as a
model of an alternative to that
complex.[^82^](#c1-note-0082){#c1-note-0082a}
:::

This complex was possible because, as a theory, cybernetics was
formulated in extraordinarily abstract terms, so much so that a whole
variety of competing visions could be associated with
it.[^83^](#c1-note-0083){#c1-note-0083a} With cybernetics as a
meta-science, it was possible to investigate the common features of
technical, social, and biological
processes.[^84^](#c1-note-0084){#c1-note-0084a} They were analyzed as
open, interactive, and information-processing systems. It was especially
consequential that cybernetics defined control and communication as the
same thing, namely as activities oriented toward informational
feedback.[^85^](#c1-note-0085){#c1-note-0085a} The heterogeneous legacy
of cybernetics and its synonymous treatment of the terms "communication"
and "control" continue to influence information technology and the
internet today.[]{#Page_50 type="pagebreak" title="50"}

The various actors who contributed to the development of the internet
shared a common interest for forms of organ­ization based on the
comprehensive, dynamic, and open exchange of information. Both on the
micro and macro level (and this is decisive at this point),
decentralized and flexible communication technologies were meant to
become the foundation of new organizational models. Militaries feared
attacks on their command and communication centers; academics wanted to
broaden their culture of autonomy, collaboration among peers, and the
free exchange of information; businesses were looking for new areas of
activity; and countercultural activists were longing for new forms of
peaceful coexistence.[^86^](#c1-note-0086){#c1-note-0086a} They all
rejected the bureaucratic model, and the counterculture provided them
with the central catchword for their alternative vision: community.
Though rather difficult to define, it was a powerful and positive term
that somehow promised the opposite of bureaucracy: humanity,
cooperation, horizontality, mutual trust, and consensus. Now, however,
humanity was expected to be reconfigured as a community in cooperation
with and inseparable from machines. And what was yearned for had become
a liberating symbiosis of man and machine, an idea that the author
Richard Brautigan was quick to mock in his poem "All Watched Over by
Machines of Loving Grace" from 1967:

::: {.poem}
::: {.lineGroup}
I like to think (and

the sooner the better!)

of a cybernetic meadow

where mammals and computers

live together in mutually

programming harmony

like pure water

touching clear sky.[^87^](#c1-note-0087){#c1-note-0087a}
:::
:::

Here, Brautigan is ridiculing both the impatience (*the sooner the
better!*) and the naïve optimism (*harmony, clear sky*) of the
countercultural activists. Primarily, he regarded the underlying vision
as an innocent but amusing fantasy and not as a potential threat against
which something had to be done. And there were also reasons to believe
that, ultimately, the new communities would be free from the coercive
nature that []{#Page_51 type="pagebreak" title="51"}had traditionally
characterized the downside of community experiences. It was thought that
the autonomy and freedom of the individual could be regained in and by
means of the community. The conditions for this were that participation
in the community had to be voluntary and that the rules of participation
had to be self-imposed. I will return to this topic in greater detail
below.

In line with their solution-oriented engineering culture and the
results-focused military funders who by and large set the agenda, a
relatively small group of computer scientists now took it upon
themselves to establish the technological foundations for new
institutions. This was not an abstract goal for the distant future;
rather, they wanted to change everyday practices as soon as possible. It
was around this time that advanced technology became the basis of social
communication, which now adopted forms that would have been
inconceivable (not to mention impracticable) without these
preconditions. Of course, effective communication technologies already
existed at the time. Large corporations had begun long before then to
operate their own computing centers. In contrast to the latter, however,
the new infrastructure could also be used by individuals outside of
established institutions and could be implemented for all forms of
communication and exchange. This idea gave rise to a pragmatic culture
of horizontal, voluntary cooperation. The clearest summary of this early
ethos -- which originated at the unusual intersection of military,
academic, and countercultural interests -- was offered by David D.
Clark, a computer scientist who for some time coordinated the
development of technical standards for the internet: "We reject: kings,
presidents and voting. We believe in: rough consensus and running
code."[^88^](#c1-note-0088){#c1-note-0088a}

All forms of classical, formal hierarchies and their methods for
resolving conflicts -- commands (by kings and presidents) and votes --
were dismissed. Implemented in their place was a pragmatics of open
cooperation that was oriented around two guiding principles. The first
was that different views should be discussed without a single individual
being able to block any final decisions. Such was the meaning of the
expression "rough consensus." The second was that, in accordance with
the classical engineering tradition, the focus should remain on concrete
solutions that had to be measured against one []{#Page_52
type="pagebreak" title="52"}another on the basis of transparent
criteria. Such was the meaning of the expression "running code." In
large part, this method was possible because the group oriented around
these principles was, internally, relatively homogeneous: it consisted
of top-notch computer scientists -- all of them men -- at respected
American universities and research centers. For this very reason, many
potential and fundamental conflicts were avoided, at least at first.
This internal homogeneity lends rather dark undertones to their sunny
vision, but this was hardly recognized at the time. Today these
undertones are far more apparent, and I will return to them below.

Not only were technical protocols developed on the basis of these
principles, but organizational forms as well. Along with the Internet
Engineering Task Force (which he directed), Clark created the so-called
Request-for-Comments documents, with which ideas could be presented to
interested members of the community and simultaneous feedback could be
collected in order to work through the ideas in question and thus reach
a rough consensus. If such a consensus could not be reached -- if, for
instance, an idea failed to resonate with anyone or was too
controversial -- then the matter would be dropped. The feedback was
organized as a form of many-to-many communication through email lists,
newsgroups, and online chat systems. This proved to be so effective that
horizontal communication within large groups or between multiple groups
could take place without resulting in chaos. This therefore invalidated
the traditional trend that social units, once they reach a certain size,
would necessarily introduce hierarchical structures for the sake of
reducing complexity and communication. In other words, the foundations
were laid for larger numbers of (changing) people to organize flexibly
and with the aim of building an open consensus. For Manuel Castells,
this combination of organizational flexibility and scalability in size
is the decisive innovation that was enabled by the rise of the network
society.[^89^](#c1-note-0089){#c1-note-0089a} At the same time, however,
this meant that forms of organization spread that could only be possible
on the basis of technologies that have formed (and continue to form)
part of the infrastructure of the internet. Digital technology and the
social activity of individual users were linked together to an
unprecedented extent. Social and cultural agendas were now directly
related []{#Page_53 type="pagebreak" title="53"}to and entangled with
technical design. Each of the four original interest groups -- the
military, scientists, businesses, and the counterculture -- implemented
new technologies to pursue their own projects, which partly complemented
and partly contradicted one another. As we know today, the first three
groups still cooperate closely with each other. To a great extent, this
has allowed the military and corporations, which are willingly supported
by researchers in need of funding, to determine the technology and thus
aspects of the social and cultural agendas that depend on it.

The software developers\' immediate environment experienced its first
major change in the late 1970s. Software, which for many had been a mere
supplement to more expensive and highly specialized hardware, became a
marketable good with stringent licensing restrictions. A new generation
of businesses, led by Bill Gates, suddenly began to label co­operation
among programmers as theft.[^90^](#c1-note-0090){#c1-note-0090a}
Previously it had been par for the course, and above all necessary, for
programmers to share software with one another. The former culture of
horizontal cooperation between developers transformed into a
hierarchical and commercially oriented relation between developers and
users (many of whom, at least at the beginning, had developed programs
of their own). For the first time, copyright came to play an important
role in digital culture. In order to survive in this environment, the
practice of open cooperation had to be placed on a new legal foundation.
Copyright law, which served to separate programmers (producers) from
users (consumers), had to be neutralized or circumvented. The first step
in this direction was taken in 1984 by the activist and programmer
Richard Stallman. Composed by Stallman, the GNU General Public License
was and remains a brilliant hack that uses the letter of copyright law
against its own spirit. This happens in the form of a license that
defines "four freedoms":

1. The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom
0).
2. The freedom to study how the program works and change it so it does
your computing as you wish (freedom 1).
3. The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor
(freedom 2).[]{#Page_54 type="pagebreak" title="54"}
4. The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others
(freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance
to benefit from your changes.[^91^](#c1-note-0091){#c1-note-0091a}

Thanks to this license, people who were personally unacquainted and did
not share a common social environment could now cooperate (freedoms 2
and 3) and simultaneously remain autonomous and unrestricted (freedoms 0
and 1). For many, the tension between the need to develop complex
software in large teams and the desire to maintain one\'s own autonomy
represented an incentive to try out new forms of
cooperation.[^92^](#c1-note-0092){#c1-note-0092a}

Stallman\'s influence was at first limited to a small circle of
programmers. In the middle of the 1980s, the goal of developing a
completely free operating system seemed a distant one. Communication
between those interested in doing so was often slow and complicated. In
part, program codes still had to be sent by mail. It was not until the
beginning of the 1990s that students in technical departments at many
universities could access the
internet.[^93^](#c1-note-0093){#c1-note-0093a} One of the first to use
these new opportunities in an innovative way was a Finnish student named
Linus Torvalds. He built upon Stallman\'s work and programmed a kernel,
which, as the most important module of an operating system, governs the
interaction between hardware and software. He published the first free
version of this in 1991 and encouraged anyone interested to give him
feedback.[^94^](#c1-note-0094){#c1-note-0094a} And it poured in.
Torvalds reacted promptly and issued new versions of his software in
quick succession. Instead of understanding his software as a finished
product, he treated it like an open-ended process. This, in turn,
motiv­ated even more developers to participate, because they saw that
their contributions were being adopted swiftly, which led to the
formation of an open community of interested programmers who swapped
ideas over the internet and continued writing software. In order to
maintain an overview of the different versions of the program, which
appeared in parallel with one another, it soon became necessary to
employ specialized platforms. The fusion of social processes --
horizontal and voluntary cooperation among developers -- and
technological platforms, which enabled this form of cooperation
[]{#Page_55 type="pagebreak" title="55"}by providing archives, filter
functions, and search capabil­ities that made it possible to organize
large amounts of data, was thus advanced even further. The programmers
were no longer primarily working on the development of the internet
itself, which by then was functioning quite reliably, but were rather
using the internet to apply their cooperative principles to other
arenas. By the end of the 1990s, the free-software movement had
established a new, internet-based form of organization and had
demonstrated its efficiency in practice: horizontal, informal
communities of actors -- voluntary, autonomous, and focused on a common
interest -- that, on the basis of high-tech infrastructure, could
include thousands of people without having to create formal hierarchies.
:::
:::

::: {.section}
From the Margins to the Center of Society {#c1-sec-0013}
-----------------------------------------

It was around this same time that the technologies in question, which
were already no longer very new, entered mainstream society. Within a
few years, the internet became part of everyday life. Three years before
the turn of the millennium, only about 6 percent of the entire German
population used the internet, often only occasionally. Three years after
the millennium, the number of users already exceeded 53 percent. Since
then, this share has increased even further. In 2014, it was more than
97 percent for people under the age of
40.[^95^](#c1-note-0095){#c1-note-0095a} Parallel to these developments,
data transfer rates increased considerably, broadband connections ousted
the need for dial-up modems, and the internet was suddenly "here" and no
longer "there." With the spread of mobile devices, especially since the
year 2007 when the first iPhone was introduced, digital communication
became available both extensively and continuously. Since then, the
internet has been ubiquitous. The amount of time that users spend online
has increased and, with the rapid ascent of social mass media such as
Facebook, people have been online in almost every situation and
circumstance in life.[^96^](#c1-note-0096){#c1-note-0096a} The internet,
like water or electricity, has become for many people a utility that is
simply taken for granted.

In a BBC survey from 2010, 80 percent of those polled believed that
internet access -- a precondition for participating []{#Page_56
type="pagebreak" title="56"}in the now dominant digital condition --
should be regarded as a fundamental human right. This idea was most
popular in South Korea (96 percent) and Mexico (94 percent), while in
Germany at least 72 percent were of the same
opinion.[^97^](#c1-note-0097){#c1-note-0097a}

On the basis of this new infrastructure, which is now relevant in all
areas of life, the cultural developments described above have been
severed from the specific historical conditions from which they emerged
and have permeated society as a whole. Expressivity -- the ability to
communicate something "unique" -- is no longer a trait of artists and
know­ledge workers alone, but rather something that is required by an
increasingly broader stratum of society and is already being taught in
schools. Users of social mass media must produce (themselves). The
development of specific, differentiated identities and the demand that
each be treated equally are no longer promoted exclusively by groups who
have to struggle against repression, existential threats, and
marginalization, but have penetrated deeply into the former mainstream,
not least because the present forms of capitalism have learned to profit
from the spread of niches and segmentation. When even conservative
parties have abandoned the idea of a "leading culture," then cultural
differences can no longer be classified by enforcing an absolute and
indisputable hierarchy, the top of which is occupied by specific
(geographical and cultural) centers. Rather, a space has been opened up
for endless negotiations, a space in which -- at least in principle --
everything can be called into question. This is not, of course, a
peaceful and egalitarian process. In addition to the practical hurdles
that exist in polarizing societies, there are also violent backlashes
and new forms of fundamentalism that are attempting once again to remove
certain religious, social, cultural, or political dimensions of
existence from the discussion. Yet these can only be understood in light
of a sweeping cultural transformation that has already reached
mainstream society.[^98^](#c1-note-0098){#c1-note-0098a} In other words,
the digital condition has become quotidian and dominant. It forms a
cultural constellation that determines all areas of life, and its
characteristic features are clearly recognizable. These will be the
focus of the next chapter.[]{#Page_57 type="pagebreak" title="57"}
:::

::: {.section .notesSet type="rearnotes"}
[]{#notesSet}Notes {#c1-ntgp-9999}
------------------

::: {.section .notesList}
[1](#c1-note-0001a){#c1-note-0001}  Kathrin Passig and Sascha Lobo,
*Internet: Segen oder Fluch* (Berlin: Rowohlt, 2012) \[--trans.\].

[2](#c1-note-0002a){#c1-note-0002}  The expression "heteronormatively
behaving" is used here to mean that, while in the public eye, the
behavior of the people []{#Page_177 type="pagebreak" title="177"}in
question conformed to heterosexual norms regardless of their personal
sexual orientations.

[3](#c1-note-0003a){#c1-note-0003}  No order is ever entirely closed
off. In this case, too, there was also room for exceptions and for
collective moments of greater cultural multiplicity. That said, the
social openness of the end of the 1920s, for instance, was restricted to
particular milieus within large cities and was accordingly short-lived.

[4](#c1-note-0004a){#c1-note-0004}  Fritz Machlup, *The Political
Economy of Monopoly: Business, Labor and Government Policies*
(Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1952).

[5](#c1-note-0005a){#c1-note-0005}  Machlup was a student of Ludwig von
Mises, the most influential representative of this radically
individualist school. See Hans-Hermann Hoppe, "Die Österreichische
Schule und ihre Bedeutung für die moderne Wirtschaftswissenschaft," in
Karl-Dieter Grüske (ed.), *Die Gemeinwirtschaft: Kommentarband zur
Neuauflage von Ludwig von Mises' "Die Gemeinwirtschaft"* (Düsseldorf:
Verlag Wirtschaft und Finanzen, 1996), pp. 65--90.

[6](#c1-note-0006a){#c1-note-0006}  Fritz Machlup, *The Production and
Distribution of Knowledge in the United States* (New York: John Wiley &
Sons, 1962).

[7](#c1-note-0007a){#c1-note-0007}  The term "knowledge worker" had
already been introduced to the discussion a few years before; see Peter
Drucker, *Landmarks of Tomorrow: A Report on the New* (New York: Harper,
1959).

[8](#c1-note-0008a){#c1-note-0008}  Peter Ecker, "Die
Verwissenschaftlichung der Industrie: Zur Geschichte der
Industrieforschung in den europäischen und amerikanischen
Elektrokonzernen 1890--1930," *Zeitschrift für Unternehmensgeschichte*
35 (1990): 73--94.

[9](#c1-note-0009a){#c1-note-0009}  Edward Bernays was the son of
Sigmund Freud\'s sister Anna and Ely Bernays, the brother of Freud\'s
wife, Martha Bernays.

[10](#c1-note-0010a){#c1-note-0010}  Edward L. Bernays, *Propaganda*
(New York: Horace Liverlight, 1928).

[11](#c1-note-0011a){#c1-note-0011}  James Beniger, *The Control
Revolution: Technological and Economic Origins of the Information
Society* (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), p. 350.

[12](#c1-note-0012a){#c1-note-0012}  Norbert Wiener, *Cybernetics: Or
Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine* (New York: J.
Wiley, 1948).

[13](#c1-note-0013a){#c1-note-0013}  Daniel Bell, *The Coming of
Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting* (New York:
Basic Books, 1973).

[14](#c1-note-0014a){#c1-note-0014}  Simon Nora and Alain Minc, *The
Computerization of Society: A Report to the President of France*
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1980).

[15](#c1-note-0015a){#c1-note-0015}  Manuel Castells, *The Rise of the
Network Society* (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996).

[16](#c1-note-0016a){#c1-note-0016}  Hans-Dieter Kübler, *Mythos
Wissensgesellschaft: Gesellschaft­licher Wandel zwischen Information,
Medien und Wissen -- Eine Einführung* (Wiesbaden: Verlag für
Sozialwissenschaften, 2009).[]{#Page_178 type="pagebreak" title="178"}

[17](#c1-note-0017a){#c1-note-0017}  Luc Boltanski and Ève Chiapello,
*The New Spirit of Capitalism*, trans. Gregory Elliott (London: Verso,
2005).

[18](#c1-note-0018a){#c1-note-0018}  Michael Piore and Charles Sabel,
*The Second Industrial Divide: Possibilities of Prosperity* (New York:
Basic Books, 1984).

[19](#c1-note-0019a){#c1-note-0019}  Castells, *The Rise of the Network
Society*. For a critical evaluation of Castells\'s work, see Felix
Stalder, *Manuel Castells and the Theory of the Network Society*
(Cambridge: Polity, 2006).

[20](#c1-note-0020a){#c1-note-0020}  "UK Creative Industries Mapping
Documents" (1998); quoted from Terry Flew, *The Creative Industries:
Culture and Policy* (Los Angeles, CA: Sage, 2012), pp. 9--10.

[21](#c1-note-0021a){#c1-note-0021}  The rise of the creative
industries, and the hope that they inspired among politicians, did not
escape criticism. Among the first works to draw attention to the
precarious nature of working in such industries was Angela McRobbie\'s
*British Fashion Design: Rag Trade or Image Industry?* (New York:
Routledge, 1998).

[22](#c1-note-0022a){#c1-note-0022}  This definition is not without a
degree of tautology, given that economic growth is based on talent,
which itself is defined by its ability to create new jobs; that is,
economic growth. At the same time, he employs the term "talent" in an
extremely narrow sense. Apparently, if something has nothing to do with
job creation, it also has nothing to do with talent or creativity. All
forms of creativity are thus measured and compared according to a common
criterion.

[23](#c1-note-0023a){#c1-note-0023}  Richard Florida, *Cities and the
Creative Class* (New York: Routledge, 2005), p. 5.

[24](#c1-note-0024a){#c1-note-0024}  One study has reached the
conclusion that, despite mass participation, "a new form of
communicative elite has developed, namely digitally and technically
versed actors who inform themselves in this way, exchange ideas and thus
gain influence. For them, the possibilities of platforms mainly
represent an expansion of useful tools. Above all, the dissemination of
digital technology makes it easier for versed and highly networked
individuals to convey their news more simply -- and, for these groups of
people, it lowers the threshold for active participation." Michael
Bauer, "Digitale Technologien und Partizipation," in Clara Landler et
al. (eds), *Netzpolitik in Österreich: Internet, Macht, Menschenrechte*
(Krems: Donau-Universität Krems, 2013), pp. 219--24, at 224
\[--trans.\].

[25](#c1-note-0025a){#c1-note-0025}  Boltanski and Chiapello, *The New
Spirit of Capitalism*.

[26](#c1-note-0026a){#c1-note-0026}  According to Wikipedia,
"Heteronormativity is the belief that people fall into distinct and
complementary genders (man and woman) with natural roles in life. It
assumes that heterosexuality is the only sexual orientation or only
norm, and states that sexual and marital relations are most (or only)
fitting between people of opposite sexes."[]{#Page_179 type="pagebreak"
title="179"}

[27](#c1-note-0027a){#c1-note-0027}  Jannis Plastargias, *RotZSchwul:
Der Beginn einer Bewegung (1971--1975)* (Berlin: Querverlag, 2015).

[28](#c1-note-0028a){#c1-note-0028}  Helmut Ahrens et al. (eds),
*Tuntenstreit: Theoriediskussion der Homosexuellen Aktion Westberlin*
(Berlin: Rosa Winkel, 1975), p. 4.

[29](#c1-note-0029a){#c1-note-0029}  Susanne Regener and Katrin Köppert
(eds), *Privat/öffentlich: Mediale Selbstentwürfe von Homosexualität*
(Vienna: Turia + Kant, 2013).

[30](#c1-note-0030a){#c1-note-0030}  Such, for instance, was the
assessment of Manfred Bruns, the spokesperson for the Lesbian and Gay
Association in Germany, in his text "Schwulenpolitik früher" (link no
longer active). From today\'s perspective, however, the main problem
with this event was the unclear position of the Green Party with respect
to pedophilia. See Franz Walter et al. (eds), *Die Grünen und die
Pädosexualität: Eine bundesdeutsche Geschichte* (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck
& Ruprecht, 2014).

[31](#c1-note-0031a){#c1-note-0031}  "AIDS: Tödliche Seuche," *Der
Spiegel* 23 (1983) \[--trans.\].

[32](#c1-note-0032a){#c1-note-0032}  Quoted from Frank Niggemeier, "Gay
Pride: Schwules Selbst­bewußtsein aus dem Village," in Bernd Polster
(ed.), *West-Wind: Die Amerikanisierung Europas* (Cologne: Dumont,
1995), pp. 179--87, at 184 \[--trans.\].

[33](#c1-note-0033a){#c1-note-0033}  Quoted from Regener and Köppert,
*Privat/öffentlich*, p. 7 \[--trans.\].

[34](#c1-note-0034a){#c1-note-0034}  Hans-Peter Buba and László A.
Vaskovics, *Benachteiligung gleichgeschlechtlich orientierter Personen
und Paare: Studie im Auftrag des Bundesministerium der Justiz* (Cologne:
Bundes­anzeiger, 2001).

[35](#c1-note-0035a){#c1-note-0035}  This process of internal
differentiation has not yet reached its conclusion, and thus the
acronyms have become longer and longer: LGBPTTQQIIAA+ stands for
"lesbian, gay, bisexual, pansexual, transgender, transsexual, queer,
questioning, intersex, intergender, asexual, ally."

[36](#c1-note-0036a){#c1-note-0036}  Judith Butler, *Gender Trouble:
Feminism and the Subversion of Identity* (New York: Routledge, 1989).

[37](#c1-note-0037a){#c1-note-0037}  Andreas Krass, "Queer Studies: Eine
Einführung," in Krass (ed.), *Queer denken: Gegen die Ordnung der
Sexualität* (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2003), pp. 7--27.

[38](#c1-note-0038a){#c1-note-0038}  Edward W. Said, *Orientalism* (New
York: Vintage Books, 1978).

[39](#c1-note-0039a){#c1-note-0039}  Kark August Wittfogel, *Oriental
Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power* (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1957).

[40](#c1-note-0040a){#c1-note-0040}  Silke Förschler, *Bilder des Harem:
Medienwandel und kultereller Austausch* (Berlin: Reimer, 2010).

[41](#c1-note-0041a){#c1-note-0041}  The selection and effectiveness of
these images is not a coincidence. Camel was one of the first brands of
cigarettes for []{#Page_180 type="pagebreak" title="180"}which
advertising, in the sense described above, was used in a systematic
manner.

[42](#c1-note-0042a){#c1-note-0042}  This would not exclude feelings of
regret about the loss of an exotic and romantic way of life, such as
those of T. E. Lawrence, whose activities in the Near East during the
First World War were memorialized in the film *Lawrence of Arabia*
(1962).

[43](#c1-note-0043a){#c1-note-0043}  Said has often been criticized,
however, for portraying orientalism so dominantly that there seems to be
no way out of the existing dependent relations. For an overview of the
debates that Said has instigated, see María do Mar Castro Varela and
Nikita Dhawan, *Postkoloniale Theorie: Eine kritische Ein­führung*
(Bielefeld: Transcript, 2005), pp. 37--46.

[44](#c1-note-0044a){#c1-note-0044}  "Migration führt zu 'hybrider'
Gesellschaft" (an interview with Homi K. Bhabha), *ORF Science*
(November 9, 2007), online \[--trans.\].

[45](#c1-note-0045a){#c1-note-0045}  Homi K. Bhabha, *The Location of
Culture* (New York: Routledge, 1994), p. 4.

[46](#c1-note-0046a){#c1-note-0046}  Elisabeth Bronfen and Benjamin
Marius, "Hybride Kulturen: Einleitung zur anglo-amerikanischen
Multikulturismusdebatte," in Bronfen et al. (eds), *Hybride Kulturen*
(Tübingen: Stauffenburg), pp. 1--30, at 8 \[--trans.\].

[47](#c1-note-0047a){#c1-note-0047}  "What Is Postcolonial Thinking? An
Interview with Achille Mbembe," *Eurozine* (December 2006), online.

[48](#c1-note-0048a){#c1-note-0048}  Migrants have always created their
own culture, which deals in various ways with the experience of
migration itself, but non-migrant populations have long tended to ignore
this. Things have now begun to change in this regard, for instance
through Imra Ayata and Bülent Kullukcu\'s compilation of songs by the
Turkish diaspora of the 1970s and 1980s: *Songs of Gastarbeiter*
(Munich: Trikont, 2013).

[49](#c1-note-0049a){#c1-note-0049}  The conference programs can be
found at: \<\>.

[50](#c1-note-0050a){#c1-note-0050}  "Deutschland entwickelt sich zu
einem attraktiven Einwanderungsland für hochqualifizierte Zuwanderer,"
press release by the CDU/CSU Alliance in the German Parliament (June 4,
2014), online \[--trans.\].

[51](#c1-note-0051a){#c1-note-0051}  Andreas Reckwitz, *Die Erfindung
der Kreativität: Zum Prozess gesellschaftlicher Ästhetisierung* (Berlin:
Suhrkamp, 2011), p. 180 \[--trans.\]. An English translation of this
book is forthcoming: *The Invention of Creativity: Modern Society and
the Culture of the New*, trans. Steven Black (Cambridge: Polity, 2017).

[52](#c1-note-0052a){#c1-note-0052}  Gert Selle, *Geschichte des Design
in Deutschland* (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2007).

[53](#c1-note-0053a){#c1-note-0053}  "Less Is More: The Design Ethos of
Dieter Rams," *SFMOMA* (June 29, 2011), online.[]{#Page_181
type="pagebreak" title="181"}

[54](#c1-note-0054a){#c1-note-0054}  The cybernetic perspective was
introduced to the field of design primarily by Buckminster Fuller. See
Diedrich Diederichsen and Anselm Franke, *The Whole Earth: California
and the Disappearance of the Outside* (Berlin: Sternberg, 2013).

[55](#c1-note-0055a){#c1-note-0055}  Clive Dilnot, "Design as a Socially
Significant Activity: An Introduction," *Design Studies* 3/3 (1982):
139--46.

[56](#c1-note-0056a){#c1-note-0056}  Victor J. Papanek, *Design for the
Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change* (New York: Pantheon, 1972),
p. 2.

[57](#c1-note-0057a){#c1-note-0057}  Reckwitz, *Die Erfindung der
Kreativität*.

[58](#c1-note-0058a){#c1-note-0058}  B. Joseph Pine and James H.
Gilmore, *The Experience Economy: Work Is Theater and Every Business Is
a Stage* (Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1999), p. ix (the
emphasis is original).

[59](#c1-note-0059a){#c1-note-0059}  Mona El Khafif, *Inszenierter
Urbanismus: Stadtraum für Kunst, Kultur und Konsum im Zeitalter der
Erlebnisgesellschaft* (Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag Dr. Müller, 2013).

[60](#c1-note-0060a){#c1-note-0060}  Konrad Becker and Martin Wassermair
(eds), *Phantom Kulturstadt* (Vienna: Löcker, 2009).

[61](#c1-note-0061a){#c1-note-0061}  See, for example, Andres Bosshard,
*Stadt hören: Klang­spaziergänge durch Zürich* (Zurich: NZZ Libro,
2009).

[62](#c1-note-0062a){#c1-note-0062}  "An alternate realty game (ARG),"
according to Wikipedia, "is an interactive networked narrative that uses
the real world as a platform and employs transmedia storytelling to
deliver a story that may be altered by players\' ideas or actions."

[63](#c1-note-0063a){#c1-note-0063}  Eric von Hippel, *Democratizing
Innovation* (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005).

[64](#c1-note-0064a){#c1-note-0064}  It is often the case that the
involvement of users simply serves to increase the efficiency of
production processes and customer service. Many activities that were
once undertaken at the expense of businesses now have to be carried out
by the customers themselves. See Günter Voss, *Der arbeitende Kunde:
Wenn Konsumenten zu unbezahlten Mitarbeitern werden* (Frankfurt am Main:
Campus, 2005).

[65](#c1-note-0065a){#c1-note-0065}  Beniger, *The Control Revolution*,
pp. 411--16.

[66](#c1-note-0066a){#c1-note-0066}  Louis Althusser, "Ideology and
Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation)," in
Althusser, *Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays*, trans. Ben Brewster
(New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971), pp. 127--86.

[67](#c1-note-0067a){#c1-note-0067}  Florian Becker et al. (eds),
*Gramsci lesen! Einstiege in die Gefängnis­hefte* (Hamburg: Argument,
2013), pp. 20--35.

[68](#c1-note-0068a){#c1-note-0068}  Guy Debord, *The Society of the
Spectacle*, trans. Fredy Perlman and Jon Supak (Detroit: Black & Red,
1977).

[69](#c1-note-0069a){#c1-note-0069}  Derrick de Kerckhove, "McLuhan and
the Toronto School of Communication," *Canadian Journal of
Communication* 14/4 (1989): 73--9.[]{#Page_182 type="pagebreak"
title="182"}

[70](#c1-note-0070a){#c1-note-0070}  Marshall McLuhan, *Understanding
Media: The Extensions of Man* (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964).

[71](#c1-note-0071a){#c1-note-0071}  Nam Jun Paik, "Exposition of Music
-- Electronic Television" (leaflet accompanying the exhibition). Quoted
from Zhang Ga, "Sounds, Images, Perception and Electrons," *Douban*
(March 3, 2016), online.

[72](#c1-note-0072a){#c1-note-0072}  Laura R. Linder, *Public Access
Television: America\'s Electronic Soapbox* (Westport, CT: Praeger,
1999).

[73](#c1-note-0073a){#c1-note-0073}  Hans Magnus Enzensberger,
"Constituents of a Theory of the Media," in Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick
Montfort (eds), *The New Media Reader* (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003),
pp. 259--75.

[74](#c1-note-0074a){#c1-note-0074}  Paul Groot, "Rabotnik TV,"
*Mediamatic* 2/3 (1988), online.

[75](#c1-note-0075a){#c1-note-0075}  Inke Arns, "Social Technologies:
Deconstruction, Subversion and the Utopia of Democratic Communication,"
*Medien Kunst Netz* (2004), online.

[76](#c1-note-0076a){#c1-note-0076}  The term was coined at a series of
conferences titled The Next Five Minutes (N5M), which were held in
Amsterdam from 1993 to 2003. See \<\>.

[77](#c1-note-0077a){#c1-note-0077}  Mark Dery, *Culture Jamming:
Hacking, Slashing and Sniping in the Empire of Signs* (Westfield: Open
Media, 1993); Luther Blisset et al., *Handbuch der
Kommunikationsguerilla*, 5th edn (Berlin: Assoziationen A, 2012).

[78](#c1-note-0078a){#c1-note-0078}  Critical Art Ensemble, *Electronic
Civil Disobedience and Other Unpopular Ideas* (New York: Autonomedia,
1996).

[79](#c1-note-0079a){#c1-note-0079}  Today this method is known as a
"distributed denial of service attack" (DDOS).

[80](#c1-note-0080a){#c1-note-0080}  Max Weber, *Economy and Society: An
Outline of Interpretive Sociology*, trans. Guenther Roth and Claus
Wittich (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1978), pp. 26--8.

[81](#c1-note-0081a){#c1-note-0081}  Ernst Friedrich Schumacher, *Small
Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered*, 8th edn (New York:
Harper Perennial, 2014).

[82](#c1-note-0082a){#c1-note-0082}  Fred Turner, *From Counterculture
to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Movement and the Rise of
Digital Utopianism* (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2006), p.
21. In this regard, see also the documentary films *Das Netz* by Lutz
Dammbeck (2003) and *All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace* by
Adam Curtis (2011).

[83](#c1-note-0083a){#c1-note-0083}  It was possible to understand
cybernetics as a language of free markets or also as one of centralized
planned economies. See Slava Gerovitch, *From Newspeak to Cyberspeak: A
History of Soviet Cybernetics* (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002). The
great interest of Soviet scientists in cybernetics rendered the term
rather suspicious in the West, where it was disassociated from
artificial intelligence.[]{#Page_183 type="pagebreak" title="183"}

[84](#c1-note-0084a){#c1-note-0084}  Claus Pias, "The Age of
Cybernetics," in Pias (ed.), *Cybernetics: The Macy Conferences
1946--1953* (Zurich: Diaphanes, 2016), pp. 11--27.

[85](#c1-note-0085a){#c1-note-0085}  Norbert Wiener, one of the
cofounders of cybernetics, explained this as follows in 1950: "In giving
the definition of Cybernetics in the original book, I classed
communication and control together. Why did I do this? When I
communicate with another person, I impart a message to him, and when he
communicates back with me he returns a related message which contains
information primarily accessible to him and not to me. When I control
the actions of another person, I communicate a message to him, and
although this message is in the imperative mood, the technique of
communication does not differ from that of a message of fact.
Furthermore, if my control is to be effective I must take cognizance of
any messages from him which may indicate that the order is understood
and has been obeyed." Norbert Wiener, *The Human Use of Human Beings:
Cybernetics and Society*, 2nd edn (London: Free Association Books,
1989), p. 16.

[86](#c1-note-0086a){#c1-note-0086}  Though presented here as distinct,
these interests could in fact be held by one and the same person. In
*From Counterculture to Cyberculture*, for instance, Turner discusses
"countercultural entrepreneurs."

[87](#c1-note-0087a){#c1-note-0087}  Richard Brautigan, "All Watched
Over by Machines of Loving Grace," in *All Watched Over by Machines of
Loving Grace*, by Brautigan (San Francisco: The Communication Company,
1967).

[88](#c1-note-0088a){#c1-note-0088}  David D. Clark, "A Cloudy Crystal
Ball: Visions of the Future," *Internet Engineering Taskforce* (July
1992), online.

[89](#c1-note-0089a){#c1-note-0089}  Castells, *The Rise of the Network
Society*.

[90](#c1-note-0090a){#c1-note-0090}  Bill Gates, "An Open Letter to
Hobbyists," *Homebrew Computer Club Newsletter* 2/1 (1976): 2.

[91](#c1-note-0091a){#c1-note-0091}  Richard Stallman, "What Is Free
Software?", *GNU Operating System*, online.

[92](#c1-note-0092a){#c1-note-0092}  The fundamentally cooperative
nature of programming was recognized early on. See Gerald M. Weinberg,
*The Psychology of Computer Programming*, rev. edn (New York: Dorset
House, 1998 \[originally published in 1971\]).

[93](#c1-note-0093a){#c1-note-0093}  On the history of free software,
see Volker Grassmuck, *Freie Software: Zwischen Privat- und
Gemeineigentum* (Berlin: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 2002).

[94](#c1-note-0094a){#c1-note-0094}  In his first email on the topic, he
wrote: "Hello everybody out there \[...\]. I'm doing a (free) operating
system (just a hobby, won\'t be big and professional like gnu) \[...\].
This has been brewing since April, and is starting to get ready. I\'d
like any feedback on things people like/dislike." Linus Torvalds, "What
[]{#Page_184 type="pagebreak" title="184"}Would You Like to See Most in
Minix," *Usenet Group* (August 1991), online.

[95](#c1-note-0095a){#c1-note-0095}  ARD/ZDF, "Onlinestudie" (2015),
online.

[96](#c1-note-0096a){#c1-note-0096}  From 1997 to 2003, the average use
of online media in Germany climbed from 76 to 138 minutes per day, and
by 2013 it reached 169 minutes. Over the same span of time, the average
frequency of use increased from 3.3 to 4.4 days per week, and by 2013 it
was 5.8. From 2007 to 2013, the percentage of people who were members of
private social networks like Facebook grew from 15 percent to 46
percent. Of these, nearly 60 percent -- around 19 million people -- used
such services on a daily basis. The source of this information is the
article cited in the previous note.

[97](#c1-note-0097a){#c1-note-0097}  "Internet Access Is 'a Fundamental
Right'," *BBC News* (8 March 2010), online.

[98](#c1-note-0098a){#c1-note-0098}  Manuel Castells, *The Power of
Identity* (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), pp. 7--22.
:::
:::

[II]{.chapterNumber} [Forms]{.chapterTitle} {#c2}

::: {.section}
With the emergence of the internet around the turn of the millennium as
an omnipresent infrastructure for communication and coordination,
previously independent cultural developments began to spread beyond
their specific original contexts, mutually influencing and enhancing one
another, and becoming increasingly intertwined. Out of a disconnected
conglomeration of more or less marginalized practices, a new and
specific cultural environment thus took shape, usurping or marginalizing
an ever greater variety of cultural constellations. The following
discussion will focus on three *forms* of the digital condition; that
is, on those formal qualities that (notwithstanding all of its internal
conflicts and contradictions) lend a particular shape to this cultural
environment as a whole: *referentiality*, *communality*, and
*algorithmicity*. It is only because most of the cultural processes
operating under the digital condition are characterized by common formal
features such as these that it is reasonable to speak of the digital
condition in the singular.

"Referentiality" is a method with which individuals can inscribe
themselves into cultural processes and constitute themselves as
producers. Understood as shared social meaning, the arena of culture
entails that such an undertaking cannot be limited to the individual.
Rather, it takes place within a larger framework whose existence and
development depend on []{#Page_58 type="pagebreak" title="58"}communal
formations. "Algorithmicity" denotes those aspects of cultural processes
that are (pre-)arranged by the activities of machines. Algorithms
transform the vast quantities of data and information that characterize
so many facets of present-day life into dimensions and formats that can
be registered by human perception. It is impossible to read the content
of billions of websites. Therefore we turn to services such as Google\'s
search algorithm, which reduces the data flood ("big data") to a
manageable amount and translates it into a format that humans can
understand ("small data"). Without them, human beings could not
comprehend or do anything within a culture built around digital
technologies, but they influence our understanding and activity in an
ambivalent way. They create new dependencies by pre-sorting and making
the (informational) world available to us, yet simultaneously ensure our
autonomy by providing the preconditions that enable us to act.
:::

::: {.section}
Referentiality {#c2-sec-0002}
--------------

In the digital condition, one of the methods (if not *the* most
fundamental method) enabling humans to participate -- alone or in groups
-- in the collective negotiation of meaning is the system of creating
references. In a number of arenas, referential processes play an
important role in the assignment of both meaning and form. According to
the art historian André Rottmann, for instance, "one might claim that
working with references has in recent years become the dominant
production-aesthetic model in contemporary
art."[^1^](#c2-note-0001){#c2-note-0001a} This burgeoning engagement
with references, however, is hardly restricted to the world of
contemporary art. Referentiality is a feature of many processes that
encompass the operations of various genres of professional and everyday
culture. In its essence, it is the use of materials that are already
equipped with meaning -- as opposed to so-called raw material -- to
create new meanings. The referential techniques used to achieve this are
extremely diverse, a fact reflected in the numerous terms that exist to
describe them: re-mix, re-make, re-enactment, appropriation, sampling,
meme, imitation, homage, tropicália, parody, quotation, post-production,
re-performance, []{#Page_59 type="pagebreak" title="59"}camouflage,
(non-academic) research, re-creativity, mashup, transformative use, and
so on.

These processes have two important aspects in common: the
recognizability of the sources and the freedom to deal with them however
one likes. The first creates an internal system of references from which
meaning and aesthetics are derived in an essential
manner.[^2^](#c2-note-0002){#c2-note-0002a} The second is the
precondition enabling the creation of something that is both new and on
the same level as the re-used material. This represents a clear
departure from the historical--critical method, which endeavors to embed
a source in its original context in order to re-determine its meaning,
but also a departure from classical forms of rendition such as
translations, adaptations (for instance, adapting a book for a film), or
cover versions, which, though they translate a work into another
language or medium, still attempt to preserve its original meaning.
Re-mixes produced by DJs are one example of the referential treatment of
source material. In his book on the history of DJ culture, the
journalist Ulf Poschardt notes: "The remixer isn\'t concerned with
salvaging authenticity, but with creating a new
authenticity."[^3^](#c2-note-0003){#c2-note-0003a} For instead of
distancing themselves from the past, which would follow the (Western)
logic of progress or the spirit of the avant-garde, these processes
refer explicitly to precursors and to existing material. In one and the
same gesture, both one\'s own new position and the context and cultural
tradition that is being carried on in one\'s own work are constituted
performatively; that is, through one\'s own activity in the moment. I
will discuss this phenomenon in greater depth below.

To work with existing cultural material is, in itself, nothing new. In
modern montages, artists likewise drew upon available texts, images, and
treated materials. Yet there is an important difference: montages were
concerned with bringing together seemingly incongruous but stable
"finished pieces" in a more or less unmediated and fragmentary manner.
This is especially clear in the collages by the Dadaists or in
Expressionist literature such as Alfred Döblin\'s *Berlin
Alexanderplatz*. In these works, the experience of Modernity\'s many
fractures -- its fragmentation and turmoil -- was given a new aesthetic
form. In his reference to montages, Adorno thus observed that the
"negation of synthesis becomes a principle []{#Page_60 type="pagebreak"
title="60"}of form."[^4^](#c2-note-0004){#c2-note-0004a} At least for a
brief moment, he considered them an adequate expression for the
impossibility of reconciling the contradictions of capitalist culture.
Influenced by Adorno, the literary theorist Peter Bürger went so far as
to call the montage the true "paradigm of
modernity."[^5^](#c2-note-0005){#c2-note-0005a} In today\'s referential
processes, on the contrary, pieces are not brought together as much as
they are integrated into one another by being altered, adapted, and
transformed. Unlike the older arrangement, it is not the fissures
between elements that are foregrounded but rather their synthesis in the
present. Conchita Wurst, the bearded diva, is not torn between two
conflicting poles. Rather, she represents a successful synthesis --
something new and harmonious that distinguishes itself by showcasing
elements of the old order (man/woman) and simultaneously transcending
them.

This synthesis, however, is usually just temporary, for at any time it
can itself serve as material for yet another rendering. Of course, this
is far easier to pull off with digital objects than with analog objects,
though these categories have become increasingly porous and thus
increasingly problematic as opposites. More and more objects exist both
in an analog and in a digital form. Think of photographs and slides,
which have become so easy to digitalize. Even three-dimensional objects
can now be scanned and printed. In the future, programmable materials
with controllable and reversible features will cause the difference
between the two domains to vanish: analog is becoming more and more
digital.

Montages and referential processes can only become widespread methods
if, in a given society, cultural objects are available in three
different respects. The first is economic and organizational: they must
be affordable and easily accessible. Whoever is unable to afford books
or get hold of them by some other means will not be able to reconfigure
any texts. The second is cultural: working with cultural objects --
which can always create deviations from the source in unpredictable ways
-- must not be treated as taboo or illegal, but rather as an everyday
activity without any special preconditions. It is much easier to
manipulate a text from a secular newspaper than one from a religious
canon. The third is material: it must be possible to use the material
and to change it.[^6[]{#Page_61 type="pagebreak"
title="61"}^](#c2-note-0006){#c2-note-0006a}

In terms of this third form of availability, montages differ from
referential processes, for cultural objects can be integrated into one
another -- instead of simply being placed side by side -- far more
readily when they are digitally coded. Information is digitally coded
when it is stored by means of a limited system of discrete (that is,
separated by finite intervals or distances) signs that are meaningless
in themselves. This allows information to be copied from one carrier to
another without any loss and it allows the respective signs, whether
individually or in groups, to be arranged freely. Seen in this way,
digital coding is not necessarily bound to computers but can rather be
realized with all materials: a mosaic is a digital process in which
information is coded by means of variously colored tiles, just as a
digital image consists of pixels. In the case of the mosaic, of course,
the resolution is far lower. Alphabetic writing is a form of coding
linguistic information by means of discrete signs that are, in
themselves, meaningless. Consequently, Florian Cramer has argued that
"every form of literature that is recorded alphabetically and not based
on analog parameters such as ideograms or orality is already digital in
that it is stored in discrete
signs."[^7^](#c2-note-0007){#c2-note-0007a} However, the specific
features of the alphabet, as Marshall McLuhan repeatedly underscored,
did not fully develop until the advent of the printing
press.[^8^](#c2-note-0008){#c2-note-0008a} It was the printing press, in
other words, that first abstracted written signs from analog handwriting
and transformed them into standardized symbols that could be repeated
without any loss of information. In this practical sense, the printing
press made writing digital, with the result that dealing with texts soon
became radically different.

::: {.section}
### Information overload 1.0 {#c2-sec-0003}

The printing press made texts available in the three respects mentioned
above. For one thing, their number increased rapidly, while their price
significantly sank. During the first two generations after Gutenberg\'s
invention -- that is, between 1450 and 1500 -- more books were produced
than during the thousand years
before.[^9^](#c2-note-0009){#c2-note-0009a} And that was just the
beginning. Dealing with books and their content changed from the ground
up. In manuscript culture, every new copy represented a potential
degradation of the original, and therefore []{#Page_62 type="pagebreak"
title="62"}the oldest sources (those that had undergone as little
corruption as possible) were valued above all. With the advent of print
culture, the idea took hold that texts could be improved by the process
of editing, not least because the availability of old sources, through
reprints and facsimiles, had also improved dramatically. Pure
reproduction was mechanized and overcome as a cultural challenge.

According to the historian Elizabeth Eisenstein, one of the first
consequences of the greatly increased availability of the printed book
was that it overcame the "tyranny of major authorities, which was common
in small libraries."[^10^](#c2-note-0010){#c2-note-0010a} Scientists
were now able to compare texts with one another and critique them to an
unprecedented extent. Their general orientation turned around: instead
of looking back in order to preserve what they knew, they were now
looking ahead toward what they might not (yet) know.

In order to organize this information flood of rapidly amassing texts,
it was necessary to create new conventions: books were now specified by
their author, publisher, and date of publication, not to mention
furnished with page numbers. This enabled large numbers of texts to be
catalogued and every individual text -- indeed, every single passage --
to be referenced.[^11^](#c2-note-0011){#c2-note-0011a} Scientists could
legitimize the pursuit of new knowledge by drawing attention to specific
mistakes or gaps in existing texts. In the scientific culture that was
developing at the time, the close connection between old and new
ma­terial was not simply regarded as something positive; it was also
urgently prescribed as a method of argumentation. Every text had to
contain an internal system of references, and this was the basis for the
development of schools, disciplines, and specific discourses.

The digital character of printed writing also made texts available in
the third respect mentioned above. Because discrete signs could be
reproduced without any loss of information, it was possible not only to
make perfect copies but also to remove content from one carrier and
transfer it to another. Materials were no longer simply arranged
sequentially, as in medieval compilations and almanacs, but manipulated
to give rise to a new and independent fluid text. A set of conventions
was developed -- one that remains in use today -- for modifying embedded
or quoted material in order for it []{#Page_63 type="pagebreak"
title="63"}to fit into its new environment. In this manner, quotations
could be altered in such a way that they could be integrated seamlessly
into a new text while remaining recognizable as direct citations.
Several of these conventions, for instance the use of square brackets to
indicate additions ("\[ \]") or ellipses to indicate omissions ("..."),
are also used in this very book. At the same time, the conventions for
making explicit references led to the creation of an internal reference
system that made the singular position of the new text legible within a
collective field of work. "Printing," to quote Elizabeth Eisenstein once
again, "encouraged forms of combinatory activity which were social as
well as intellectual. It changed relationships between men of learning
as well as between systems of
ideas."[^12^](#c2-note-0012){#c2-note-0012a} Exchange between scholars,
in the form of letters and visits, intensified. The seventeenth century
saw the formation of the *respublica literaria* or the "Republic of
Letters," a loose network of scholars devoted to promoting the ideas of
the Enlightenment. Beginning in the eighteenth century, the rapidly
growing number of scientific fields was arranged and institutionalized
into clearly distinct disciplines. In the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, diverse media-technical innovations made images, sounds, and
moving images available, though at first only in analog formats. These
created the preconditions that enabled the montage in all of its forms
-- film cuts, collages, readymades, *musique concrète*, found-footage
films, literary cut-ups, and artistic assemblages (to name only the
best-known genres) -- to become the paradigm of Modernity.
:::

::: {.section}
### Information overload 2.0 {#c2-sec-0004}

It was not until new technical possibilities for recording, storing,
processing, and reproduction appeared over the course of the 1990s that
it also became increasingly possible to code and edit images, audio, and
video digitally. Through the networking that was taking place not far
behind, society was flooded with an unprecedented amount of digit­ally
coded information *of every sort*, and the circulation of this
information accelerated. This was not, however, simply a quantitative
change but also and above all a qualitative one. Cultural materials
became available in a comprehensive []{#Page_64 type="pagebreak"
title="64"}sense -- economically and organizationally, culturally
(despite legal problems), and materially (because digitalized). Today it
would not be bold to predict that nearly every text, image, or sound
will soon exist in a digital form. Most of the new reproducible works
are already "born digital" and digit­ally distributed, or they are
physically produced according to digital instructions. Many initiatives
are working to digitalize older, analog works. We are now anchored in
the digital.

Among the numerous digitalization projects currently under way, the most
ambitious is that of Google Books, which, since its launch in 2004, has
digitalized around 20 million books from the collections of large
libraries and prepared them for full-text searches. Right from the
start, a fierce debate arose about the legal and cultural acceptability
of this project. One concern was whether Google\'s process infringed
upon the rights of the authors and publishers of the scanned books or
whether, according to American law, it qualified as "fair use," in which
case there would be no obligation for the company to seek authorization
or offer compensation. The second main concern was whether it would be
culturally or politically appropriate for a private corporation to hold
a de facto monopoly over the digital heritage of book culture. The first
issue incited a complex legal battle that, in 2013, was decided in
Google\'s favor by a judge on the United States District Court in New
York.[^13^](#c2-note-0013){#c2-note-0013a} At the heart of the second
issue was the question of how a public library should look in the
twenty-first century.[^14^](#c2-note-0014){#c2-note-0014a} In November
of 2008, the European Commission and the cultural minister of the
European Union launched the virtual Europeana library, which occurred
after a number of European countries had already invested hundreds of
millions of euros in various digitalization
initiatives.[^15^](#c2-note-0015){#c2-note-0015a} Today, Europeana
serves as a common access point to the online archives of around 2,500
European cultural institutions. By the end of 2015, its digital holdings
had grown to include more than 40 million objects. This is still,
however, a relatively small number, for it has been estimated that
European archives and museums contain more than 220 million
natural-historical and more than 260 million cultural-historical
objects. In the United States, discussions about the future of libraries
[]{#Page_65 type="pagebreak" title="65"}led to the 2013 launch of the
Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), which, like Europeana,
provides common access to the digitalized holdings of archives, museums,
and libraries. By now, more than 14 million items can be viewed there.

In one way or another, however, both the private and the public projects
of this sort have been limited by binding copyright laws. The librarian
and book historian Robert Darnton, one of the most prominent advocates
of the Digital Public Library of America, has accordingly stated: "The
main impediment to the DPLA\'s growth is legal, not financial. Copyright
laws could exclude everything published after 1964, most works published
after 1923, and some that go back as far as
1873."[^16^](#c2-note-0016){#c2-note-0016a} The legal situation in
Europe is similar to that in the United States. It, too, massively
obstructs the work of public
institutions.[^17^](#c2-note-0017){#c2-note-0017a} In many cases, this
has had the absurd consequence that certain materials, though they have
been fully digitalized, may only be accessed in part or exclusively
inside the facilities of a particular institution. Whereas companies
such as Google can afford to wage long legal battles, and in the
meantime create precedents, public institutions must proceed with great
caution, not least to avoid the accusation of using public funds to
violate copyright laws. Thus, they tend to fade into the background and
leave users, who are unfamiliar with the complex legal situation, with
the impression that they are even more out-of-date than they often are.

Informal actors, who explicitly operate beyond the realm of copyright
law, are not faced with such restrictions. UbuWeb, for instance, which
is the largest online archive devoted to the history of
twentieth-century avant-garde art, was not created by an art museum but
rather by the initiative of an individual artist, Kenneth Goldsmith.
Since 1996, he has been collecting historically relevant materials that
were no longer in distribution and placing them online for free and
without any stipulations. He forgoes the process of obtaining the rights
to certain works of art because, as he remarks on the website, "Let\'s
face it, if we had to get permission from everyone on UbuWeb, there
would be no UbuWeb."[^18^](#c2-note-0018){#c2-note-0018a} It would
simply be too demanding to do so. Because he pursues the project without
any financial interest and has saved so much []{#Page_66
type="pagebreak" title="66"}from oblivion, his efforts have provoked
hardly any legal difficulties. On the contrary, UbuWeb has become so
important that Goldsmith has begun to receive more and more material
directly from artists and their heirs, who would like certain works not
to be forgotten. Nevertheless, or perhaps for this very reason,
Goldsmith repeatedly stresses the instability of his archive, which
could disappear at any moment if he loses interest in maintaining it or
if something else happens. Users are therefore able to download works
from UbuWeb and archive, on their own, whatever items they find most
important. Of course, this fragility contradicts the idea of an archive
as a place for long-term preservation. Yet such a task could only be
undertaken by an institution that is oriented toward the long term.
Because of the existing legal conditions, however, it is hardly likely
that such an institution will come about.

Whereas Goldsmith is highly adept at operating within a niche that not
only tolerates but also accepts the violation of formal copyright
claims, large websites responsible for the uncontrolled dissemination of
digital content do not bother with such niceties. Their purpose is
rather to ensure that all popular content is made available digitally
and for free, whether legally or not. These sites, too, have experienced
uninterrupted growth. By the end of 2015, dozens of millions of people
were simultaneously using the BitTorrent tracker The Pirate Bay -- the
largest nodal point for file-sharing networks during the last decade --
to exchange several million digital files with one
another.[^19^](#c2-note-0019){#c2-note-0019a} And this was happening
despite protracted attempts to block or close down the file-sharing site
by legal means and despite a variety of competing services. Even when
the founders of the website were sentenced in Sweden to pay large fines
(around €3 million) and to serve time in prison, the site still did not
disappear from the internet.[^20^](#c2-note-0020){#c2-note-0020a} At the
same time, new providers have entered the market of free access; their
method is not to facilitate distributed downloads but rather to offer,
on account of the drastically reduced cost of data transfers, direct
streaming. Although some of these services are relatively easy to locate
and some have been legally banned -- the best-known case in Germany
being that of the popular site kino.to -- more of them continue to
appear.[^21^](#c2-note-0021){#c2-note-0021a} Moreover, this phenomenon
[]{#Page_67 type="pagebreak" title="67"}is not limited to music and
films, but encompasses all media formats. For instance, it is
foreseeable that the number of freely available plans for 3D objects
will increase along with the popularity of 3D printing. It has almost
escaped notice, however, that so-called "shadow libraries" have been
popping up everywhere; the latter are not accessible to the public but
rather to members, for instance, of closed exchange platforms or of
university intranets. Few seminars take place any more without a corpus
of scanned texts, regardless of whether this practice is legal or
not.[^22^](#c2-note-0022){#c2-note-0022a}

The lines between these different mechanisms of access are highly
permeable. Content acquired legally can make its way to file-sharing
networks as an illegal copy; content available for free can be sold in
special editions; content from shadow libraries can make its way to
publicly accessible sites; and, conversely, content that was once freely
available can disappear into shadow libraries. As regards free access,
the details of this rapidly changing landscape are almost
inconsequential, for the general trend that has emerged from these
various dynamics -- legal and illegal, public and private -- is
unambiguous: in a comprehensive and practical sense, cultural works of
all sorts will become freely available despite whatever legal and
technical restrictions might be in place. Whether absolutely all
material will be made available in this way is not the decisive factor,
at least not for the individual, for, as the German Library Association
has stated, "it is foreseeable that non-digitalized material will
increasingly escape the awareness of users, who have understandably come
to appreciate the ubiquitous availability and more convenient
processability of the digital versions of analog
objects."[^23^](#c2-note-0023){#c2-note-0023a} In this context of excess
information, it is difficult to determine whether a particular work or a
crucial reference is missing, given that a multitude of other works and
references can be found in their place.

At the same time, prodigious amounts of new material are being produced
that, before the era of digitalization and networks, never could have
existed at all or never would have left the private sphere. An example
of this is amateur photography. This is nothing new in itself; as early
as 1899, Kodak was marketing its films and apparatus with the slogan
"You press the button, we do the rest," and ever since, []{#Page_68
type="pagebreak" title="68"}drawers and albums have been overflowing
with photographs. With the advent of digitalization, however, certain
economic and material limitations ceased to exist that, until then, had
caused most private photographers to think twice about how many shots
they wanted to take. After all, they had to pay for the film to be
developed and then store the pictures somewhere. Cameras also became
increasingly "intelligent," which improved the technical quality of
photo­graphs. Even complex procedures such as increasing the level of
detail or the contrast ratio -- the difference between an image\'s
brightest and darkest points -- no longer require any specialized
knowledge of photochemical processes in the darkroom. Today, such
features are often pre-installed in many cameras as an option (high
dynamic range). Ever since the introduction of built-in digital cameras
for smartphones, anyone with such a device can take pictures everywhere
and at any time and then store them digitally. Images can then be posted
on online platforms and shared with others. By the middle of 2015,
Flickr -- the largest but certainly not the only specialized platform of
this sort -- had more than 112 million registered users participating in
more than 2 million groups. Every user has access to free storage space
for about half a million of his or her own pictures. At that point, in
other words, the platform was equipped to manage more than 55 billion
photographs. Around 3.5 million images were being uploaded every day,
many of which could be accessed by anyone. This may seem like a lot, but
in reality it is just a small portion of the pictures that are posted
online on a daily basis. Around that same time -- again, the middle of
2015 -- approximately 350 million pictures were being posted on Facebook
*every day*. The total number of photographs saved there has been
estimated to be 250 billion. In addition, there are also large platforms
for professional "stock photos" (supplies of pre-produced images that
are supposed to depict generic situations) and the databanks of
professional agencies such Getty Images or Corbis. All of these images
can be found easily and acquired quickly (though not always for free).
Yet photography is not unique in this regard. In all fields, the number
of cultural artifacts available to the public on specialized platforms
has been increasing rapidly in recent years.[]{#Page_69 type="pagebreak"
title="69"}
:::

::: {.section}
### The great disorder {#c2-sec-0005}

The old orders that had been responsible for filtering, organ­izing, and
publishing cultural material -- culture industries, mass media,
libraries, museums, archives, etc. -- are incapable of managing almost
any aspect of this deluge. They can barely function as gatekeepers any
more between those realms that, with their help, were once defined as
"private" and "public." Their decisions about what is or is not
important matter less and less. Moreover, having already been subjected
to a decades-long critique, their rules, which had been relatively
binding and formative over long periods of time, are rapidly losing
practical significance.

Even Europeana, a relatively small project based on trad­itional museums
and archives and with a mandate to make the European cultural heritage
available online, has contributed to the disintegration of established
orders: it indiscriminately brings together 2,500 previously separated
institutions. The specific semantic contexts that formerly shaped the
history and orientation of institutions have been dissolved or reduced
to dry meta-data, and millions upon millions of cultural artifacts are
now equidistant from one another. Instead of certain artifacts being
firmly anchored in a location, for instance in an ethnographic
collection devoted to the colonial history of France, it is now possible
for everything to exist side by side. Europeana is not an archive in the
traditional sense, or even a museum with a fixed and meaningful order;
rather, it is just a standard database. Everything in it is just one
search request away, and every search generates a unique order in the
form of a sequence of visible artifacts. As a result, individual objects
are freed from those meta-narratives, created by the museums and
archives that preserve them, which situate them within broader contexts
and assign more or less clear meanings to them. They consequently become
more open to interpretation. A search result does not articulate an
interpretive field of reference but merely a connection, created by
constantly changing search algorithms, between a request and the corpus
of material, which is likewise constantly changing.

Precisely because it offers so many different approaches to more or less
freely combinable elements of information, []{#Page_70 type="pagebreak"
title="70"}the order of the database no longer really provides a
framework for interpreting search results in a meaningful way.
Al­together, the meaning of many objects and signs is becoming even more
uncertain. On the one hand, this is because the connection to their
original context is becoming fragile; on the other hand, it is because
they can appear in every possible combination and in the greatest
variety of reception contexts. In less official archives and in less
specialized search engines, the dissolution of context is far more
pronounced than it is in the case of the Europeana project. For the sake
of orienting its users, for instance, YouTube provides the date when a
video has been posted, but there is no indication of when a video was
actually produced. Further information provided about a video, for
example in the comments section, is essentially unreliable. It might be
true -- or it might not. The internet researcher David Weinberger has
called this the "new digital disorder," which, at least for many users,
is an entirely apt description.[^24^](#c2-note-0024){#c2-note-0024a} For
individuals, this disorder has created both the freedom to establish
their own orders and the obligation of doing so, regardless of whether
or not they are ready for the task.

This tension between freedom and obligation is at its strongest online,
where the excess of culture and its more or less free availability are
immediate and omnipresent. In fact, everything that can be retrieved
online is culture in the sense that everything -- from the deepest layer
of hardware to the most superficial tweet -- has been made by someone
with a particular intention, and everything has been made to fit a
particular order. And it is precisely this excess of often contradictory
meanings and limited, regional, and incompatible orders that leads to
disorder and meaninglessness. This is not limited to the online world,
however, because the latter is not self-contained. In an essential way,
digital media also serve to organize the material world. On the basis of
extremely complex and opaque yet highly efficient logistical and
production processes, people are also confronted with constantly
changing material things about whose origins and meanings they have
little idea. Even something as simple to produce as yoghurt usually has
a thousand kilometers behind it before it ends up on a shelf in the
supermarket. The logistics that enable this are oriented toward
flexibility; []{#Page_71 type="pagebreak" title="71"}they bring elements
together as efficiently as possible. It is nearly impossible for final
customers to find out anything about the ingredients. Customers are
merely supposed to be oriented by signs and notices such as "new" or "as
before," "natural," and "healthy," which are written by specialists and
meant to manipulate shoppers as much as the law allows. Even here, in
corporeal everyday life, every individual has to deal with a surge of
excess and disorder that threatens to erode the original meaning
conferred on every object -- even where such meaning was once entirely
unproblematic, as in the case of
yoghurt.[^25^](#c2-note-0025){#c2-note-0025a}
:::

::: {.section}
### Selecting and organizing {#c2-sec-0006}

In this situation, the creation of one\'s own system of references has
become a ubiquitous and generally accessible method for organizing all
of the ambivalent things that one encounters on a given day. Such things
are thus arranged within a specific context of meaning that also
(co)determines one\'s own relation to the world and subjective position
in it. Referentiality takes place through three types of activity, the
first being simply to attract attention to certain things, which affirms
(at least implicitly) that they are important. With every single picture
posted on Flickr, every tweet, every blog post, every forum post, and
every status update, the user is doing exactly that; he or she is
communicating to others: "Look over here! I think this is important!" Of
course, there is nothing new to filtering and allocating meaning. What
is new, however, is that these processes are no longer being carried out
primarily by specialists at editorial offices, museums, or archives, but
have become daily requirements for a large portion of the population,
regardless of whether they possess the material and cultural resources
that are necessary for the task.
:::

::: {.section}
### The loop through the body {#c2-sec-0007}

Given the flood of information that perpetually surrounds everyone, the
act of focusing attention and reducing vast numbers of possibilities
into something concrete has become a productive achievement, however
banal each of these micro-activities might seem on its own, and even if,
at first, []{#Page_72 type="pagebreak" title="72"}the only concern might
be to focus the attention of the person doing it. The value of this
(often very brief) activity is that it singles out elements from the
uniform sludge of unmanageable complexity. Something plucked out in this
way gains value because it has required the use of a resource that
cannot be reproduced, that exists outside of the world of information
and that is invariably limited for every individual: our own lifetime.
Every status update that is not machine-generated means that someone has
invested time, be it only a second, in order to point to this and not to
something else. Thus, a process of validating what exists in the excess
takes place in connection with the ultimate scarcity -- our own
lifetimes, our own bodies. Even if the value generated by this act is
minimal or diffuse, it is still -- to borrow from Gregory Bateson\'s
famous definition of information -- a difference that makes a difference
in this stream of equivalencies and
meaninglessness.[^26^](#c2-note-0026){#c2-note-0026a} This singling out
-- this use of one\'s own body to generate meaning -- does not, however,
take place by means of mere micro-activities throughout the day; it is
also a defining aspect of complex cultural strategies. In recent years,
re-enactment (that is, the re-staging of historical situ­ations and
events) has established itself as a common practice in contemporary art.
Unlike traditional re-enactments, such as those of historically
significant battles, which attempt to represent the past as faithfully
as possible, "artistic re-enactments," according to the curator Inke
Arns, "are not an affirmative confirmation of the past; rather, they are
*questionings* of the present through reaching back to historical
events," especially as they are represented in images and other forms of
documentation. Thanks to search engines and databases, such
representations are more or less always present, though in the form of
indeterminate images, ambivalent documents, and contentious
interpretations. Artists in this situation, as Arns explains,

::: {.extract}
do not ask the naïve question about what really happened outside of the
history represented in the media -- the "authenticity" beyond the images
-- instead, they ask what the images we see might mean concretely to us,
if we were to experience these situations personally. In this way the
artistic reenactment confronts the general feeling of insecurity about
the meaning []{#Page_73 type="pagebreak" title="73"}of images by using a
paradoxical approach: through erasing distance to the images and at the
same time distancing itself from the
images.[^27^](#c2-note-0027){#c2-note-0027a}
:::

This paradox manifests itself in that the images are appropriated and
sublated through the use of one\'s own body in the re-enactments. They
simultaneously refer to the past and create a new reality in the
present. In perhaps the best-known re-enactment of this type, the artist
Jeremy Deller revived, in 2001, the Battle of Orgreave, one of the
central episodes of the British miners\' strike of 1984 and 1985. This
historical event is regarded as a turning point in the protracted
conflict between Margaret Thatcher\'s government and the labor unions --
a key moment in the implementation of Great Britain\'s neoliberal
regime, which is still in effect today. In Deller\'s re-enactment, the
heart of the matter is not historical accuracy, which is always
controversial in such epoch-changing events. Rather, he focuses on the
former participants -- the miners and police officers alike, who, along
with non-professional actors, lived through the situation again -- in
order to explore both the distance from the events and their
representation in the media, as well as their ongoing biographical and
societal presence.[^28^](#c2-note-0028){#c2-note-0028a}

Elaborate practices of embodying medial images through processes of
appropriation and distancing have also found their way into popular
culture, for instance in so-called "cosplay." The term, which is a
contraction of the words "costume" and "play," was coined by a Japanese
man named Nobuyuki Takahashi. In 1984, while attending the World Science
Fiction Convention in Los Angeles, he used the word to describe the
practice of certain attendees to dress up as their favorite characters.
Participants in cosplay embody fictitious figures -- mostly from the
worlds of science fiction, comics/manga, or computer games -- by donning
home-made costumes and striking characteristic
poses.[^29^](#c2-note-0029){#c2-note-0029a} The often considerable
effort that goes into this is mostly reflected in the costumes, not in
the choreography or dramaturgy of the performance. What is significant
is that these costumes are usually not exact replicas but are rather
freely adapted by each player to represent the character as he or she
interprets it to be. Accordingly, "Cosplay is a form of appropriation
[]{#Page_74 type="pagebreak" title="74"}that transforms, actualizes and
performs an existing story in close connection to the fan\'s own
identity."[^30^](#c2-note-0030){#c2-note-0030a} This practice,
admittedly, goes back quite far in the history of fan culture, but it
has experienced a striking surge through the opportunity for fans to
network with one another around the world, to produce costumes and
images of professional quality, and to place themselves on the same
level as their (fictitious) idols. By now it has become a global
subculture whose members are active not only online but also at hundreds
of conventions throughout the world. In Germany, an annual cosplay
competition has been held since 2007 (it is organized by the Frankfurt
Book Fair and Animexx, the country\'s largest manga and anime
community). The scene, which has grown and branched out considerably
over the past few years, has slowly begun to professionalize, with
shops, books, and players who make paid appearances. Even in fan
culture, stars are born. As soon as the subculture has exceeded a
certain size, this gradual onset of commercialization will undoubtedly
lead to tensions within the community. For now, however, two of its
noteworthy features remain: the power of the desire to appropriate, in a
bodily manner, characters from vast cultural universes, and the
widespread combination of free interpretation and meticulous attention
to detail.
:::

::: {.section}
### Lineages and transformations {#c2-sec-0008}

Because of the great effort tha they require, re-enactment and cosplay
are somewhat extreme examples of singling out, appropriating, and
referencing. As everyday activities that almost take place incidentally,
however, these three practices usually do not make any significant or
lasting differences. Yet they do not happen just once, but over and over
again. They accumulate and thus constitute referentiality\'s second type
of activity: the creation of connections between the many things that
have attracted attention. In such a way, paths are forged through the
vast complexity. These paths, which can be formed, for instance, by
referring to different things one after another, likewise serve to
produce and filter meaning. Things that can potentially belong in
multiple contexts are brought into a single, specific context. For the
individual []{#Page_75 type="pagebreak" title="75"}producer, this is how
fields of attention, reference systems, and contexts of meaning are
first established. In the third step, the things that have been selected
and brought together are changed. Perhaps something is removed to modify
the meaning, or perhaps something is added that was previously absent or
unavailable. Either way, referential culture is always producing
something new.

These processes are applied both within individual works (referentiality
in a strict sense) and within currents of communication that consist of
numerous molecular acts (referentiality in a broader sense). This latter
sort of compilation is far more widespread than the creation of new
re-mix works. Consider, for example, the billionfold sequences of status
updates, which sometimes involve a link to an interesting video,
sometimes a post of a photograph, then a short list of favorite songs, a
top 10 chart from one\'s own feed, or anything else. Such methods of
inscribing oneself into the world by means of references, combinations,
or alterations are used to create meaning through one\'s own activity in
the world and to constitute oneself in it, both for one\'s self and for
others. In a culture that manifests itself to a great extent through
mediatized communication, people have to constitute themselves through
such acts, if only by posting
"selfies."[^31^](#c2-note-0031){#c2-note-0031a} Not to do so would be to
risk invisibility and being forgotten.

On this basis, a genuine digital folk culture of re-mixing and mashups
has formed in recent years on online platforms, in game worlds, but also
through cultural-economic productions of individual pieces or short
series. It is generated and maintained by innumerable people with
varying degrees of intensity and ambition. Its common feature with
trad­itional folk culture, in choirs or elsewhere, is that production
and reception (but also reproduction and creation) largely coincide.
Active participation admittedly requires a certain degree of
proficiency, interest, and engagement, but usually not any extraordinary
talent. Many classical institutions such as museums and archives have
been attempting to take part in this folk culture by setting up their
own re-mix services. They know that the "public" is no longer able or
willing to limit its engagement with works of art and cultural history
to one of quiet contemplation. At the end of 2013, even []{#Page_76
type="pagebreak" title="76"}the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin
initiated a re-mix competition. A year earlier, the Rijksmuseum in
Amsterdam launched so-called "Rijksstudios." Since then, the museum has
made available on its website more than 200,000 high-resolution images
from its collection. Users are free to use these to create their own
re-mixes online and share them with others. Interestingly, the
Rijksmuseum does not distinguish between the work involved in
transforming existing pieces and that involved in curating its own
online gallery.

Referential processes have no beginning and no end. Any material that is
used to make something new has a pre-history of its own, even if its
traces are lost in clouds of uncertainty. Upon closer inspection, this
cloud might clear a little bit, but it is extremely uncommon for a
genuine beginning -- a *creatio ex nihilo* -- to be revealed. This
raises the question of whether there can really be something like
originality in the emphatic sense.[^32^](#c2-note-0032){#c2-note-0032a}
Regardless of the answer to this question, the fact that by now many
people select, combine, and alter objects on a daily basis has led to a
slow shift in our perception and sensibilities. In light of the
experiences that so many people are creating, the formerly exotic
theories of deconstruction suddenly seem anything but outlandish. Nearly
half a century ago, Roland Barthes defined the text as a fabric of
quotations, and this incited vehement
opposition.[^33^](#c2-note-0033){#c2-note-0033a} "But of course," one
would be inclined to say today, "that can be statistically proven
through software analysis!" Amazon identifies books by means of their
"statistically improbable phrases"; that is, by means of textual
elements that are highly unlikely to occur elsewhere. This implies, of
course, that books contain many textual elements that are highly likely
to be found in other texts, without suggesting that such elements would
have to be regarded as plagiarism.

In the Gutenberg Galaxy, with its fixation on writing, the earliest
textual document is usually understood to represent a beginning. If no
references to anything before can be identified, the text is then
interpreted as a closed entity, as a new text. Thus, fairy tales and
sagas, which are typical elements of oral culture, are still more
strongly associated with the names of those who recorded them than with
the names of those who narrated them. This does not seem very convincing
today. In recent years, literary historians have made strong []{#Page_77
type="pagebreak" title="77"}efforts to shift the focus of attention to
the people (mostly women) who actually told certain fairy tales. In
doing so, they have been able to work out to what extent the respective
narrators gave shape to specific stories, which were written down as
common versions, and to what extent these stories reflect their
narrators\' personal histories.[^34^](#c2-note-0034){#c2-note-0034a}

Today, after more than 40 years of deconstructionist theory and a change
in our everyday practices, it is no longer controversial to read works
-- even by canonical figures like Wagner or Mozart -- in such a way as
to highlight the other works, either by the artists in question or by
other artists, that are contained within
them.[^35^](#c2-note-0035){#c2-note-0035a} This is not an expression of
decreased appreciation but rather an indication that, as Zygmunt Bauman
has stressed, "The way human beings understand the world tends to be at
all times *praxeomorphic*: it is always shaped by the know-how of the
day, by what people can do and how they usually go about doing
it."[^36^](#c2-note-0036){#c2-note-0036a} And the everyday practice of
today is one of singling out, bringing together, altering, and adding.
Accordingly, not only has our view of current cultural production
shifted; our view of cultural history has shifted as well. As always,
the past is made to suit the sensibilities of the present.

As a rule, however, things that have no beginning also have no end. This
is not only because they can in turn serve as elements for other new
contexts of meaning, but also because the attention paid to the context
in which they take on specific meaning is sensitive to the work that has
to be done to maintain the context itself. Even timelessness is an
elaborate everyday business. The attempt to rescue works of art from the
ravages of time -- to preserve them forever -- means that they regularly
need to be restored. Every restoration inevit­ably stirs a debate about
whether the planned interventions are appropriate and about how to deal
with the traces of previous interventions, which, from the current
perspective, often seem to be highly problematic. Whereas, just a
generation ago, preservationists ensured that such interventions
remained visible (as articulations of the historical fissures that are
typical of Modernity), today greater emphasis is placed on reducing
their visibility and re-creating the illusion of an "original condition"
(without, however, impeding any new functionality that a piece might
have in the present). []{#Page_78 type="pagebreak" title="78"}The
historically faithful restoration of the Berlin City Palace, and yet its
repurposed function as a museum and meeting place, are typical of this
new attitude in dealing with our historical heritage.

In everyday activity, too, the never-ending necessity of this work can
be felt at all times. Here the issue is not timelessness, but rather
that the established contexts of meaning quickly become obsolete and
therefore have to be continuously affirmed, expanded, and changed in
order to maintain the relevance of the field that they define. This
lends referentiality a performative character that combines productive
and reproductive dimensions. That which is not constantly used and
renewed simply disappears. Often, however, this only means that it will
sink into an endless archive and become unrealized potential until
someone reactivates it, breathes new life into it, rouses it from its
slumber, and incorporates it into a newly relevant context of meaning.
"To be relevant," according to the artist Eran Schaerf, "things must be
recyclable."[^37^](#c2-note-0037){#c2-note-0037a}

Alone, everyone is overwhelmed by the task of having to generate meaning
against this backdrop of all-encompassing meaninglessness. First, the
challenge is too great for any individual to overcome; second, meaning
itself is only created intersubjectively. While it can admittedly be
asserted by a single person, others have to confirm it before it can
become a part of culture. For this reason, the actual subject of
cultural production under the digital condition is not the individual
but rather the next-largest unit.
:::
:::

::: {.section}
Communality {#c2-sec-0009}
-----------

As an individual, it is impossible to orient oneself within a complex
environment. Meaning -- as well as the ability to act -- can only be
created, reinforced, and altered in exchange with others. This is
nothing noteworthy; biologically and culturally, people are social
beings. What has changed historically is how people are integrated into
larger contexts, how processes of exchange are organized, and what every
individual is expected to do in order to become a fully fledged
participant in these processes. For nearly 50 years, traditional
[]{#Page_79 type="pagebreak" title="79"}institutions -- that is,
hierarchically and bureaucratically organ­ized civic institutions such
as established churches, labor unions, and political parties -- have
continuously been losing members.[^38^](#c2-note-0038){#c2-note-0038a}
In tandem with this, the overall commitment to the identities, family
values, and lifestyles promoted by these institutions has likewise been
in decline. The great mech­anisms of socialization from the late stages
of the Gutenberg Galaxy have been losing more and more of their
influence, though at different speeds and to different extents. All
told, however, explicitly and collectively normative impulses are
decreasing, while others (implicitly economic, above all) are on the
rise. According to mainstream sociology, a cause or consequence of this
is the individualization and atomization of society. As early as the
middle of the 1980s, Ulrich Beck claimed: "In the individualized society
the individual must therefore learn, on pain of permanent disadvantage,
to conceive of himself or herself as the center of action, as the
planning office with respect to his/her own biography, abil­ities,
orientations, relationships and so
on."[^39^](#c2-note-0039){#c2-note-0039a} Over the past three decades,
the dominant neoliberal political orientation, with its strong stress on
the freedom of the individual -- to realize oneself as an individual
actor in the allegedly open market and in opposition to allegedly
domineering collective mechanisms -- has radicalized these tendencies
even further. The ability to act, however, is not only a question of
one\'s personal attitude but also of material resources. And it is this
same neoliberal politics that deprives so many people of the resources
needed to take advantage of these new freedoms in their own lives. As a
result they suffer, in Ulrich Beck\'s terms, "permanent disadvantage."

Under the digital condition, this process has permeated the finest
structures of social life. Individualization, commercialization, and the
production of differences (through design, for instance) are ubiquitous.
Established civic institutions are not alone in being hollowed out;
relatively new collectives are also becoming more differentiated, a
development that I outlined above with reference to the transformation
of the gay movement into the LGBT community. Yet nevertheless, or
perhaps for this very reason, new forms of communality are being formed
in these offshoots -- in the small activities of everyday life. And
these new communal formations -- rather []{#Page_80 type="pagebreak"
title="80"}than individual people -- are the actual subjects who create
the shared meaning that we call culture.

::: {.section}
### The problem of the "community" {#c2-sec-0010}

I have chosen the rather cumbersome expression "communal formation" in
order to avoid the term "community" (*Gemeinschaft*), although the
latter is used increasingly often in discussions of digital cultures and
has played an import­ant role, from the beginning, in conceptions of
networking. Viewed analytically, however, "community" is a problematic
term because it is almost hopelessly overloaded. Particularly in the
German-speaking tradition, Ferdinand Tönnies\'s polar distinction
between "community" (*Gemeinschaft*) and "society" (*Gesellschaft*),
which he introduced in 1887, remains
influential.[^40^](#c2-note-0040){#c2-note-0040a} Tönnies contrasted two
fundamentally different and exclusive types of social relations. Whereas
community is characterized by the overlapping multidimensional nature of
social relationships, society is defined by the functional separation of
its sectors and spheres. Community embeds every individual into complex
social relationships, all of which tend to be simultaneously present. In
the traditional village community ("communities of place," in Tönnies\'s
terms), neighbors are involved with one another, for better or for
worse, both on a familiar basis and economically or religiously. Every
activity takes place on several different levels at the same time.
Communities are comprehensive social institutions that penetrate all
areas of life, endowing them with meaning. Through mutual dependency,
they create stability and security, but they also obstruct change and
hinder social mobility. Because everyone is connected with each other,
no can leave his or her place without calling into question the
arrangement as a whole. Communities are thus structurally conservative.
Because every human activity is embedded in multifaceted social
relationships, every change requires adjustments across the entire
interrelational web -- a task that is not easy to accomplish.
Accordingly, the trad­itional communities of the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries fiercely opposed the establishment of capitalist
society. In order to impose the latter, the old community structures
were broken apart with considerable violence. This is what Marx
[]{#Page_81 type="pagebreak" title="81"}and Engels were referring to in
that famous passage from *The Communist Manifesto*: "All the settled,
age-old relations with their train of time-honoured preconceptions and
viewpoints are dissolved. \[...\] Everything feudal and fixed goes up in
smoke, everything sacred is
profaned."[^41^](#c2-note-0041){#c2-note-0041a}

The defining feature of society, on the contrary, is that it frees the
individual from such multifarious relationships. Society, according to
Tönnies, separates its members from one another. Although they
coordinate their activity with others, they do so in order to pursue
partial, short-term, and personal goals. Not only are people separated,
but so too are different areas of life. In a market-oriented society,
for instance, the economy is conceptualized as an independent sphere. It
can therefore break away from social connections to be organized simply
by limited formal or legal obligations between actors who, beyond these
obligations, have nothing else to do with one another. Costs or benefits
that inadvertently affect people who are uninvolved in a given market
transaction are referred to by economists as "externalities," and market
participants do not need to care about these because they are strictly
pursuing their own private interests. One of the consequences of this
form of social relationship is a heightened social dynamic, for now it
is possible to introduce changes into one area of life without
considering its effects on other areas. In the end, the dissolution of
mutual obligations, increased uncertainty, and the reduction of many
social connections go hand in hand with what Marx and Engels referred to
in *The Communist Manifesto* as "unfeeling hard cash."

From this perspective, the historical development looks like an
ambivalent process of modernization in which society (dynamic, but cold)
is erected over the ruins of community (static, but warm). This is an
unusual combination of romanticism and progress-oriented thinking, and
the problems with this influential perspective are numerous. There is,
first, the matter of its dichotomy; that is, its assumption that there
can only be these two types of arrangement, community and society. Or
there is the notion that the one form can be completely ousted by the
other, even though aspects of community and aspects of society exist at
the same time in specific historical situations, be it in harmony or in
conflict.[^42^](#c2-note-0042){#c2-note-0042a} []{#Page_82
type="pagebreak" title="82"}These impressions, however, which are so
firmly associated with the German concept of *Gemeinschaft*, make it
rather difficult to comprehend the new forms of communality that have
developed in the offshoots of networked life. This is because, at least
for now, these latter forms do not represent a genuine alternative to
societal types of social
connectedness.[^43^](#c2-note-0043){#c2-note-0043a} The English word
"community" is somewhat more open. The opposition between community and
society resonates with it as well, although the dichotomy is not as
clear-cut. American communitarianism, for instance, considers the
difference between community and society to be gradual and not
categorical. Its primary aim is to strengthen civic institutions and
mechanisms, and it regards community as an intermediary level between
the individual and society.[^44^](#c2-note-0044){#c2-note-0044a} But
there is a related English term, which seems even more productive for my
purposes, namely "community of practice," a concept that is more firmly
grounded in the empirical observation of concrete social relationships.
The term was introduced at the beginning of the 1990s by the social
researchers Jean Lave and Étienne Wenger. They observed that, in most
cases, professional learning (for instance, in their case study of
midwives) does not take place as a one-sided transfer of knowledge or
proficiency, but rather as an open exchange, often outside of the formal
learning environment, between people with different levels of knowledge
and experience. In this sense, learning is an activity that, though
distinguishable, cannot easily be separated from other "normal"
activities of everyday life. As Lave and Wenger stress, however, the
community of practice is not only a social space of exchange; it is
rather, and much more fundamentally, "an intrinsic condition for the
existence of knowledge, not least because it provides the interpretive
support necessary for making sense of its
heritage."[^45^](#c2-note-0045){#c2-note-0045a} Communities of practice
are thus always epistemic communities that form around certain ways of
looking at the world and one\'s own activity in it. What constitutes a
community of practice is thus the joint acquisition, development, and
preservation of a specific field of practice that contains abstract
knowledge, concrete proficiencies, the necessary material and social
resources, guidelines, expectations, and room to interpret one\'s own
activity. All members are active participants in the constitution of
this field, and this reinforces the stress on []{#Page_83
type="pagebreak" title="83"}practice. Each of them, however, brings
along different presuppositions and experiences, for their situations
are embedded within numerous and specific situations of life or work.
The processes within the community are mostly informal, and yet they are
thoroughly structured, for authority is distributed unequally and is
based on the extent to which the members value each other\'s (and their
own) levels of knowledge and experience. At first glance, then, the term
"community of practice" seems apt to describe the meaning-generating
communal formations that are at issue here. It is also somewhat
problematic, however, because, having since been subordinated to
management strategies, its use is now narrowly applied to professional
learning and managing knowledge.[^46^](#c2-note-0046){#c2-note-0046a}

From these various notions of community, it is possible to develop the
following way of looking at new types of communality: they are formed in
a field of practice, characterized by informal yet structured exchange,
focused on the generation of new ways of knowing and acting, and
maintained through the reflexive interpretation of their own activity.
This last point in particular -- the communal creation, preservation,
and alteration of the interpretive framework in which actions,
processes, and objects acquire a firm meaning and connection -- can be
seen as the central role of communal formations.

Communication is especially significant to them. Indi­viduals must
continuously communicate in order to constitute themselves within the
fields and practices, or else they will remain invisible. The mass of
tweets, updates, emails, blogs, shared pictures, texts, posts on
collaborative platforms, and databases (etc.) that are necessary for
this can only be produced and processed by means of digital
technologies. In this act of incessant communication, which is a
constitutive element of social existence, the personal desire for
self-constitution and orientation becomes enmeshed with the outward
pressure of having to be present and available to form a new and binding
set of requirements. This relation between inward motivation and outward
pressure can vary highly, depending on the character of the communal
formation and the position of the individual within it (although it is
not the individual who determines what successful communication is, what
represents a contribution to the communal formation, or in which form
one has to be present). []{#Page_84 type="pagebreak" title="84"}Such
decisions are made by other members of the formation in the form of
positive or negative feedback (or none at all), and they are made with
recourse to the interpretive framework that has been developed in
common. These communal and continuous acts of learning, practicing, and
orientation -- the exchange, that is, between "novices" and "experts" on
the same field, be it concerned with internet politics, illegal street
racing, extreme right-wing music, body modification, or a free
encyclopedia -- serve to maintain the framework of shared meaning,
expand the constituted field, recruit new members, and adapt the
framework of interpretation and activity to changing conditions. Such
communal formations constitute themselves; they preserve and modify
themselves by constantly working out the foundations of their
constitution. This may sound circular, for the process of reflexive
self-constitution -- "autopoiesis" in the language of systems theory --
is circular in the sense that control is maintained through continuous,
self-generating feedback. Self-referentiality is a structural feature of
these formations.
:::

::: {.section}
### Singularity and communality {#c2-sec-0011}

The new communal formations are informal forms of organ­ization that are
based on voluntary action. No one is born into them, and no one
possesses the authority to force anyone else to join or remain against
his or her will, or to assign anyone with tasks that he or she might be
unwilling to do. Such a formation is not an enclosed disciplinary
institution in Foucault\'s sense,[^47^](#c2-note-0047){#c2-note-0047a}
and, within it, power is not exercised through commands, as in the
classical sense formulated by Max
Weber.[^48^](#c2-note-0048){#c2-note-0048a} The condition of not being
locked up and not being subordinated can, at least at first, represent
for the individual a gain in freedom. Under a given set of conditions,
everyone can (and must) choose which formations to participate in, and
he or she, in doing so, will have a better or worse chance to influence
the communal field of reference.

On the everyday level of communicative self-constitution and creating a
personal cognitive horizon -- in innumerable streams, updates, and
timelines on social mass media -- the most important resource is the
attention of others; that is, their feedback and the mutual recognition
that results from it. []{#Page_85 type="pagebreak" title="85"}And this
recognition may simply be in the form of a quickly clicked "like," which
is the smallest unit that can assure the sender that, somewhere out
there, there is a receiver. Without the latter, communication has no
meaning. The situation is somewhat menacing if no one clicks the "like"
button beneath a post or a photo. It is a sign that communication has
broken, and the result is the dissolution of one\'s own communicatively
constituted social existence. In this context, the boundaries are
blurred between the categories of information, communication, and
activity. Making information available always involves the active --
that is, communicating -- person, and not only in the case of ubiquitous
selfies, for in an overwhelming and chaotic environment, as discussed
above, selection itself is of such central importance that the
differences between the selected and the selecting become fluid,
particularly when the goal of the latter is to experience confirmation
from others. In this back-and-forth between one\'s own presence and the
validation of others, one\'s own motives and those of the community are
not in opposition but rather mutually depend on one another. Condensed
to simple norms and to a basic set of guidelines within the context of
an image-oriented social mass media service, the rule (or better:
friendly tip) that one need not but probably ought to follow is this:

::: {.extract}
Be an active member of the Instagram community to receive likes and
comments. Take time to comment on a friend\'s photo, or to like photos.
If you do this, others will reciprocate. If you never acknowledge your
followers\' photos, then they won\'t acknowledge
you.[^49^](#c2-note-0049){#c2-note-0049a}
:::

The context of this widespread and highly conventional piece of advice
is not, for instance, a professional marketing campaign; it is simply
about personally positioning oneself within a social network. The goal
is to establish one\'s own, singular, identity. The process required to
do so is not primarily inward-oriented; it is not based on questions
such as: "Who am I really, apart from external influences?" It is rather
outward-oriented. It takes place through making connections with others
and is concerned with questions such as: "Who is in my network, and what
is my position within it?" It is []{#Page_86 type="pagebreak"
title="86"}revealing that none of the tips in the collection cited above
offers advice about achieving success within a community of
photographers; there are not suggestions, for instance, about how to
take high-quality photographs. With smart cameras and built-in filters
for post-production, this is not especially challenging any more,
especially because individual pictures, to be examined closely and on
their own terms, have become less important gauges of value than streams
of images that are meant to be quickly scrolled through. Moreover, the
function of the critic, who once monopolized the right to interpret and
evaluate an image for everyone, is no longer of much significance.
Instead, the quality of a picture is primarily judged according to
whether "others like it"; that is, according to its performance in the
ongoing popularity contest within a specific niche. But users do not
rely on communal formations and the feedback they provide just for the
sharing and evaluation of pictures. Rather, this dynamic has come to
determine more and more facets of life. Users experience the
constitution of singularity and communality, in which a person can be
perceived as such, as simultaneous and reciprocal processes. A million
times over and nearly subconsciously (because it is so commonplace),
they engage in a relationship between the individual and others that no
longer really corresponds to the liberal opposition between
individuality and society, between personal and group identity. Instead
of viewing themselves as exclusive entities (either in terms of the
emphatic affirmation of individuality or its dissolution within a
homogeneous group), the new formations require that the production of
difference and commonality takes place
simultaneously.[^50^](#c2-note-0050){#c2-note-0050a}
:::

::: {.section}
### Authenticity and subjectivity {#c2-sec-0012}

Because members have decided to participate voluntarily in the
community, their expressions and actions are regarded as authentic, for
it is implicitly assumed that, in making these gestures, they are not
following anyone else\'s instructions but rather their own motivations.
The individual does not act as a representative or functionary of an
organization but rather as a private and singular (that is, unique)
person. While at a gathering of the Occupy movement, a sure way to be
kicked out to is to stick stubbornly to a party line, even if this way
[]{#Page_87 type="pagebreak" title="87"}of thinking happens to agree
with that of the movement. Not only at Occupy gatherings, however, but
in all new communal formations it is expected that everyone there is
representing his or her own interests. As most people are aware, this
assumption is theoretically naïve and often proves to be false in
practice. Even spontaneity can be calculated, and in many cases it is.
Nevertheless, the expectation of authenticity is relevant because it
creates a minimum of trust. As the basis of social trust, such
contra-factual expectations exist elsewhere as well. Critical readers of
newspapers, for instance, must assume that what they are reading has
been well researched and is presented as objectively as possible, even
though they know that objectivity is theoretically a highly problematic
concept -- to this extent, postmodern theory has become common knowledge
-- and that newspapers often pursue (hidden) interests or lead
campaigns. Yet without such contra-factual assumptions, the respective
orders of knowledge and communication would not function, for they
provide the normative framework within which deviations can be
perceived, criticized, and sanctioned.

In a seemingly traditional manner, the "authentic self" is formulated
with reference to one\'s inner world, for instance to personal
knowledge, interests, or desires. As the core of personality, however,
this inner world no longer represents an immutable and essential
characteristic but rather a temporary position. Today, even someone\'s
radical reinvention can be regarded as authentic. This is the central
difference from the classical, bourgeois conception of the subject. The
self is no longer understood in essentialist terms but rather
performatively. Accordingly, the main demand on the individual who
voluntarily opts to participate in a communal formation is no longer to
be self-aware but rather to be
self-motivated.[^51^](#c2-note-0051){#c2-note-0051a} Nor is it necessary
any more for one\'s core self to be coherent. It is not a contradiction
to appear in various communal formations, each different from the next,
as a different "I myself," for every formation is comprehensive, in that
it appeals to the whole person, and simultaneously partial, in that it
is oriented toward a particular goal and not toward all areas of life.
As in the case of re-mixes and other referential processes, the concern
here is not to preserve authenticity but rather to create it in the
moment. The success or failure []{#Page_88 type="pagebreak"
title="88"}of these efforts is determined by the continuous feedback of
others -- one like after another.

These practices have led to a modified form of subject constitution for
which some sociologists, engaged in empir­ical research, have introduced
the term "networked individualism."[^52^](#c2-note-0052){#c2-note-0052a}
The idea is based on the observation that people in Western societies
(the case studies were mostly in North America) are defining their
identity less and less by their family, profession, or other stable
collective, but rather increasingly in terms of their personal social
networks; that is, according to the communal formations in which they
are active as individuals and in which they are perceived as singular
people. In this regard, individualization and atomization no longer
necessarily go hand in hand. On the contrary, the intertwined nature of
personal identity and communality can be experienced on an everyday
level, given that both are continuously created, adapted, and affirmed
by means of personal communication. This makes the networks in question
simultaneously fragile and stable. Fragile because they require the
ongoing presence of every individual and because communication can break
down quickly. Stable because the networks of relationships that can
support a single person -- as regards the number of those included,
their geograph­ical distribution, and the duration of their cohesion --
have expanded enormously by means of digital communication technologies.

Here the issue is not that of close friendships, whose number remains
relatively constant for most people and over long periods of
time,[^53^](#c2-note-0053){#c2-note-0053a} but rather so-called "weak
ties"; that is, more or less loose acquaintances that can be tapped for
new information and resources that do not exist within one\'s close
circle of friends.[^54^](#c2-note-0054){#c2-note-0054a} The more they
are expanded, the more sustainable and valuable these networks become,
for they bring together a large number of people and thus multiply the
material and organizational resources that are (potentially) accessible
to the individual. It is impossible to make a sweeping statement as to
whether these formations actually represent communities in a
comprehensive sense and how stable they really are, especially in times
of crisis, for this is something that can only be found out on a
case-by-case basis. It is relevant that the development of personal
networks []{#Page_89 type="pagebreak" title="89"}has not taken place in
a vacuum. The disintegration of institutions that were formerly
influential in the formation of identity and meaning began long before
the large-scale spread of networks. For most people, there is no other
choice but to attempt to orient and organize oneself, regardless of how
provisional or uncertain this may be. Or, as Manuel Castells somewhat
melodramatically put it, "At the turn of the millennium, the king and
the queen, the state and civil society, are both naked, and their
children-citizens are wandering around a variety of foster
homes."[^55^](#c2-note-0055){#c2-note-0055a}
:::

::: {.section}
### Space and time as a communal practice {#c2-sec-0013}

Although participation in a communal formation is voluntary, it is not
unselfish. Quite the contrary: an important motivation is to gain access
to a formation\'s constitutive field of practice and to the resources
associated with it. A communal formation ultimately does more than
simply steer the attention of its members toward one another. Through
the common production of culture, it also structures how the members
perceive the world and how they are able to design themselves and their
potential actions in it. It is thus a co­operative mechanism of
filtering, interpretation, and constitution. Through the everyday
referential work of its members, the community selects a manageable
amount of information from the excess of potentially available
information and brings it into a meaningful context, whereby it
validates the selection itself and orients the activity of each of its
members.

The new communal formations consist of self-referential worlds whose
constructive common practice affects the foundations of social activity
itself -- the constitution of space and time. How? The spatio-temporal
horizon of digital communication is a global (that is, placeless) and
ongoing present. The technical vision of digital communication is always
the here and now. With the instant transmission of information,
everything that is not "here" is inaccessible and everything that is not
"now" has disappeared. Powerful infrastructure has been built to achieve
these effects: data centers, intercontinental networks of cables,
satellites, high-performance nodes, and much more. Through globalized
high-frequency trading, actors in the financial markets have realized
this []{#Page_90 type="pagebreak" title="90"}technical vision to its
broadest extent by creating a never-ending global present whose expanse
is confined to milliseconds. This process is far from coming to an end,
for massive amounts of investment are allocated to accomplish even the
smallest steps toward this goal. On November 3, 2015, a 4,600-kilometer,
300-million-dollar transatlantic telecommunications cable (Hibernia
Express) was put into operation between London and New York -- the first
in more than 10 years -- with the single goal of accelerating automated
trading between the two places by 5.2 milliseconds.

For social and biological processes, this technical horizon of space and
time is neither achievable nor desirable. Such processes, on the
contrary, are existentially dependent on other spatial and temporal
orders. Yet because of the existence of this non-geographical and
atemporal horizon, the need -- as well as the possibility -- has arisen
to redefine the parameters of space and time themselves in order to
counteract the mire of technically defined spacelessness and
timelessness. If space and time are not simply to vanish in this
spaceless, ongoing present, how then should they be defined? Communal
formations create spaces for action not least by determining their own
geographies and temporal rhythms. They negotiate what is near and far
and also which places are disregarded (that is, not even perceived). If
every place is communicatively (and physically) reachable, every person
must decide which place he or she would like to reach in practice. This,
however, is not an individual decision but rather a task that can only
be approached collectively. Those places which are important and thus
near are determined by communal formations. This takes place in the form
of a rough consensus through the blogs that "one" has to read, the
exhibits that "one" has to see, the events and conferences that "one"
has to attend, the places that "one" has to visit before they are
overrun by tourists, the crises in which "the West" has to intervene,
the targets that "lend themselves" to a terrorist attack, and so on. On
its own, however, selection is not enough. Communal formations are
especially powerful when they generate the material and organizational
resources that are necessary for their members to implement their shared
worldview through actions -- to visit, for instance, the places that
have been chosen as important. This can happen if they enable access
[]{#Page_91 type="pagebreak" title="91"}to stipends, donations, price
reductions, ride shares, places to stay, tips, links, insider knowledge,
public funds, airlifts, explosives, and so on. It is in this way that
each formation creates its respective spatial constructs, which define
distances in a great variety of ways. At the same time that war-torn
Syria is unreachably distant even for seasoned reporters and their
staff, veritable travel agencies are being set up in order to bring
Western jihadists there in large numbers.

Things are similar for the temporal dimensions of social and biological
processes. Permanent presence is a temporality that is inimical to life
but, under its influence, temporal rhythms have to be redefined as well.
What counts as fast? What counts as slow? In what order should things
proceed? On the everyday level, for instance, the matter can be as
simple as how quickly to respond to an email. Because the transmission
of information hardly takes any time, every delay is a purely social
creation. But how much is acceptable? There can be no uniform answer to
this. The members of each communal formation have to negotiate their own
rules with one another, even in areas of life that are otherwise highly
formalized. In an interview with the magazine *Zeit*, for instance, a
lawyer with expertise in labor law was asked whether a boss may require
employees to be reachable at all times. Instead of answering by
referring to any binding legal standards, the lawyer casually advised
that this was a matter of flexible negotiation: "Express your misgivings
openly and honestly about having to be reachable after hours and,
together with your boss, come up with an agreeable rule to
follow."[^56^](#c2-note-0056){#c2-note-0056a} If only it were that easy.

Temporalities that, in many areas, were once simply taken for granted by
everyone on account of the factuality of things now have to be
culturally determined -- that is, explicitly negotiated -- in a greater
number of contexts. Under the conditions of capitalism, which is always
creating new competitions and incentives, one consequence is the
often-lamented "acceleration of time." We are asked to produce, consume,
or accomplish more and more in less and less
time.[^57^](#c2-note-0057){#c2-note-0057a} This change in the
structuring of time is not limited to linear acceleration. It reaches
deep into the foundations of life and has even reconfigured biological
processes themselves. Today there is an entire industry that specializes
in freezing the stem []{#Page_92 type="pagebreak" title="92"}cells of
newborns in liquid nitrogen -- that is, in suspending cellular
biological time -- in case they might be needed later on in life for a
transplant or for the creation of artificial organs. Children can be
born even if their physical mothers are already dead. Or they can be
"produced" from ova that have been stored for many years at minus 196
degrees.[^58^](#c2-note-0058){#c2-note-0058a} At the same time,
questions now have to be addressed every day whose grand temporal
dimensions were once the matter of myth. In the case of atomic energy,
for instance, there is the issue of permanent disposal. Where can we
deposit nuclear waste for the next hundred thousand years without it
causing catastrophic damage? How can the radioactive material even be
transported there, wherever that is, within the framework of everday
traffic laws?[^59^](#c2-note-0059){#c2-note-0059a}

The construction of temporal dimensions and sequences has thus become an
everyday cultural question. Whereas throughout Europe, for example,
committees of experts and ethicists still meet to discuss reproductive
medicine and offer their various recommendations, many couples are
concerned with the specific question of whether or how they can fulfill
their wish to have children. Without a coherent set of rules, questions
such as these have to be answered by each individual with recourse to
his or her personally relevant communal formation. If there is no
cultural framework that at least claims to be binding for everyone, then
the individual must negotiate independently within each communal
formation with the goal of acquiring the resources necessary to act
according to communal values and objectives.
:::

::: {.section}
### Self-generating orders {#c2-sec-0014}

These three functions -- selection, interpretation, and the constitutive
ability to act -- make communal formations the true subject of the
digital condition. In principle, these functions are nothing new;
rather, they are typical of fields that are organized without reference
to external or irrefutable authorities. The state of scholarship, for
instance, is determined by what is circulated in refereed publications.
In this case, "refereed" means that scientists at the same professional
rank mutually evaluate each other\'s work. The scientific community (or
better: the sub-community of a specialized discourse) []{#Page_93
type="pagebreak" title="93"}evaluates the contributions of individual
scholars. They decide what should be considered valuable, and this
consensus can theoretically be revised at any time. It is based on a
particular catalog of criteria, on an interpretive framework that
provides lines of inquiry, methods, appraisals, and conventions of
presentation. With every article, this framework is confirmed and
reconstituted. If the framework changes, this can lead in the most
extreme case to a paradigm shift, which overturns fundamental
orientations, assumptions, and
certainties.[^60^](#c2-note-0060){#c2-note-0060a} The result of this is
not only a change in how scientific contributions are evaluated but also
a change in how the external world is perceived and what activities are
possible in it. Precisely because the sciences claim to define
themselves, they have the ability to revise their own foundations.

The sciences were the first large sphere of society to achieve
comprehensive cultural autonomy; that is, the ability to determine its
own binding meaning. Art was the second that began to organize itself on
the basis of internal feedback. It was during the era of Romanticism
that artists first laid claim to autonomy. They demanded "to absolve art
from all conditions, to represent it as a realm -- indeed as the only
realm -- in which truth and beauty are expressed in their pure form, a
realm in which everything truly human is
transcended."[^61^](#c2-note-0061){#c2-note-0061a} With the spread of
photography in the second half of the nineteenth century, art also
liberated itself from its final task, which was hoisted upon it from the
outside, namely the need to represent external reality. Instead of
having to represent the external world, artists could now focus on their
own subjectivity. This gave rise to a radical individualism, which found
its clearest summation in Marcel Duchamp\'s assertion that only the
artist could determine what is art. This he claimed in 1917 by way of
explaining how an industrially produced urinal, exhibited as a signed
piece with the title "Fountain," could be considered a work of art.

With the rise of the knowledge economy and the expansion of cultural
fields, including the field of art and the artists active within it,
this individualism quickly swelled to unmanageable levels. As a
consequence, the task of defining what should be regarded as art shifted
from the individual artist to the curator. It now fell upon the latter
to select a few works from the surplus of competing scenes and thus
bring temporary []{#Page_94 type="pagebreak" title="94"}order to the
constantly diversifying and changing world of contemporary art. This
order was then given expression in the form of exhibits, which were
intended to be more than the sum of their parts. The beginning of this
practice can be traced to the 1969 exhibition When Attitudes Become
Form, which was curated by Harald Szeemann for the Kunsthalle Bern (it
was also sponsored by Philip Morris). The works were not neatly
separated from one another and presented without reference to their
environment, but were connected with each other both spatially and in
terms of their content. The effect of the exhibition could be felt at
least as much through the collection of works as a whole as it could
through the individual pieces, many of which had been specially
commissioned for the exhibition itself. It not only cemented Szeemann\'s
reputation as one of the most significant curators of the twentieth
century; it also completely redefined the function of the curator as a
central figure within the art system.

This was more than 40 years ago and in a system that functioned
differently from that of today. The distance from this exhibition, but
also its ongoing relevance, was negotiated, significantly, in a
re-enactment at the 2013 Biennale in Venice. For this, the old rooms at
the Kunsthalle Bern were reconstructed in the space of the Fondazione
Prada in such a way that both could be seen simultaneously. As is
typical with such re-enactments, the curators of the project described
its goals in terms of appropriation and distancing: "This was the
challenge: how could we find and communicate a limit to a non-limit,
creating a place that would reflect exactly the architectural structures
of the Kunsthalle, but also an asymmetrical space with respect to our
time and imbued with an energy and tension equivalent to that felt at
Bern?"[^62^](#c2-note-0062){#c2-note-0062a}

Curation -- that is, selecting works and associating them with one
another -- has become an omnipresent practice in the art system. No
exhibition takes place any more without a curator. Nevertheless,
curators have lost their extraordinary
position,[^63^](#c2-note-0063){#c2-note-0063a} with artists taking on
more of this work themselves, not only because the boundaries between
artistic and curatorial activities have become fluid but also because
many artists explicitly co-produce the context of their work by
incorporating a multitude of references into their pieces. It is with
precisely this in mind that André Rottmann, in the []{#Page_95
type="pagebreak" title="95"}quotation cited at the beginning of this
chapter, can assert that referentiality has become the dominant
production-aesthetic model in contemporary art. This practice enables
artists to objectify themselves by explicitly placing themselves into a
historical and social context. At the same time, it also enables them to
subjectify the historical and social context by taking the liberty to
select and arrange the references
themselves.[^64^](#c2-note-0064){#c2-note-0064a}

Such strategies are no longer specific to art. Self-generated spaces of
reference and agency are now deeply embedded in everyday life. The
reason for this is that a growing number of questions can no longer be
answered in a generally binding way (such as those about what
constitutes fine art), while the enormous expansion of the cultural
requires explicit decisions to be made in more aspects of life. The
reaction to this dilemma has been radical subjectivation. This has not,
however, been taking place at the level of the individual but rather at
that of communal formations. There is now a patchwork of answers to
large questions and a multitude of reactions to large challenges, all of
which are limited in terms of their reliability and scope.
:::

::: {.section}
### Ambivalent voluntariness {#c2-sec-0015}

Even though participation in new formations is voluntary and serves the
interests of their members, it is not without preconditions. The most
important of these is acceptance, the willing adoption of the
interpretive framework that is generated by the communal formation. The
latter is formed from the social, cultural, legal, and technical
protocols that lend to each of these formations its concrete
constitution and specific character. Protocols are common sets of rules;
they establish, according to the network theorist Alexander Galloway,
"the essential points necessary to enact an agreed-upon standard of
action." They provide, he goes on, "etiquette for autonomous
agents."[^65^](#c2-note-0065){#c2-note-0065a} Protocols are
simul­taneously voluntary and binding; they allow actors to meet
eye-to-eye instead of entering into hierarchical relations with one
another. If everyone voluntarily complies with the protocols, then it is
not necessary for one actor to give instructions to another. Whoever
accepts the relevant protocols can interact with others who do the same;
whoever opts not to []{#Page_96 type="pagebreak" title="96"}accept them
will remain on the outside. Protocols establish, for example, common
languages, technical standards, or social conventions. The fundamental
protocol for the internet is the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet
Protocol (TCP/IP). This suite of protocols defines the common language
for exchanging data. Every device that exchanges information over the
internet -- be it a smartphone, a supercomputer in a data center, or a
networked thermostat -- has to use these protocols. In growing areas of
social contexts, the common language is English. Whoever wishes to
belong has to speak it increasingly often. In the natural sciences,
communication now takes place almost exclusively in English. Non-native
speakers who accept this norm may pay a high price: they have to learn a
new language and continually improve their command of it or else resign
themselves to being unable to articulate things as they would like --
not to mention losing the possibility of expressing something for which
another language would perhaps be more suitable, or forfeiting
trad­itions that cannot be expressed in English. But those who refuse to
go along with these norms pay an even higher price, risking
self-marginalization. Those who "voluntarily" accept conventions gain
access to a field of practice, even though within this field they may be
structurally disadvantaged. But unwillingness to accept such
conventions, with subsequent denial of access to this field, might have
even greater disadvantages.[^66^](#c2-note-0066){#c2-note-0066a}

In everyday life, the factors involved with this trade-off are often
presented in the form of subtle cultural codes. For instance, in order
to participate in a project devoted to the development of free software,
it is not enough for someone to possess the necessary technical
knowledge; he or she must also be able to fit into a wide-ranging
informal culture with a characteristic style of expression, humor, and
preferences. Ultimately, software developers do not form a professional
corps in the traditional sense -- in which functionaries meet one
another in the narrow and regulated domain of their profession -- but
rather a communal formation in which the engagement of the whole person,
both one\'s professional and social self, is scrutinized. The
abolishment of the separ­ation between different spheres of life,
requiring interaction of a more holistic nature, is in fact a key
attraction of []{#Page_97 type="pagebreak" title="97"}these communal
formations and is experienced by some as a genuine gain in freedom. In
this situation, one is no longer subjected to rules imposed from above
but rather one is allowed to -- and indeed ought to -- be authentically
pursuing his or her own interests.

But for others the experience can be quite the opposite because the
informality of the communal formation also allows forms of exclusion and
discrimination that are no longer acceptable in formally organized
realms of society. Discrimination is more difficult to identify when it
takes place within the framework of voluntary togetherness, for no one
is forced to participate. If you feel uncomfortable or unwelcome, you
are free to leave at any time. But this is a specious argument. The
areas of free software or Wikipedia are difficult places for women. In
these clubby atmospheres of informality, they are often faced with
blatant sexism, and this is one of the reasons why many women choose to
stay away from such projects.[^67^](#c2-note-0067){#c2-note-0067a} In
2007, according to estimates by the American National Center for Women &
Information Technology, whereas approximately 27 percent of all jobs
related to computer science were held by women, their representation at
the same time was far lower in the field of free software -- on average
less than 2 percent. And for years, the proportion of women who edit
texts on Wikipedia has hovered at around 10
percent.[^68^](#c2-note-0068){#c2-note-0068a}

The consequences of such widespread, informal, and elusive
discrimination are not limited to the fact that certain values and
prejudices of the shared culture are included in these products, while
different viewpoints and areas of knowledge are
excluded.[^69^](#c2-note-0069){#c2-note-0069a} What is more, those who
are excluded or do not wish to expose themselves to discrimination (and
thus do not even bother to participate in any communal formations) do
not receive access to the resources that circulate there (attention and
support, valuable and timely knowledge, or job offers). Many people are
thus faced with the choice of either enduring the discrimination within
a community or remaining on the outside and thus invisible. That this
decision is made on a voluntary basis and on one\'s own responsibility
hardly mitigates the coercive nature of the situation. There may be a
choice, but it would be misleading to call it a free one.[]{#Page_98
type="pagebreak" title="98"}
:::

::: {.section}
### The power of sociability {#c2-sec-0016}

In order to explain the peculiar coercive nature of the (nom­inally)
voluntary acceptance of protocols, rules, and norms, the political
scientist David Singh Grewal, drawing on the work of Max Weber and
Michel Foucault, has distinguished between the "power of sovereignty"
and the "power of sociabil­ity."[^70^](#c2-note-0070){#c2-note-0070a}
The former develops on the basis of dominance and subordination, as
imposed by authorities, police officers, judges, or other figures within
formal hierarchies. Their power is anchored in disciplinary
institutions, and the dictum of this sort of power is: "You must!" The
power of sociability, on the contrary, functions by prescribing the
conditions or protocols under which people are able to enter into an
exchange with one another. The dictum of this sort of power is: "You
can!" The more people accept certain protocols and standards, the more
powerful these become. Accordingly, the sociability that they structure
also becomes more comprehensive, and those not yet involved have to ask
themselves all the more urgently whether they can afford not to accept
these protocols and standards. Whereas the first type of power is
ultimately based on the monopoly of violence and on repression, the
second is founded on voluntary submission. When the entire internet
speaks TCP/IP, then an individual\'s decision to use it may be voluntary
in nominal terms, but at the same time it is an indispensable
precondition for existing within the network at all. Protocols exert
power without there having to be anyone present to possess the power in
question. Whereas the sovereign can be located, the effects of
sociability\'s power are diffuse and omnipresent. They are not
repressive but rather constitutive. No one forces a scientist to publish
in English or a woman editor to tolerate disparaging remarks on
Wikipedia. People accept these often implicit behavioral norms (sexist
comments are permitted, for instance) out of their own interests in
order to acquire access to the resources circulating within the networks
and to constitute themselves within it. In this regard, Singh
distinguishes between the "intrinsic" and "extrinsic" reasons for
abiding by certain protocols.[^71^](#c2-note-0071){#c2-note-0071a} In
the first case, the motivation is based on a new protocol being better
suited than existing protocols for carrying out []{#Page_99
type="pagebreak" title="99"}a specific objective. People thus submit
themselves to certain rules because they are especially efficient,
transparent, or easy to use. In the second case, a protocol is accepted
not because but in spite of its features. It is simply a precondition
for gaining access to a space of agency in which resources and
opportunities are available that cannot be found anywhere else. In the
first case, it is possible to speak subjectively of voluntariness,
whereas the second involves some experience of impersonal compunction.
One is forced to do something that might potentially entail grave
disadvantages in order to have access, at least, to another level of
opportunities or to create other advantages for oneself.
:::

::: {.section}
### Homogeneity, difference and authority {#c2-sec-0017}

Protocols are present on more than a technical level; as interpretive
frameworks, they structure viewpoints, rules, and patterns of behavior
on all levels. Thus, they provide a degree of cultural homogeneity, a
set of commonalities that lend these new formations their communal
nature. Viewed from the outside, these formations therefore seem
inclined toward consensus and uniformity, for their members have already
accepted and internalized certain aspects in common -- the protocols
that enable exchange itself -- whereas everyone on the outside has not
done so. When everyone is speaking in English, the conversation sounds
quite monotonous to someone who does not speak the language.

Viewed from the inside, the experience is something different: in order
to constitute oneself within a communal formation, not only does one
have to accept its rules voluntarily and in a self-motivated manner; one
also has to make contributions to the reproduction and development of
the field. Everyone is urged to contribute something; that is, to
produce, on the basis of commonalities, differences that simultaneously
affirm, modify, and enhance these commonalities. This leads to a
pronounced and occasionally highly competitive internal differentiation
that can only be understood, however, by someone who has accepted the
commonalities. To an outsider, this differentiation will seem
irrelevant. Whoever is not well versed in the universe of *Star Wars*
will not understand why the various character interpretations at
[]{#Page_100 type="pagebreak" title="100"}cosplay conventions, which I
discussed above, might be brilliant or even controversial. To such a
person, they will all seem equally boring and superficial.

These formations structure themselves internally through the production
of differences; that is, by constantly changing their common ground.
Those who are able to add many novel aspects to the common resources
gain a degree of authority. They assume central positions and they
influence, through their behavior, the development of the field more
than others do. However, their authority, influence, and de facto power
are not based on any means of coercion. As Niklas Luhmann noted, "In the
end, one participant\'s achievements in making selections \[...\] are
accepted by another participant \[...\] as a limitation of the latter\'s
potential experiences and activities without him having to make the
selection on his own."[^72^](#c2-note-0072){#c2-note-0072a} Even this is
a voluntary and self-interested act: the members of the formation
recognize that this person has contributed more to the common field and
to the resources within it. This, in turn, is to everyone\'s advantage,
for each member would ultimately like to make use of the field\'s
resources to achieve his or her own goals. This arrangement, which can
certainly take on hierarchical qualities, is experienced as something
meritocratically legitimized and voluntarily
accepted.[^73^](#c2-note-0073){#c2-note-0073a} In the context of free
software, there has therefore been some discussion of "benevolent
dictators."[^74^](#c2-note-0074){#c2-note-0074a} The matter of
"dictators" is raised because projects are often led by charismatic
figures without a formal mandate. They are "benevolent" because their
pos­ition of authority is based on the fact that a critical mass of
participating producers has voluntarily subordinated itself for its own
self-interest. If the consensus breaks over whose contributions have
been carrying the most weight, then the formation will be at risk of
losing its internal structure and splitting apart ("forking," in the
jargon of free software).
:::
:::

::: {.section}
Algorithmicity {#c2-sec-0018}
--------------

Through personal communication, referential processes in communal
formations create cultural zones of various sizes and scopes. They
expand into the empty spaces that have been created by the erosion of
established institutions and []{#Page_101 type="pagebreak"
title="101"}processes, and once these new processes have been
established the process of erosion intensifies. Multiple processes of
exchange take place alongside one another, creating a patchwork of
interconnected, competing, or entirely unrelated spheres of meaning,
each with specific goals and resources and its own preconditions and
potentials. The structures of knowledge, order, and activity that are
generated by this are holistic as well as partial and limited. The
participants in such structures are simultaneously addressed on many
levels that were once functionally separated; previously independent
spheres, such as work and leisure, are now mixed together, but usually
only with respect to the subdivisions of one\'s own life. And, at first,
the structures established in this way are binding only for active
participants.

::: {.section}
### Exiting the "Library of Babel" {#c2-sec-0019}

For one person alone, however, these new processes would not be able to
generate more than a local island of meaning from the enormous clamor of
chaotic spheres of information. In his 1941 story "The Library of
Babel," Jorge Luis Borges fashioned a fitting image for such a
situation. He depicts the world as a library of unfathomable and
possibly infinite magnitude. The characters in the story do not know
whether there is a world outside of the library. There are reasons to
believe that there is, and reasons that suggest otherwise. The library
houses the complete collection of all possible books that can be written
on exactly 410 pages. Contained in these volumes is the promise that
there is "no personal or universal problem whose eloquent solution
\[does\] not exist," for every possible combination of letters, and thus
also every possible pronouncement, is recorded in one book or another.
No catalog has yet been found for the library (though it must exist
somewhere), and it is impossible to identify any order in its
arrangement of books. The "men of the library," according to Borges,
wander round in search of the one book that explains everything, but
their actual discoveries are far more modest. Only once in a while are
books found that contain more than haphazard combinations of signs. Even
small regularities within excerpts of texts are heralded as sensational
discoveries, and it is around these discoveries that competing
[]{#Page_102 type="pagebreak" title="102"}schools of interpretation
develop. Despite much labor and effort, however, the knowledge gained is
minimal and fragmentary, so the prevailing attitude in the library is
bleak. By the time of the narrator\'s generation, "nobody expects to
discover anything."[^75^](#c2-note-0075){#c2-note-0075a}

Although this vision has now been achieved from a quantitative
perspective -- no one can survey the "library" of digital information,
which in practical terms is infinitely large, and all of the growth
curves continue to climb steeply -- today\'s cultural reality is
nevertheless entirely different from that described by Borges. Our
ability to deal with massive amounts of data has radically improved, and
thus our faith in the utility of information is not only unbroken but
rather gaining strength. What is new is precisely such large quantities
of data ("big data"), which, as we are promised or forewarned, will lead
to new knowledge, to a comprehensive understanding of the world, indeed
even to "omniscience."[^76^](#c2-note-0076){#c2-note-0076a} This faith
in data is based above all on the fact that the two processes described
above -- referentiality and communality -- are not the only new
mechanisms for filtering, sorting, aggregating, and evaluating things.
Beneath or ahead of the social mechanisms of decentralized and networked
cultural production, there are algorithmic processes that pre-sort the
immeasurably large volumes of data and convert them into a format that
can be apprehended by individuals, evaluated by communities, and
invested with meaning.

Strictly speaking, it is impossible to maintain a categorical
distinction between social processes that take place in and by means of
technological infrastructures and technical pro­cesses that are socially
constructed. In both cases, social actors attempt to realize their own
interests with the resources at their disposal. The methods of
(attempted) realization, the available resources, and the formulation of
interests mutually influence one another. The technological resources
are inscribed in the formulation of goals. These open up fields of
imagination and desire, which in turn inspire technical
development.[^77^](#c2-note-0077){#c2-note-0077a} Although it is
impossible to draw clear theoretical lines, the attempt to make such a
distinction can nevertheless be productive in practice, for in this way
it is possible to gain different perspectives about the same object of
investigation.[]{#Page_103 type="pagebreak" title="103"}
:::

::: {.section}
### The rise of algorithms {#c2-sec-0020}

An algorithm is a set of instructions for converting a given input into
a desired output by means of a finite number of steps: algorithms are
used to solve predefined problems. For a set of instructions to become
an algorithm, it has to be determined in three different respects.
First, the necessary steps -- individually and as a whole -- have to be
described unambiguously and completely. To do this, it is usually
neces­sary to use a formal language, such as mathematics, or a
programming language, in order to avoid the characteristic imprecision
and ambiguity of natural language and to ensure instructions can be
followed without interpretation. Second, it must be possible in practice
to execute the individual steps together. For this reason, every
algorithm is tied to the context of its realization. If the context
changes, so do the operating processes that can be formalized as
algorithms and thus also the ways in which algorithms can partake in the
constitution of the world. Third, it must be possible to execute an
operating instruction mechanically so that, under fixed conditions, it
always produces the same result.

Defined in such general terms, it would also be possible to understand
the instruction manual for a typical piece of Ikea furniture as an
algorithm. It is a set of instructions for creating, with a finite
number of steps, a specific and predefined piece of furniture (output)
from a box full of individual components (input). The instructions are
composed in a formal language, pictograms, which define each step as
unambiguously as possible, and they can be executed by a single person
with simple tools. The process can be repeated, for the final result is
always the same: a Billy box will always yield a Billy shelf. In this
case, a person takes over the role of a machine, which (unambiguous
pictograms aside) can lead to problems, be it that scratches and other
traces on the finished piece of furniture testify to the unique nature
of the (unsuccessful) execution, or that, inspired by the micro-trend of
"Ikea hacking," the official instructions are intentionally ignored.

Because such imprecision is supposed to be avoided, the most important
domain of algorithms in practice is mathematics and its implementation
on the computer. The term []{#Page_104 type="pagebreak"
title="104"}"algorithm" derives from the Persian mathematician,
astronomer, and geographer Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī. His book *On
the Calculation with Hindu Numerals*, which was written in Baghdad in
825, was known widely in the Western Middle Ages through a Latin
translation and made the essential contribution of introducing
Indo-Arabic nu­merals and the number zero to Europe. The work begins
with the formula *dixit algorizmi* ... ("Algorismi said ..."). During
the Middle Ages, *algorizmi* or *algorithmi* soon became a general term
for advanced methods of
calculation.[^78^](#c2-note-0078){#c2-note-0078a}

The modern effort to build machines that could mechanic­ally carry out
instructions achieved its first breakthrough with Gottfried Wilhelm
Leibniz. He has often been credited with making the following remark:
"It is unworthy of excellent men to lose hours like slaves in the labour
of calculation which could be done by any peasant with the aid of a
machine."[^79^](#c2-note-0079){#c2-note-0079a} This vision already
contains a distinction between higher cognitive and interpretive
activities, which are regarded as being truly human, and lower processes
that involve pure execution and can therefore be mechanized. To this
end, Leibniz himself developed the first calculating machine, which
could carry out all four of the basic types of arithmetic. He was not
motivated to do this by the practical necessities of production and
business (although conceptually groundbreaking, Leibniz\'s calculating
machine remained, on account of its mechanical complexity, a unique item
and was never used).[^80^](#c2-note-0080){#c2-note-0080a} In the
estimation of the philosopher Sybille Krämer, calculating machines "were
rather speculative masterpieces of a century that, like none before it,
was infatuated by the idea of mechanizing 'intellectual'
processes."[^81^](#c2-note-0081){#c2-note-0081a} Long before machines
were implemented on a large scale to increase the efficiency of material
production, Leibniz had already speculated about using them to enhance
intellectual labor. And this vision has never since disappeared. Around
a century and a half later, the English polymath Charles Babbage
formulated it anew, now in direct connection with industrial
mechanization and its imperative of time-saving
efficiency.[^82^](#c2-note-0082){#c2-note-0082a} Yet he, too, failed to
overcome the problem of practically realizing such a machine.

The decisive step that turned the vision of calculating machines into
reality was made by Alan Turing in 1937. With []{#Page_105
type="pagebreak" title="105"}a theoretical model, he demonstrated that
every algorithm could be executed by a machine as long as it could read
an incremental set of signs, manipulate them according to established
rules, and then write them out again. The validity of his model did not
depend on whether the machine would be analog or digital, mechanical or
electronic, for the rules of manipulation were not at first conceived as
being a fixed component of the machine itself (that is, as being
implemented in its hardware). The electronic and digital approach came
to be preferred because it was hoped that even the instructions could be
read by the machine itself, so that the machine would be able to execute
not only one but (theoretically) every written algorithm. The
Hungarian-born mathematician John von Neumann made it his goal to
implement this idea. In 1945, he published a model in which the program
(the algorithm) and the data (the input and output) were housed in a
common storage device. Thus, both could be manipulated simultaneously
without having to change the hardware. In this way, he converted the
"Turing machine" into the "universal Turing machine"; that is, the
modern computer.[^83^](#c2-note-0083){#c2-note-0083a}

Gordon Moore, the co-founder of the chip manufacturer Intel,
prognosticated 20 years later that the complexity of integrated circuits
and thus the processing power of computer chips would double every 18 to
24 months. Since the 1970s, his prediction has been known as Moore\'s
Law and has essentially been correct. This technical development has
indeed taken place exponentially, not least because the semi-conductor
industry has been oriented around
it.[^84^](#c2-note-0084){#c2-note-0084a} An IBM 360/40 mainframe
computer, which was one of the first of its kind to be produced on a
large scale, could make approximately 40,000 calculations per second and
its cost, when it was introduced to the market in 1965, was \$1.5
million per unit. Just 40 years later, a standard server (with a
quad-core Intel processor) could make more than 40 billion calculations
per second, and this at a price of little more than \$1,500. This
amounts to an increase in performance by a factor of a million and a
corresponding price reduction by a factor of a thousand; that is, an
improvement in the price-to-performance ratio by a factor of a billion.
With inflation taken into consideration, this factor would be even
higher. No less dramatic were the increases in performance -- or rather
[]{#Page_106 type="pagebreak" title="106"}the price reductions -- in the
area of data storage. In 1980, it cost more than \$400,000 to store a
gigabyte of data, whereas 30 years later it would cost just 10 cents to
do the same -- a price reduction by a factor of 4 million. And in both
areas, this development has continued without pause.

These increases in performance have formed the material basis for the
rapidly growing number of activities carried out by means of algorithms.
We have now reached a point where Leibniz\'s distinction between
creative mental functions and "simple calculations" is becoming
increasingly fuzzy. Recent discussions about the allegedly threatening
"domination of the computer" have been kindled less by the increased use
of algorithms as such than by the gradual blurring of this distinction
with new possibilities to formalize and mechanize increasing areas of
creative thinking.[^85^](#c2-note-0085){#c2-note-0085a} Activities that
not long ago were reserved for human intelligence, such as composing
texts or analyzing the content of images, are now frequently done by
machines. As early as 2010, a program called Stats Monkey was introduced
to produce short reports about baseball games. All that the program
needs for this is comprehensive data about the games, which can be
accumulated mechanically and which have since become more detailed due
to improved image recognition and sensors. From these data, the program
extracts the decisive moments and players of a game, recognizes
characteristic patterns throughout the course of play (such as
"extending an early lead," "a dramatic comeback," etc.), and on this
basis generates its own report. Regarding the reports themselves, a
number of variables can be determined in advance, for instance whether
the story should be written from the perspective of a neutral observer
or from the standpoint of one of the two teams. If writing about little
league games, the program can be instructed to ignore the errors made by
children -- because no parent wants to read about those -- and simply
focus on their heroics. The algorithm was soon patented, and a start-up
business was created from the original interdisciplinary research
project: Narrative Science. In addition to sport reports it now offers
texts of all sorts, but above all financial reports -- another field for
which there is a great deal of available data. These texts have been
published by reputable media outlets such as the business magazine
*Forbes*, in which their authorship []{#Page_107 type="pagebreak"
title="107"}is credited to "Narrative Science." Although these
contributions are still limited to relatively simple topics, this will
not remain the case for long. When asked about the percentage of news
that would be written by computers 15 years from now, Narrative
Science\'s chief technology officer and co-founder Kristian Hammond
confidently predicted "\[m\]ore than 90 percent." He added that, within
the next five years, an algorithm could even win a Pulitzer
Prize.[^86^](#c2-note-0086){#c2-note-0086a} This may be blatant hype and
self-promotion but, as a general estimation, Hammond\'s assertion is not
entirely beyond belief. It remains to be seen whether algorithms will
replace or simply supplement traditional journalism. Yet because media
companies are now under strong financial pressure, it is certainly
reasonable to predict that many journalistic texts will be automated in
the future. Entirely different applications, however, have also been
conceived. Alexander Pschera, for instance, foresees a new age in the
relationship between humans and nature, for, as soon as animals are
equipped with transmitters and sensors and are thus able to tell their
own stories through the appropriate software, they will be regarded as
individuals and not merely as generic members of a
species.[^87^](#c2-note-0087){#c2-note-0087a}

We have not yet reached this point. However, given that the CIA has also
expressed interest in Narrative Science and has invested in it through
its venture-capital firm In-Q-Tel, there are indications that
applications are being developed beyond the field of journalism. For the
purpose of spreading propaganda, for instance, algorithms can easily be
used to create a flood of entries on online forums and social mass
media.[^88^](#c2-note-0088){#c2-note-0088a} Narrative Science is only
one of many companies offering automated text analysis and production.
As implemented by IBM and other firms, so-called E-discovery software
promises to reduce dramatically the amount of time and effort required
to analyze the constantly growing numbers of files that are relevant to
complex legal cases. Without such software, it would be impossible in
practice for lawyers to deal with so many documents. Numerous bots
(automated editing programs) are active in the production of Wikipedia
as well. Whereas, in the German edition, bots are forbidden from writing
their own articles, this is not the case in the Swedish version.
Measured by the number of entries, the latter is now the second-largest
edition of the online encyclopedia in the []{#Page_108 type="pagebreak"
title="108"}world, for, in the summer of 2013, a single bot contributed
more than 200,000 articles to it.[^89^](#c2-note-0089){#c2-note-0089a}
Since 2013, moreover, the company Epagogix has offered software that
uses histor­ical data to evaluate the market potential of film scripts.
At least one major Hollywood studio uses this software behind the backs
of scriptwriters and directors, for, according to the company\'s CEO,
the latter would be "nervous" to learn that their creative work was
being analyzed in such a way.[^90^](#c2-note-0090){#c2-note-0090a}
Think, too, of the typical statement that is made at the beginning of a
call to a telephone hotline -- "This call may be recorded for training
purposes." Increasingly, this training is not intended for the employees
of the call center but rather for algorithms. The latter are expected to
learn how to recognize the personality type of the caller and, on that
basis, to produce an appropriate script to be read by its poorly
educated and part-time human
co-workers.[^91^](#c2-note-0091){#c2-note-0091a} Another example is the
use of algorithms to grade student
essays,[^92^](#c2-note-0092){#c2-note-0092a} or ... But there is no need
to expand this list any further. Even without additional references to
comparable developments in the fields of image, sound, language, and
film analysis, it is clear by now that, on many fronts, the borders
between the creative and the mechanical have
shifted.[^93^](#c2-note-0093){#c2-note-0093a}
:::

::: {.section}
### Dynamic algorithms {#c2-sec-0021}

The algorithms used for such tasks, however, are no longer simple
sequences of static instructions. They are no longer repeated unchanged,
over and over again, but are dynamic and adaptive to a high degree. The
computing power available today is used to write programs that modify
and improve themselves semi-automatically and in response to feedback.

What this means can be illustrated by the example of evolutionary and
self-learning algorithms. An evolutionary algorithm is developed in an
iterative process that continues to run until the desired result has
been achieved. In most cases, the values of the variables of the first
generation of algorithms are chosen at random in order to diminish the
influence of the programmer\'s presuppositions on the results. These
cannot be avoided entirely, however, because the type of variables
(independent of their value) has to be determined in the first place. I
will return to this problem later on. This is []{#Page_109
type="pagebreak" title="109"}followed by a phase of evaluation: the
output of every tested algorithm is evaluated according to how close it
is to the desired solution. The best are then chosen and combined with
one another. In addition, mutations (that is, random changes) are
introduced. These steps are then repeated as often as necessary until,
according to the specifications in question, the algorithm is
"sufficient" or cannot be improved any further. By means of intensive
computational processes, algorithms are thus "cultivated"; that is,
large numbers of these are tested instead of a single one being designed
analytically and then implemented. At the heart of this pursuit is a
functional solution that proves itself experimentally and in practice,
but about which it might no longer be possible to know why it functions
or whether it actually is the best possible solution. The fundamental
methods behind this process largely derive from the 1970s (the first
stage of artificial intelligence), the difference being that today they
can be carried out far more effectively. One of the best-known examples
of an evolutionary algorithm is that of Google Flu Trends. In order to
predict which regions will be especially struck by the flu in a given
year, it evaluates the geographic distribution of internet searches for
particular terms ("cold remedies," for instance). To develop the
program, Google tested 450 million different models until one emerged
that could reliably identify local flu epidemics one to two weeks ahead
of the national health authorities.[^94^](#c2-note-0094){#c2-note-0094a}

In pursuits of this magnitude, the necessary processes can only be
administered by computer programs. The series of tests are no longer
conducted by programmers but rather by algorithms. In short, algorithms
are implemented in order to write new algorithms or determine their
variables. If this reflexive process, in turn, is built into an
algorithm, then the latter becomes "self-learning": the programmers do
not set the rules for its execution but rather the rules according to
which the algorithm is supposed to know how to accomplish a particular
goal. In many cases, the solution strategies are so complex that they
are incomprehensible in retrospect. They can no longer be tested
logically, only experimentally. Such algorithms are essentially black
boxes -- objects that can only be understood by their outer behavior but
whose internal structure cannot be known.[]{#Page_110 type="pagebreak"
title="110"}

Automatic facial recognition, as used in surveillance technologies and
for authorizing access to certain things, is based on the fact that
computers can evaluate large numbers of facial images, first to produce
a general model for a face, then to identify the variables that make a
face unique and therefore recognizable. With so-called "unsupervised" or
"deep-learning" algorithms, some developers and companies have even
taken this a step further: computers are expected to extract faces from
unstructured images -- that is, from volumes of images that contain
images both with faces and without them -- and to do so without
possessing in advance any model of the face in question. So far, the
extraction and evaluation of unknown patterns from unstructured material
has only been achieved in the case of very simple patterns -- with edges
or surfaces in images, for instance -- for it is extremely complex and
computationally intensive to program such learning processes. In recent
years, however, there have been enormous leaps in available computing
power, and both the data inputs and the complexity of the learning
models have increased exponentially. Today, on the basis of simple
patterns, algorithms are developing improved recognition of the complex
content of images. They are refining themselves on their own. The term
"deep learning" is meant to denote this very complexity. In 2012, Google
was able to demonstrate the performance capacity of its new programs in
an impressive manner: from a collection of randomly chosen YouTube
videos, analyzed in a cluster by 1,000 computers with 16,000 processors,
it was possible to create a model in just three days that increased
facial recognition in unstructured images by 70
percent.[^95^](#c2-note-0095){#c2-note-0095a} Of course, the algorithm
does not "know" what a face is, but it reliably recognizes a class of
forms that humans refer to as a face. One advantage of a model that is
not created on the basis of prescribed parameters is that it can also
identify faces in non-standard situ­ations (for instance if a person is
in the background, if a face is half-concealed, or if it has been
recorded at a sharp angle). Thanks to this technique, it is possible to
search the content of images directly and not, as before, primarily by
searching their descriptions. Such algorithms are also being used to
identify people in images and to connect them in social networks with
the profiles of the people in question, and this []{#Page_111
type="pagebreak" title="111"}without any cooperation from the users
themselves. Such algorithms are also expected to assist in directly
controlling activity in "unstructured" reality, for instance in
self-driving cars or other autonomous mobile applications that are of
great interest to the military in particular.

Algorithms of this sort can react and adjust themselves directly to
changes in the environment. This feedback, however, also shortens the
timeframe within which they are able to generate repetitive and
therefore predictable results. Thus, algorithms and their predictive
powers can themselves become unpredictable. Stock markets have
frequently experi­enced so-called "sub-second extreme events"; that is,
price fluctuations that happen in less than a
second.[^96^](#c2-note-0096){#c2-note-0096a} Dramatic "flash crashes,"
however, such as that which occurred on May 6, 2010, when the Dow Jones
Index dropped almost a thousand points in a few minutes (and was thus
perceptible to humans), have not been terribly
uncommon.[^97^](#c2-note-0097){#c2-note-0097a} With the introduction of
voice commands on mobile phones (Apple\'s Siri, for example, which came
out in 2011), programs based on self-learning algorithms have now
reached the public at large and have infiltrated increased areas of
everyday life.
:::

::: {.section}
### Sorting, ordering, extracting {#c2-sec-0022}

Orders generated by algorithms are a constitutive element of the digital
condition. On the one hand, the mechanical pre-sorting of the
(informational) world is a precondition for managing immense and
unstructured amounts of data. On the other hand, these large amounts of
data and the computing centers in which they are stored and processed
provide the material precondition for developing increasingly complex
algorithms. Necessities and possibilities are mutually motivating one
another.[^98^](#c2-note-0098){#c2-note-0098a}

Perhaps the best-known algorithms that sort the digital infosphere and
make it usable in its present form are those of search engines, above
all Google\'s PageRank. Thanks to these, we can find our way around in a
world of unstructured information and transfer increasingly larger parts
of the (informational) world into the order of unstructuredness without
giving rise to the "Library of Babel." Here, "unstructured" means that
there is no prescribed order such as (to stick []{#Page_112
type="pagebreak" title="112"}with the image of the library) a cataloging
system that assigns to each book a specific place on a shelf. Rather,
the books are spread all over the place and are dynamically arranged,
each according to a search, so that the appropriate books for each
visitor are always standing ready at the entrance. Yet the metaphor of
books being strewn all about is problematic, for "unstructuredness" does
not simply mean the absence of any structure but rather the presence of
another type of order -- a meta-structure, a potential for order -- out
of which innumerable specific arrangements can be generated on an ad hoc
basis. This meta-structure is created by algorithms. They subsequently
derive from it an actual order, which the user encounters, for instance,
when he or she scrolls through a list of hits produced by a search
engine. What the user does not see are the complex preconditions for
assembling the search results. By the middle of 2014, according to the
company\'s own information, the Google index alone included more than a
hundred million gigabytes of data.

Originally (that is, in the second half of the 1990s), Page­Rank
functioned in such a way that the algorithm analyzed the structure of
links on the World Wide Web, first by noting the number of links that
referred to a given document, and second by evaluating the "relevance"
of the site that linked to the document in question. The relevance of a
site, in turn, was determined by the number of links that led to it.
From these two variables, every document registered by the search engine
was assigned a value, the PageRank. The latter served to present the
documents found with a given search term as a hierarchical list (search
results), whereby the document with the highest value was listed
first.[^99^](#c2-note-0099){#c2-note-0099a} This algorithm was extremely
successful because it reduced the unfathomable chaos of the World Wide
Web to a task that could be managed without difficulty by an individual
user: inputting a search term and selecting from one of the presented
"hits." The simplicity of the user\'s final choice, together with the
quality of the algorithmic pre-selection, quickly pushed Google past its
competition.

Underlying this process is the assumption that every link is an
indication of relevance, and that links from frequently linked (that is,
popular) sources are more important than those from less frequently
linked (that is, unpopular) sources. []{#Page_113 type="pagebreak"
title="113"}The advantage of this assumption is that it can be
understood in terms of purely quantitative variables and it is not
necessary to have any direct understanding of a document\'s content or
of the context in which it exists.

In the middle of the 1990s, when the first version of the PageRank
algorithm was developed, the problem of judging the relevance of
documents whose content could only partially be evaluated was not a new
one. Science administrators at universities and funding agencies had
been facing this difficulty since the 1950s. During the rise of the
knowledge economy, the number of scientific publications increased
rapidly. Scientific fields, perspectives, and methods also multiplied
and diversified during this time, so that even experts could not survey
all of the work being done in their own areas of
research.[^100^](#c2-note-0100){#c2-note-0100a} Thus, instead of reading
and evaluating the content of countless new publications, they shifted
their analysis to a higher level of abstraction. They began to count how
often an article or book was cited and applied this information to
assess the value of a given author or
publication.[^101^](#c2-note-0101){#c2-note-0101a} The underlying
assumption was (and remains) that only important things are referenced,
and therefore every citation and every reference can be regarded as an
indirect vote for something\'s relevance.

In both cases -- classifying a chaotic sphere of information and
administering an expanding industry of knowledge -- the challenge is to
develop dynamic orders for rapidly changing fields, enabling the
evaluation of the importance of individual documents without knowledge
of their content. Because the analysis of citations or links operates on
a purely quantitative basis, large amounts of data can be quickly
structured with them, and especially relevant positions can be
determined. The second advantage of this approach is that it does not
require any assumptions about the contours of different fields or their
relationships to one another. This enables the organ­ization of
disordered or dynamic content. In both cases, references made by the
actors themselves are used: citations in a scientific text, links on
websites. Their value for establishing the order of a field as a whole,
however, is only visible in the aggregate, for instance in the frequency
with which a given article is
cited.[^102^](#c2-note-0102){#c2-note-0102a} In both cases, the shift
from analyzing "data" (the content of documents in the traditional
sense) to []{#Page_114 type="pagebreak" title="114"}analyzing
"meta-data" (describing documents in light of their relationships to one
another) is a precondition for being able to make any use at all of
growing amounts of information.[^103^](#c2-note-0103){#c2-note-0103a}
This shift introduced a new level of abstraction. Information is no
longer understood as a representation of external reality; its
significance is not evaluated with regard to the relation between
"information" and "the world," for instance with a qualitative criterion
such as "true"/"false." Rather, the sphere of information is treated as
a self-referential, closed world, and documents are accordingly only
evaluated in terms of their position within this world, though with
quantitative criteria such as "central"/"peripheral."

Even though the PageRank algorithm was highly effective and assisted
Google\'s rapid ascent to a market-leading position, at the beginning it
was still relatively simple and its mode of operation was at least
partially transparent. It followed the classical statistical model of an
algorithm. A document or site referred to by many links was considered
more important than one to which fewer links
referred.[^104^](#c2-note-0104){#c2-note-0104a} The algorithm analyzed
the given structural order of information and determined the position of
every document therein, and this was largely done independently of the
context of the search and without making any assumptions about it. This
approach functioned relatively well as long as the volume of information
did not exceed a certain size, and as long as the users and their
searches were somewhat similar to one another. In both respects, this is
no longer the case. The amount of information to be pre-sorted is
increasing, and users are searching in all possible situations and
places for everything under the sun. At the time Google was founded, no
one would have thought to check the internet, quickly and while on
one\'s way, for today\'s menu at the restaurant round the corner. Now,
thanks to smartphones, this is an obvious thing to do.
:::

::: {.section}
### Algorithm clouds {#c2-sec-0023}

In order to react to such changes in user behavior -- and simultaneously
to advance it further -- Google\'s search algorithm is constantly being
modified. It has become increasingly complex and has assimilated a
greater amount of contextual []{#Page_115 type="pagebreak"
title="115"}information, which influences the value of a site within
Page­Rank and thus the order of search results. The algorithm is no
longer a fixed object or unchanging recipe but is transforming into a
dynamic process, an opaque cloud composed of multiple interacting
algorithms that are continuously refined (between 500 and 600 times a
year, according to some estimates). These ongoing developments are so
extensive that, since 2003, several new versions of the algorithm cloud
have appeared each year with their own names. In 2014 alone, Google
carried out 13 large updates, more than ever
before.[^105^](#c2-note-0105){#c2-note-0105a}

These changes continue to bring about new levels of abstraction, so that
the algorithm takes into account add­itional variables such as the time
and place of a search, alongside a person\'s previously recorded
behavior -- but also his or her involvement in social environments, and
much more. Personalization and contextualization were made part of
Google\'s search algorithm in 2005. At first it was possible to choose
whether or not to use these. Since 2009, however, they have been a fixed
and binding component for everyone who conducts a search through
Google.[^106^](#c2-note-0106){#c2-note-0106a} By the middle of 2013, the
search algorithm had grown to include at least 200
variables.[^107^](#c2-note-0107){#c2-note-0107a} What is relevant is
that the algorithm no longer determines the position of a document
within a dynamic informational world that exists for everyone
externally. Instead, it now assigns a rank to their content within a
dynamic and singular universe of information that is tailored to every
individual user. For every person, an entirely different order is
created instead of just an excerpt from a previously existing order. The
world is no longer being represented; it is generated uniquely for every
user and then presented. Google is not the only company that has gone
down this path. Orders produced by algorithms have become increasingly
oriented toward creating, for each user, his or her own singular world.
Facebook, dating services, and other social mass media have been
pursuing this approach even more radically than Google.
:::

::: {.section}
### From the data shadow to the synthetic profile {#c2-sec-0024}

This form of generating the world requires not only detailed information
about the external world (that is, the reality []{#Page_116
type="pagebreak" title="116"}shared by everyone) but also information
about every individual\'s own relation to the
latter.[^108^](#c2-note-0108){#c2-note-0108a} To this end, profiles are
established for every user, and the more extensive they are, the better
they are for the algorithms. A profile created by Google, for instance,
identifies the user on three levels: as a "knowledgeable person" who is
informed about the world (this is established, for example, by recording
a person\'s searches, browsing behavior, etc.), as a "physical person"
who is located and mobile in the world (a component established, for
example, by tracking someone\'s location through a smartphone, sensors
in a smart home, or body signals), and as a "social person" who
interacts with other people (a facet that can be determined, for
instance, by following someone\'s activity on social mass
media).[^109^](#c2-note-0109){#c2-note-0109a}

Unlike the situation in the 1990s, however, these profiles are no longer
simply representations of singular people -- they are not "digital
personas" or "data shadows." They no longer represent what is
conventionally referred to as "individuality," in the sense of a
spatially and temporally uniform identity. On the one hand, profiles
rather consist of sub-individual elements -- of fragments of recorded
behavior that can be evaluated on the basis of a particular search
without promising to represent a person as a whole -- and they consist,
on the other hand, of clusters of multiple people, so that the person
being modeled can simultaneously occupy different positions in time.
This temporal differentiation enables predictions of the following sort
to be made: a person who has already done *x* will, with a probability
of *y*, go on to engage in activity *z*. It is in this way that Amazon
assembles its book recommendations, for the company knows that, within
the cluster of people that constitutes part of every person\'s profile,
a certain percentage of them have already gone through this sequence of
activity. Or, as the data-mining company Science Rockstars (!) once
pointedly expressed on its website, "Your next activity is a function of
the behavior of others and your own past."

Google and other providers of algorithmically generated orders have been
devoting increased resources to the prognostic capabilities of their
programs in order to make the confusing and potentially time-consuming
step of the search obsolete. The goal is to minimize a rift that comes
to light []{#Page_117 type="pagebreak" title="117"}in the act of
searching, namely that between the world as everyone experiences it --
plagued by uncertainty, for searching implies "not knowing something" --
and the world of algorithmically generated order, in which certainty
prevails, for everything has been well arranged in advance. Ideally,
questions should be answered before they are asked. The first attempt by
Google to eliminate this rift is called Google Now, and its slogan is
"The right information at just the right time." The program, which was
originally developed as an app but has since been made available on
Chrome, Google\'s own web browser, attempts to anticipate, on the basis
of existing data, a user\'s next step, and to provide the necessary
information before it is searched for in order that such steps take
place efficiently. Thus, for instance, it draws upon information from a
user\'s calendar in order to figure out where he or she will have to go
next. On the basis of real-time traffic data, it will then suggest the
optimal way to get there. For those driving cars, the amount of traffic
on the road will be part of the equation. This is ascertained by
analyzing the motion profiles of other drivers, which will allow the
program to determine whether the traffic is flowing or stuck in a jam.
If enough historical data is taken into account, the hope is that it
will be possible to redirect cars in such a way that traffic jams should
no longer occur.[^110^](#c2-note-0110){#c2-note-0110a} For those who use
public transport, Google Now evaluates real-time data about the
locations of various transport services. With this information, it will
suggest the optimal route and, depending on the calculated travel time,
it will send a reminder (sometimes earlier, sometimes later) when it is
time to go. That which Google is just experimenting with and testing in
a limited and unambiguous context is already part of Facebook\'s
everyday operations. With its EdgeRank algorithm, Facebook already
organizes everyone\'s newsfeed, entirely in the background and without
any explicit user interaction. On the basis of three variables -- user
affinity (previous interactions between two users), content weight (the
rate of interaction between all users and a specific piece of content),
and currency (the age of a post) -- the algorithm selects content from
the status updates made by one\'s friends to be displayed on one\'s own
page.[^111^](#c2-note-0111){#c2-note-0111a} In this way, Facebook
ensures that the stream of updates remains easy to scroll through, while
also -- it is safe []{#Page_118 type="pagebreak" title="118"}to assume
-- leaving enough room for advertising. This potential for manipulation,
which algorithms possess as they work away in the background, will be
the topic of my next section.
:::

::: {.section}
### Variables and correlations {#c2-sec-0025}

Every complex algorithm contains a multitude of variables and usually an
even greater number of ways to make connections between them. Every
variable and every relation, even if they are expressed in technical or
mathematical terms, codifies assumptions that express a specific
position in the world. There can be no purely descriptive variables,
just as there can be no such thing as "raw
data."[^112^](#c2-note-0112){#c2-note-0112a} Both -- data and variables
-- are always already "cooked"; that is, they are engendered through
cultural operations and formed within cultural
categories.[^113^](#c2-note-0113){#c2-note-0113a} With every use of
produced data and with every execution of an algorithm, the assumptions
embedded in them are activated, and the positions contained within them
have effects on the world that the algorithm generates and presents.

As already mentioned, the early version of the PageRank algorithm was
essentially based on the rather simple assumption that frequently linked
content is more relevant than content that is only seldom linked to, and
that links to sites that are themselves frequently linked to should be
given more weight than those found on sites with fewer links to them.
Replacing the qualitative criterion of "relevance" with the quantitative
criterion of "popularity" not only proved to be tremendously practical
but also extremely consequential, for search engines not only describe
the world; they create it as well. That which search engines put at the
top of this list is not just already popular but will remain so. A third
of all users click on the first search result, and around 95 percent do
not look past the first 10.[^114^](#c2-note-0114){#c2-note-0114a} Even
the earliest version of the PageRank algorithm did not represent
existing reality but rather (co-)constituted it.

Popularity, however, is not the only element with which algorithms
actively give shape to the user\'s world. A search engine can only sort,
weigh, and make available that portion of information which has already
been incorporated into its index. Everything else remains invisible. The
relation between []{#Page_119 type="pagebreak" title="119"}the recorded
part of the internet (the "surface web") and the unrecorded part (the
"deep web") is difficult to determine. Estimates have varied between
ratios of 1:5 and 1:500.[^115^](#c2-note-0115){#c2-note-0115a} There are
many reasons why content might be inaccessible to search engines.
Perhaps the information has been saved in formats that search engines
cannot read or can only poorly read, or perhaps it has been hidden
behind proprietary barriers such as paywalls. In order to expand the
realm of things that can be exploited by their algorithms, the operators
of search engines offer extensive guidance about how providers should
design their sites so that search tools can find them in an optimal
manner. It is not necessary to follow this guidance, but given the
central role of search engines in sorting and filtering information, it
is clear that they exercise a great deal of power by setting the
standards.[^116^](#c2-note-0116){#c2-note-0116a}

That the individual must "voluntarily" submit to this authority is
typical of the power of networks, which do not give instructions but
rather constitute preconditions. Yet it is in the interest of (almost)
every producer of information to optimize its position in a search
engine\'s index, and thus there is a strong incentive to accept the
preconditions in question. Considering, moreover, the nearly
monopolistic character of many providers of algorithmically generated
orders and the high price that one would have to pay if one\'s own site
were barely (or not at all) visible to others, the term "voluntary"
begins to take on a rather foul taste. This is a more or less subtle way
of pre-formatting the world so that it can be optimally recorded by
algorithms.[^117^](#c2-note-0117){#c2-note-0117a}

The providers of search engines usually justify such methods in the name
of offering "more efficient" services and "more relevant" results.
Ostensibly technical and neutral terms such as "efficiency" and
"relevance" do little, however, to conceal the political nature of
defining variables. Efficient with respect to what? Relevant for whom?
These are issues that are decided without much discussion by the
developers and institutions that regard the algorithms as their own
property. Every now and again such questions incite public debates,
mostly when the interests of one provider happen to collide with those
of its competition. Thus, for instance, the initiative known as
FairSearch has argued that Google abuses its market power as a search
engine to privilege its []{#Page_120 type="pagebreak" title="120"}own
content and thus to showcase it prominently in search
results.[^118^](#c2-note-0118){#c2-note-0118a} FairSearch\'s
representatives alleged, for example, that Google favors its own map
service in the case of address searches and its own price comparison
service in the case of product searches. The argument had an effect. In
November of 2010, the European Commission initiated an antitrust
investigation against Google. In 2014, a settlement was proposed that
would have required the American internet giant to pay certain
concessions, but the members of the Commission, the EU Parliament, and
consumer protection agencies were not satisfied with the agreement. In
April 2015, the anti-trust proceedings were recommenced by a newly
appointed Commission, its reasoning being that "Google does not apply to
its own comparison shopping service the system of penalties which it
applies to other comparison shopping services on the basis of defined
parameters, and which can lead to the lowering of the rank in which they
appear in Google\'s general search results
pages."[^119^](#c2-note-0119){#c2-note-0119a} In other words, the
Commission accused the company of manipulating search results to its own
advantage and the disadvantage of users.

This is not the only instance in which the political side of search
algorithms has come under public scrutiny. In the summer of 2012, Google
announced that sites with higher numbers of copyright removal notices
would henceforth appear lower in its
rankings.[^120^](#c2-note-0120){#c2-note-0120a} The company thus
introduced explicitly political and economic criteria in order to
influence what, according to the standards of certain powerful players
(such as film studios), users were able to
view.[^121^](#c2-note-0121){#c2-note-0121a} In this case, too, it would
be possible to speak of the personalization of searching, except that
the heart of the situation was not the natural person of the user but
rather the juridical person of the copyright holder. It was according to
the latter\'s interests and preferences that searching was being
reoriented. Amazon has employed similar tactics. In 2014, the online
merchant changed its celebrated recommendation algorithm with the goal
of reducing the presence of books released by irritating publishers that
dared to enter into price negotiations with the
company.[^122^](#c2-note-0122){#c2-note-0122a}

Controversies over the methods of Amazon or Google, however, are the
exception rather than the rule. Necessary (but never neutral) decisions
about recording and evaluating data []{#Page_121 type="pagebreak"
title="121"}with algorithms are being made almost all the time without
any discussion whatsoever. The logic of the original Page­Rank algorithm
was criticized as early as the year 2000 for essentially representing
the commercial logic of mass media, systematically disadvantaging
less-popular though perhaps otherwise relevant information, and thus
undermining the "substantive vision of the web as an inclusive
democratic space."[^123^](#c2-note-0123){#c2-note-0123a} The changes to
the search algorithm that have been adopted since then may have modified
this tendency, but they have certainly not weakened it. In addition to
concentrating on what is popular, the new variables privilege recently
uploaded and constantly updated content. The selection of search results
is now contingent upon the location of the user, and it takes into
account his or her social networking. It is oriented toward the average
of a dynamically modeled group. In other words, Google\'s new algorithm
favors that which is gaining popularity within a user\'s social network.
The global village is thus becoming more and more
provincial.[^124^](#c2-note-0124){#c2-note-0124a}
:::

::: {.section}
### Data behaviorism {#c2-sec-0026}

Algorithms such as Google\'s thus reiterate and reinforce a tendency
that has already been apparent on both the level of individual users and
that of communal formations: in order to deal with the vast amounts and
complexity of information, they direct their gaze inward, which is not
to say toward the inner being of individual people. As a level of
reference, the individual person -- with an interior world and with
ideas, dreams, and wishes -- is irrelevant. For algorithms, people are
black boxes that can only be understood in terms of their reactions to
stimuli. Consciousness, perception, and intention do not play any role
for them. In this regard, the legal philosopher Antoinette Rouvroy has
written about "data behaviorism."[^125^](#c2-note-0125){#c2-note-0125a}
With this, she is referring to the gradual return of a long-discredited
approach to behavioral psychology that postulated that human behavior
could be explained, predicted, and controlled purely by our outwardly
observable and measurable actions.[^126^](#c2-note-0126){#c2-note-0126a}
Psychological dimensions were ignored (and are ignored in this new
version of behaviorism) because it is difficult to observe them
empiric­ally. Accordingly, this approach also did away with the need
[]{#Page_122 type="pagebreak" title="122"}to question people directly or
take into account their subjective experiences, thoughts, and feelings.
People were regarded (and are so again today) as unreliable, as poor
judges of themselves, and as only partly honest when disclosing
information. Any strictly empirical science, or so the thinking went,
required its practitioners to disregard everything that did not result
in physical and observable action. From this perspective, it was
possible to break down even complex behavior into units of stimulus and
reaction. This led to the conviction that someone observing another\'s
activity always knows more than the latter does about himself or herself
for, unlike the person being observed, whose impressions can be
inaccurate, the observer is in command of objective and complete
information. Even early on, this approach faced a wave of critique. It
was held to be mechanistic, reductionist, and authoritarian because it
privileged the observing scientist over the subject. In practice, it
quickly ran into its own limitations: it was simply too expensive and
complicated to gather data about human behavior.

Yet that has changed radically in recent years. It is now possible to
measure ever more activities, conditions, and contexts empirically.
Algorithms like Google\'s or Amazon\'s form the technical backdrop for
the revival of a mechanistic, reductionist, and authoritarian approach
that has resurrected the long-lost dream of an objective view -- the
view from nowhere.[^127^](#c2-note-0127){#c2-note-0127a} Every critique
of this positivistic perspective -- that every measurement result, for
instance, reflects not only the measured but also the measurer -- is
brushed aside with reference to the sheer amounts of data that are now
at our disposal.[^128^](#c2-note-0128){#c2-note-0128a} This attitude
substantiates the claim of those in possession of these new and
comprehensive powers of observation (which, in addition to Google and
Facebook, also includes the intelligence services of Western nations),
namely that they know more about individuals than individuals know about
themselves, and are thus able to answer our questions before we ask
them. As mentioned above, this is a goal that Google expressly hopes to
achieve.

At issue with this "inward turn" is thus the space of communal
formations, which is constituted by the sum of all of the activities of
their interacting participants. In this case, however, a communal
formation is not consciously created []{#Page_123 type="pagebreak"
title="123"}and maintained in a horizontal process, but rather
synthetic­ally constructed as a computational function. Depending on the
context and the need, individuals can either be assigned to this
function or removed from it. All of this happens behind the user\'s back
and in accordance with the goals and pos­itions that are relevant to the
developers of a given algorithm, be it to optimize profit or
surveillance, create social norms, improve services, or whatever else.
The results generated in this way are sold to users as a personalized
and efficient service that provides a quasi-magical product. Out of the
enormous haystack of searchable information, results are generated that
are made to seem like the very needle that we have been looking for. At
best, it is only partially transparent how these results came about and
which positions in the world are strengthened or weakened by them. Yet,
as long as the needle is somewhat functional, most users are content,
and the algorithm registers this contentedness to validate itself. In
this dynamic world of unmanageable complexity, users are guided by a
sort of radical, short-term pragmatism. They are happy to have the world
pre-sorted for them in order to improve their activity in it. Regarding
the matter of whether the information being provided represents the
world accurately or not, they are unable to formulate an adequate
assessment for themselves, for it is ultimately impossible to answer
this question without certain resources. Outside of rapidly shrinking
domains of specialized or everyday know­ledge, it is becoming
increasingly difficult to gain an overview of the world without
mechanisms that pre-sort it. Users are only able to evaluate search
results pragmatically; that is, in light of whether or not they are
helpful in solving a concrete problem. In this regard, it is not
paramount that they find the best solution or the correct answer but
rather one that is available and sufficient. This reality lends an
enormous amount of influence to the institutions and processes that
provide the solutions and answers.[]{#Page_124 type="pagebreak"
title="124"}
:::
:::

::: {.section .notesSet type="rearnotes"}
[]{#notesSet}Notes {#c2-ntgp-9999}
------------------

::: {.section .notesList}
[1](#c2-note-0001a){#c2-note-0001}  André Rottmann, "Reflexive Systems
of Reference: Approximations to 'Referentialism' in Contemporary Art,"
trans. Gerrit Jackson, in Dirk Snauwaert et al. (eds), *Rehabilitation:
The Legacy of the Modern Movement* (Ghent: MER, 2010), pp. 97--106, at
99.

[2](#c2-note-0002a){#c2-note-0002}  The recognizability of the sources
distinguishes these processes from plagiarism. The latter operates with
the complete opposite aim, namely that of borrowing sources without
acknow­ledging them.

[3](#c2-note-0003a){#c2-note-0003}  Ulf Poschardt, *DJ Culture* (London:
Quartet Books, 1998), p. 34.

[4](#c2-note-0004a){#c2-note-0004}  Theodor W. Adorno, *Aesthetic
Theory*, trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor (Minneapolis, MN: University of
Minnesota Press, 1997), p. 151.

[5](#c2-note-0005a){#c2-note-0005}  Peter Bürger, *Theory of the
Avant-Garde*, trans. Michael Shaw (Minneapolis, MN: University of
Minnesota Press, 1984).

[6](#c2-note-0006a){#c2-note-0006}  Felix Stalder, "Neun Thesen zur
Remix-Kultur," *i-rights.info* (May 25, 2009), online.

[7](#c2-note-0007a){#c2-note-0007}  Florian Cramer, *Exe.cut(up)able
Statements: Poetische Kalküle und Phantasmen des selbstausführenden
Texts* (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2011), pp. 9--10 \[--trans.\]

[8](#c2-note-0008a){#c2-note-0008}  McLuhan stressed that, despite using
the alphabet, every manuscript is unique because it not only depended on
the sequence of letters but also on the individual ability of a given
scribe to []{#Page_185 type="pagebreak" title="185"}lend these letters a
particular shape. With the rise of the printing press, the alphabet shed
these last elements of calligraphy and became typography.

[9](#c2-note-0009a){#c2-note-0009}  Elisabeth L. Eisenstein, *The
Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe* (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1983), p. 15.

[10](#c2-note-0010a){#c2-note-0010}  Eisenstein, *The Printing
Revolution in Early Modern Europe*, p. 204.

[11](#c2-note-0011a){#c2-note-0011}  The fundamental aspects of these
conventions were formulated as early as the beginning of the sixteenth
century; see Michael Giesecke, *Der Buchdruck in der frühen Neuzeit:
Eine historische Fallstudie über die Durchsetzung neuer Informations-
und Kommunikationstechnologien* (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1991), pp.
420--40.

[12](#c2-note-0012a){#c2-note-0012}  Eisenstein, *The Printing
Revolution in Early Modern Europe*, p. 49.

[13](#c2-note-0013a){#c2-note-0013}  In April 2014, the Authors Guild --
the association of American writers that had sued Google -- filed an
appeal to overturn the decision and made a public statement demanding
that a new organization be established to license the digital rights of
out-of-print books. See "Authors Guild: Amazon was Google's Target,"
*The Authors Guild: Industry & Advocacy News* (April 11, 2014), online.
In October 2015, however, the next-highest authority -- the United
States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit -- likewise decided in
Google\'s favor. The Authors Guild promptly announced its intention to
take the case to the Supreme Court.

[14](#c2-note-0014a){#c2-note-0014}  Jean-Noël Jeanneney, *Google and
the Myth of Universal Knowledge: A View from Europe*, trans. Teresa
Lavender Fagan (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2007).

[15](#c2-note-0015a){#c2-note-0015}  Within the framework of the Images
for the Future project (2007--14), the Netherlands alone invested more
than €170 million to digitize the collections of the most important
audiovisual archives. Over 10 years, the cost of digitizing the entire
cultural heritage of Europe has been estimated to be around €100
billion. See Nick Poole, *The Cost of Digitising Europe\'s Cultural
Heritage: A Report for the Comité des Sages of the European Commission*
(November 2010), online.

[16](#c2-note-0016a){#c2-note-0016}  Richard Darnton, "The National
Digital Public Library Is Launched!", *New York Review of Books* (April
25, 2013), online.

[17](#c2-note-0017a){#c2-note-0017}  According to estimates by the
British Library, so-called "orphan works" alone -- that is, works still
legally protected but whose right holders are unknown -- make up around
40 percent of the books in its collection that still fall under
copyright law. In an effort to alleviate this problem, the European
Parliament and the European Commission issued a directive []{#Page_186
type="pagebreak" title="186"}in 2012 concerned with "certain permitted
uses of orphan works." This has allowed libraries and archives to make
works available online without permission if, "after carrying out
diligent searches," the copyright holders cannot be found. What
qualifies as a "diligent search," however, is so strictly formulated
that the German Library Association has called the directive
"impracticable." Deutscher Bibliotheksverband, "Rechtlinie über
bestimmte zulässige Formen der Nutzung verwaister Werke" (February 27,
2012), online.

[18](#c2-note-0018a){#c2-note-0018}  UbuWeb, "Frequently Asked
Questions," online.

[19](#c2-note-0019a){#c2-note-0019}  The numbers in this area of
activity are notoriously unreliable, and therefore only rough estimates
are possible. It seems credible, however, that the Pirate Bay was
attracting around a billion page views per month by the end of 2013.
That would make it the seventy-fourth most popular internet destination.
See Ernesto, "Top 10 Most Popular Torrent Sites of 2014" (January 4,
2014), online.

[20](#c2-note-0020a){#c2-note-0020}  See the documentary film *TPB AFK:
The Pirate Bay Away from Keyboard* (2013), directed by Simon Klose.

[21](#c2-note-0021a){#c2-note-0021}  In technical terms, there is hardly
any difference between a "stream" and a "download." In both cases, a
complete file is transferred to the user\'s computer and played.

[22](#c2-note-0022a){#c2-note-0022}  The practice is legal in Germany
but illegal in Austria, though digitized texts are routinely made
available there in seminars. See Seyavash Amini Khanimani and Nikolaus
Forgó, "Rechtsgutachten über die Erforderlichkeit einer freien
Werknutzung im österreichischen Urheberrecht zur Privilegierung
elektronisch unterstützter Lehre," *Forum Neue Medien Austria* (January
2011), online.

[23](#c2-note-0023a){#c2-note-0023}  Deutscher Bibliotheksverband,
"Digitalisierung" (2015), online \[--trans\].

[24](#c2-note-0024a){#c2-note-0024}  David Weinberger, *Everything Is
Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder* (New York: Times
Books, 2007).

[25](#c2-note-0025a){#c2-note-0025}  This is not a question of material
wealth. Those who are economically or socially marginalized are
confronted with the same phenomenon. Their primary experience of this
excess is with cheap goods and junk.

[26](#c2-note-0026a){#c2-note-0026}  See Gregory Bateson, "Form,
Substance and Difference," in Bateson, *Steps to an Ecology of Mind:
Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution and
Epistemology* (London: Jason Aronson, 1972), pp. 455--71, at 460:
"\[I\]n fact, what we mean by information -- the elementary unit of
information -- is *a difference which makes a difference*" (the emphasis
is original).

[27](#c2-note-0027a){#c2-note-0027}  Inke Arns and Gabriele Horn,
*History Will Repeat Itself* (Frankfurt am Main: Revolver, 2007), p.
42.[]{#Page_187 type="pagebreak" title="187"}

[28](#c2-note-0028a){#c2-note-0028}  See the film *The Battle of
Orgreave* (2001), directed by Mike Figgis.

[29](#c2-note-0029a){#c2-note-0029}  Theresa Winge, "Costuming the
Imagination: Origins of Anime and Manga Cosplay," *Mechademia* 1 (2006),
pp. 65--76.

[30](#c2-note-0030a){#c2-note-0030}  Nicolle Lamerichs, "Stranger than
Fiction: Fan Identity in Cosplay," *Transformative Works and Cultures* 7
(2011), online.

[31](#c2-note-0031a){#c2-note-0031}  The *Oxford English Dictionary*
defines "selfie" as a "photographic self-portrait; *esp*. one taken with
a smartphone or webcam and shared via social media."

[32](#c2-note-0032a){#c2-note-0032}  Odin Kroeger et al. (eds),
*Geistiges Eigentum und Originalität: Zur Politik der Wissens- und
Kulturproduktion* (Vienna: Turia + Kant, 2011).

[33](#c2-note-0033a){#c2-note-0033}  Roland Barthes, "The Death of the
Author," in Barthes, *Image -- Music -- Text*, trans. Stephen Heath
(London: Fontana Press, 1977), pp. 142--8.

[34](#c2-note-0034a){#c2-note-0034}  Heinz Rölleke and Albert
Schindehütte, *Es war einmal: Die wahren Märchen der Brüder Grimm und
wer sie ihnen erzählte* (Frankfurt am Main: Eichborn, 2011); and Heiner
Boehncke, *Marie Hassenpflug: Eine Märchenerzählerin der Brüder Grimm*
(Darmstadt: Von Zabern, 2013).

[35](#c2-note-0035a){#c2-note-0035}  Hansjörg Ewert, "Alles nur
geklaut?", *Zeit Online* (February 26, 2013), online. This is not a new
realization but has long been a special area of research for
musicologists. What is new, however, is that it is no longer
controversial outside of this narrow disciplinary discourse. See Peter
J. Burkholder, "The Uses of Existing Music: Musical Borrowing as a
Field," *Notes* 50 (1994), pp. 851--70.

[36](#c2-note-0036a){#c2-note-0036}  Zygmunt Bauman, *Liquid Modernity*
(Cambridge: Polity, 2000), p. 56.

[37](#c2-note-0037a){#c2-note-0037}  Quoted from Eran Schaerf\'s audio
installation *FM-Scenario: Reality Race* (2013), online.

[38](#c2-note-0038a){#c2-note-0038}  The number of members, for
instance, of the two large polit­ical parties in Germany, the Social
Democratic Party and the Christian Democratic Union, reached its peak at
the end of the 1970s or the beginning of the 1980s. Both were able to
increase their absolute numbers for a brief time at the beginning of the
1990s, when the Christian Democratic Party even reached its absolute
high point, but this can be explained by a surge in new members after
reunification. By 2010, both parties already had fewer members than
Greenpeace, whose 580,000 members make it Germany's largest NGO.
Parallel to this, between 1970 and 2010, the proportion of people
without any religious affiliations shrank to approximately 37 percent.
That there are more churches and political parties today is indicative
of how difficult []{#Page_188 type="pagebreak" title="188"}it has become
for any single organization to attract broad strata of society.

[39](#c2-note-0039a){#c2-note-0039}  Ulrich Beck, *Risk Society: Towards
a New Modernity*, trans. Mark Ritter (London: SAGE, 1992), p. 135.

[40](#c2-note-0040a){#c2-note-0040}  Ferdinand Tönnies, *Community and
Society*, trans. Charles P. Loomis (East Lansing: Michigan State
University Press, 1957).

[41](#c2-note-0041a){#c2-note-0041}  Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels,
"The Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848)," trans. Terrell Carver, in
*The Cambridge Companion to the Communist Manifesto*, ed. Carver and
James Farr (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 237--60,
at 239. For Marx and Engels, this was -- like everything pertaining to
the dynamics of capitalism -- a thoroughly ambivalent development. For,
in this case, it finally forced people "to take a down-to-earth view of
their circumstances, their multifarious relationships" (ibid.).

[42](#c2-note-0042a){#c2-note-0042}  As early as the 1940s, Karl Polanyi
demonstrated in *The Great Transformation* (New York: Farrar & Rinehart,
1944) that the idea of strictly separated spheres, which are supposed to
be so typical of society, is in fact highly ideological. He argued above
all that the attempt to implement this separation fully and consistently
in the form of the free market would destroy the foundations of society
because both the life of workers and the environment of the market
itself would be regarded as externalities. For a recent adaptation of
this argument, see David Graeber, *Debt: The First 5000 Years* (New
York: Melville House, 2011).

[43](#c2-note-0043a){#c2-note-0043}  Tönnies's persistent influence can
be felt, for instance, in Zygmunt Bauman's negative assessment of the
compunction to strive for community in his *Community: Seeking Safety in
an Insecure World* (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001).

[44](#c2-note-0044a){#c2-note-0044}  See, for example, Amitai Etzioni,
*The Third Way to a Good Society* (London: Demos, 2000).

[45](#c2-note-0045a){#c2-note-0045}  Jean Lave and Étienne Wenger,
*Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation* (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 98.

[46](#c2-note-0046a){#c2-note-0046}  Étienne Wenger, *Cultivating
Communities of Practice: A Guide to Managing Knowledge* (Boston, MA:
Harvard Business School Press, 2000).

[47](#c2-note-0047a){#c2-note-0047}  The institutions of the
disciplinary society -- schools, factories, prisons and hospitals, for
instance -- were closed. Whoever was inside could not get out.
Participation was obligatory, and instructions had to be followed. See
Michel Foucault, *Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison*,
trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977).[]{#Page_189
type="pagebreak" title="189"}

[48](#c2-note-0048a){#c2-note-0048}  Weber famously defined power as
follows: "Power is the probability that one actor within a social
relationship will be in a position to carry out his own will despite
resistance, regardless of the basis on which this probability rests."
Max Weber, *Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology*,
trans. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press, 1978), p. 53.

[49](#c2-note-0049a){#c2-note-0049}  For those in complete despair, the
following tip is provided: "To get more likes, start liking the photos
of random people." Such a strategy, it seems, is more likely to increase
than decrease one's hopelessness. The quotations are from "How to Get
More Likes on Your Instagram Photos," *WikiHow* (2016), online.

[50](#c2-note-0050a){#c2-note-0050}  Jeremy Gilbert, *Democracy and
Collectivity in an Age of Individualism* (London: Pluto Books, 2013).

[51](#c2-note-0051a){#c2-note-0051}  Diedrich Diederichsen,
*Eigenblutdoping: Selbstverwertung, Künstlerromantik, Partizipation*
(Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2008).

[52](#c2-note-0052a){#c2-note-0052}  Harrison Rainie and Barry Wellman,
*Networked: The New Social Operating System* (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
2012). The term is practical because it is easy to understand, but it is
also conceptually contradictory. An individual (an indivisible entity)
cannot be defined in terms of a distributed network. With a nod toward
Gilles Deleuze, the cumbersome but theoretically more precise term
"dividual" (the divisible) has also been used. See Gerald Raunig,
"Dividuen des Facebook: Das neue Begehren nach Selbstzerteilung," in
Oliver Leistert and Theo Röhle (eds), *Generation Facebook: Über das
Leben im Social Net* (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2011), pp. 145--59.

[53](#c2-note-0053a){#c2-note-0053}  Jariu Saramäki et al., "Persistence
of Social Signatures in Human Communication," *Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America* 111
(2014): 942--7.

[54](#c2-note-0054a){#c2-note-0054}  The term "weak ties" derives from a
study of where people find out information about new jobs. As the study
shows, this information does not usually come from close friends, whose
level of knowledge often does not differ much from that of the person
looking for a job, but rather from loose acquaintances, whose living
environments do not overlap much with one\'s own and who can therefore
make information available from outside of one\'s own network. See Mark
Granovetter, "The Strength of Weak Ties," *American Journal of
Sociology* 78 (1973): 1360--80.

[55](#c2-note-0055a){#c2-note-0055}  Castells, *The Power of Identity*,
420.

[56](#c2-note-0056a){#c2-note-0056}  Ulf Weigelt, "Darf der Chef
ständige Erreichbarkeit ver­langen?" *Zeit Online* (June 13, 2012),
online \[--trans.\].[]{#Page_190 type="pagebreak" title="190"}

[57](#c2-note-0057a){#c2-note-0057}  Hartmut Rosa, *Social Acceleration:
A New Theory of Modernity*, trans. Jonathan Trejo-Mathys (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2013).

[58](#c2-note-0058a){#c2-note-0058}  This technique -- "social freezing"
-- has already become so standard that it is now regarded as way to help
women achieve a better balance between work and family life. See Kolja
Rudzio "Social Freezing: Ein Kind von Apple," *Zeit Online* (November 6,
2014), online.

[59](#c2-note-0059a){#c2-note-0059}  See the film *Into Eternity*
(2009), directed by Michael Madsen.

[60](#c2-note-0060a){#c2-note-0060}  Thomas S. Kuhn, *The Structure of
Scientific Revolutions*, 3rd edn (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
Press, 1996).

[61](#c2-note-0061a){#c2-note-0061}  Werner Busch and Peter Schmoock,
*Kunst: Die Geschichte ihrer Funktionen* (Weinheim: Quadriga/Beltz,
1987), p. 179 \[--trans.\].

[62](#c2-note-0062a){#c2-note-0062}  "'When Attitude Becomes Form' at
the Fondazione Prada," *Contemporary Art Daily* (September 18, 2013),
online.

[63](#c2-note-0063a){#c2-note-0063}  Owing to the hyper-capitalization
of the art market, which has been going on since the 1990s, this role
has shifted somewhat from curators to collectors, who, though validating
their choices more on financial than on argumentative grounds, are
essentially engaged in the same activity. Today, leading cur­ators
usually work closely together with collectors and thus deal with more
money than the first generation of curators ever could have imagined.

[64](#c2-note-0064a){#c2-note-0064}  Diedrich Diederichsen, "Showfreaks
und Monster," *Texte zur Kunst* 71 (2008): 69--77.

[65](#c2-note-0065a){#c2-note-0065}  Alexander R. Galloway, *Protocol:
How Control Exists after Decentralization* (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
2004), pp. 7, 75.

[66](#c2-note-0066a){#c2-note-0066}  Even the *Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung* -- at least in its online edition -- has begun to publish more
and more articles in English. The newspaper has accepted the
disadvantage of higher editorial costs in order to remain relevant in
the increasingly globalized debate.

[67](#c2-note-0067a){#c2-note-0067}  Joseph Reagle, "'Free as in
Sexist?' Free Culture and the Gender Gap," *First Monday* 18 (2013),
online.

[68](#c2-note-0068a){#c2-note-0068}  Wikipedia\'s own "Editor Survey"
from 2011 reports a women\'s quota of 9 percent. Other studies have come
to a slightly higher number. See Benjamin Mako Hill and Aaron Shaw, "The
Wikipedia Gender Gap Revisited: Characterizing Survey Response Bias with
Propensity Score Estimation," *PLOS ONE* 8 (July 26, 2013), online. The
problem is well known, and the Wikipedia Foundation has been making
efforts to correct matters. In 2011, its goal was to increase the
participation of women to 25 percent by 2015. This has not been
achieved.[]{#Page_191 type="pagebreak" title="191"}

[69](#c2-note-0069a){#c2-note-0069}  Shyong (Tony) K. Lam et al. (2011),
"WP: Clubhouse? An Exploration of Wikipedia's Gender Imbalance,"
*WikiSym* 11 (2011), online.

[70](#c2-note-0070a){#c2-note-0070}  David Singh Grewal, *Network Power:
The Social Dynamics of Globalization* (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 2008).

[71](#c2-note-0071a){#c2-note-0071}  Ibid., p. 29.

[72](#c2-note-0072a){#c2-note-0072}  Niklas Luhmann, *Macht im System*
(Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2013), p. 52 \[--trans.\].

[73](#c2-note-0073a){#c2-note-0073}  Mathieu O\'Neil, *Cyberchiefs:
Autonomy and Authority in Online Tribes* (London: Pluto Press, 2009).

[74](#c2-note-0074a){#c2-note-0074}  Eric Steven Raymond, "The Cathedral
and the Bazaar," *First Monday* 3 (1998), online.

[75](#c2-note-0075a){#c2-note-0075}  Jorge Luis Borges, "The Library of
Babel," trans. Anthony Kerrigan, in Borges, *Ficciones* (New York: Grove
Weidenfeld, 1962), pp. 79--88.

[76](#c2-note-0076a){#c2-note-0076}  Heinrich Geiselberger and Tobias
Moorstedt (eds), *Big Data: Das neue Versprechen der Allwissenheit*
(Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2013).

[77](#c2-note-0077a){#c2-note-0077}  This is one of the central tenets
of science and technology studies. See, for instance, Geoffrey C. Bowker
and Susan Leigh Star, *Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its
Consequences* (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999).

[78](#c2-note-0078a){#c2-note-0078}  Sybille Krämer, *Symbolische
Maschinen: Die Idee der Formalisierung in geschichtlichem Abriß*
(Darmstadt: Wissenschaft­liche Buchgesellschaft, 1988), 50--69.

[79](#c2-note-0079a){#c2-note-0079}  Quoted from Doron Swade, "The
'Unerring Certainty of Mechanical Agency': Machines and Table Making in
the Nineteenth Century," in Martin Campbell-Kelly et al. (eds), *The
History of Mathematical Tables: From Sumer to Spreadsheets* (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 145--76, at 150.

[80](#c2-note-0080a){#c2-note-0080}  The mechanical construction
suggested by Leibniz was not to be realized as a practically usable (and
therefore patentable) calculating machine until 1820, by which point it
was referred to as an "arithmometer."

[81](#c2-note-0081a){#c2-note-0081}  Krämer, *Symbolische Maschinen*, 98
\[--trans.\].

[82](#c2-note-0082a){#c2-note-0082}  Charles Babbage, *On the Economy of
Machinery and Manufactures* (London: Charles Knight, 1832), p. 153: "We
have already mentioned what may, perhaps, appear paradoxical to some of
our readers -- that the division of labour can be applied with equal
success to mental operations, and that it ensures, by its adoption, the
same economy of time."

[83](#c2-note-0083a){#c2-note-0083}  This structure, which is known as
"Von Neumann architecture," continues to form the basis of almost all
computers.

[84](#c2-note-0084a){#c2-note-0084}  "Gordon Moore Says Aloha to
Moore\'s Law," *The Inquirer* (April 13, 2005), online.[]{#Page_192
type="pagebreak" title="192"}

[85](#c2-note-0085a){#c2-note-0085}  Miriam Meckel, *Next: Erinnerungen
an eine Zukunft ohne uns* (Reinbeck bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 2011). One
could also say that this anxiety has been caused by the fact that the
automation of labor has begun to affect middle-class jobs as well.

[86](#c2-note-0086a){#c2-note-0086}  Steven Levy, "Can an Algorithm
Write a Better News Story than a Human Reporter?" *Wired* (April 24,
2012), online.

[87](#c2-note-0087a){#c2-note-0087}  Alexander Pschera, *Animal
Internet: Nature and the Digital Revolution*, trans. Elisabeth Laufer
(New York: New Vessel Press, 2016).

[88](#c2-note-0088a){#c2-note-0088}  The American intelligence services
are not unique in this regard. *Spiegel* has reported that, in Russia,
entire "bot armies" have been mobilized for the "propaganda battle."
Benjamin Bidder, "Nemzow-Mord: Die Propaganda der russischen Hardliner,"
*Spiegel Online* (February 28, 2015), online.

[89](#c2-note-0089a){#c2-note-0089}  Lennart Guldbrandsson, "Swedish
Wikipedia Surpasses 1 Million Articles with Aid of Article Creation
Bot," [blog.wikimedia.org](http://blog.wikimedia.org) (June 17, 2013),
online.

[90](#c2-note-0090a){#c2-note-0090}  Thomas Bunnell, "The Mathematics of
Film," *Boom Magazine* (November 2007): 48--51.

[91](#c2-note-0091a){#c2-note-0091}  Christopher Steiner, "Automatons
Get Creative," *Wall Street Journal* (August 17, 2012), online.

[92](#c2-note-0092a){#c2-note-0092}  "The Hewlett Foundation: Automated
Essay Scoring," [kaggle.com](http://kaggle.com) (February 10, 2012),
online.

[93](#c2-note-0093a){#c2-note-0093}  Ian Ayres, *Super Crunchers: How
Anything Can Be Predicted* (London: Bookpoint, 2007).

[94](#c2-note-0094a){#c2-note-0094}  Each of these models was tested on
the basis of the 50 million most common search terms from the years
2003--8 and classified according to the time and place of the search.
The results were compared with data from the health authorities. See
Jeremy Ginsberg et al., "Detecting Influenza Epidemics Using Search
Engine Query Data," *Nature* 457 (2009): 1012--4.

[95](#c2-note-0095a){#c2-note-0095}  In absolute terms, the rate of
correct hits, at 15.8 percent, was still relatively low. With the same
dataset, however, random guessing would only have an accuracy of 0.005
percent. See V. Le Quoc et al., "Building High-Level Features Using
Large-Scale Unsupervised Learning,"
[research.google.com](http://research.google.com) (2012), online.

[96](#c2-note-0096a){#c2-note-0096}  Neil Johnson et al., "Abrupt Rise
of New Machine Ecology beyond Human Response Time," *Nature: Scientific
Reports* 3 (2013), online. The authors counted 18,520 of these events
between January 2006 and February 2011; that is, about 15 per day on
average.

[97](#c2-note-0097a){#c2-note-0097}  Gerald Nestler, "Mayhem in Mahwah:
The Case of the Flash Crash; or, Forensic Re-performance in Deep Time,"
in Anselm []{#Page_193 type="pagebreak" title="193"}Franke et al. (eds),
*Forensis: The Architecture of Public Truth* (Berlin: Sternberg Press,
2014), pp. 125--46.

[98](#c2-note-0098a){#c2-note-0098}  Another facial recognition
algorithm by Google provides a good impression of the rate of progress.
As early as 2011, the latter was able to identify dogs in images with 80
percent accuracy. Three years later, this rate had not only increased to
93.5 percent (which corresponds to human capabilities), but the
algorithm could also identify more than 200 different types of dog,
something that hardly any person can do. See Robert McMillan, "This Guy
Beat Google\'s Super-Smart AI -- But It Wasn\'t Easy," *Wired* (January
15, 2015), online.

[99](#c2-note-0099a){#c2-note-0099}  Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, "The
Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine," *Computer
Networks and ISDN Systems* 30 (1998): 107--17.

[100](#c2-note-0100a){#c2-note-0100}  Eugene Garfield, "Citation Indexes
for Science: A New Dimension in Documentation through Association of
Ideas," *Science* 122 (1955): 108--11.

[101](#c2-note-0101a){#c2-note-0101}  Since 1964, the data necessary for
this has been published as the Science Citation Index (SCI).

[102](#c2-note-0102a){#c2-note-0102}  The assumption that the subjects
produce these structures indirectly and without any strategic intention
has proven to be problematic in both contexts. In the world of science,
there are so-called citation cartels -- groups of scientists who
frequently refer to one another\'s work in order to improve their
respective position in the SCI. Search engines have likewise given rise
to search engine optimizers, which attempt by various means to optimize
a website\'s evaluation by search engines.

[103](#c2-note-0103a){#c2-note-0103}  Regarding the history of the SCI
and its influence on the early version of Google\'s PageRank, see Katja
Mayer, "Zur Soziometrik der Suchmaschinen: Ein historischer Überblick
der Methodik," in Konrad Becker and Felix Stalder (eds), *Deep Search:
Die Politik des Suchens jenseits von Google* (Innsbruck: Studienverlag,
2009), pp. 64--83.

[104](#c2-note-0104a){#c2-note-0104}  A site with zero links to it could
not be registered by the algorithm at all, for the search engine indexed
the web by having its "crawler" follow the links itself.

[105](#c2-note-0105a){#c2-note-0105}  "Google Algorithm Change History,"
[moz.com](http://moz.com) (2016), online.

[106](#c2-note-0106a){#c2-note-0106}  Martin Feuz et al., "Personal Web
Searching in the Age of Semantic Capitalism: Diagnosing the Mechanisms
of Personalisation," *First Monday* 17 (2011), online.

[107](#c2-note-0107a){#c2-note-0107}  Brian Dean, "Google\'s 200 Ranking
Factors," *Search Engine Journal* (May 31, 2013), online.

[108](#c2-note-0108a){#c2-note-0108}  Thus, it is not only the world of
advertising that motivates the collection of personal information. Such
information is also needed for the development of personalized
algorithms that []{#Page_194 type="pagebreak" title="194"}give order to
the flood of data. It can therefore be assumed that the rampant
collection of personal information will not cease or slow down even if
commercial demands happen to change, for instance to a business model
that is not based on advertising.

[109](#c2-note-0109a){#c2-note-0109}  For a detailed discussion of how
these three levels are recorded, see Felix Stalder and Christine Mayer,
"Der zweite Index: Suchmaschinen, Personalisierung und Überwachung," in
Konrad Becker and Felix Stalder (eds), *Deep Search: Die Politik des
Suchens jenseits von Google* (Innsbruck: Studienverlag, 2009), pp.
112--31.

[110](#c2-note-0110a){#c2-note-0110}  This raises the question of which
drivers should be sent on a detour, so that no traffic jam comes about,
and which should be shown the most direct route, which would now be
traffic-free.

[111](#c2-note-0111a){#c2-note-0111}  Pamela Vaughan, "Demystifying How
Facebook\'s EdgeRank Algorithm Works," *HubSpot* (April 23, 2013),
online.

[112](#c2-note-0112a){#c2-note-0112}  Lisa Gitelman (ed.), *"Raw Data"
Is an Oxymoron* (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013).

[113](#c2-note-0113a){#c2-note-0113}  The terms "raw," in the sense of
unprocessed, and "cooked," in the sense of processed, derive from the
anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, who introduced them to clarify the
difference between nature and culture. See Claude Lévi-Strauss, *The Raw
and the Cooked*, trans. John Weightman and Doreen Weightman (Chicago,
IL: University of Chicago Press, 1983).

[114](#c2-note-0114a){#c2-note-0114}  Jessica Lee, "No. 1 Position in
Google Gets 33% of Search Traffic," *Search Engine Watch* (June 20,
2013), online.

[115](#c2-note-0115a){#c2-note-0115}  One estimate that continues to be
cited quite often is already obsolete: Michael K. Bergman, "White Paper
-- The Deep Web: Surfacing Hidden Value," *Journal of Electronic
Publishing* 7 (2001), online. The more content is dynamically generated
by databases, the more questionable such estimates become. It is
uncontested, however, that only a small portion of online information is
registered by search engines.

[116](#c2-note-0116a){#c2-note-0116}  Theo Röhle, "Die Demontage der
Gatekeeper: Relationale Perspektiven zur Macht der Suchmaschinen," in
Konrad Becker and Felix Stalder (eds), *Deep Search: Die Politik des
Suchens jenseits von Google* (Innsbruck: Studienverlag, 2009), pp.
133--48.

[117](#c2-note-0117a){#c2-note-0117}  The phenomenon of preparing the
world to be recorded by algorithms is not restricted to digital
networks. As early as 1994 in Germany, for instance, a new sort of
typeface was introduced (the *Fälschungserschwerende Schrift*,
"forgery-impeding typeface") on license plates for the sake of machine
readability and facilitating automatic traffic control. To the human
eye, however, it appears somewhat misshapen and
disproportionate.[]{#Page_195 type="pagebreak" title="195"}

[118](#c2-note-0118a){#c2-note-0118}  [Fairsearch.org](http://Fairsearch.org)
was officially supported by several of Google\'s competitors, including
Microsoft, TripAdvisor, and Oracle.

[119](#c2-note-0119a){#c2-note-0119}  "Antitrust: Commission Sends
Statement of Objections to Google on Comparison Shopping Service,"
*European Commission: Press Release Database* (April 15, 2015), online.

[120](#c2-note-0120a){#c2-note-0120}  Amit Singhal, "An Update to Our
Search Algorithms," *Google Inside Search* (August 10, 2012), online. By
the middle of 2014, according to some sources, Google had received
around 20 million requests to remove links from its index on account of
copyright violations.

[121](#c2-note-0121a){#c2-note-0121}  Alexander Wragge, "Google-Ranking:
Herabstufung ist 'Zensur light'," *iRights.info* (August 23, 2012),
online.

[122](#c2-note-0122a){#c2-note-0122}  Farhad Manjoo,"Amazon\'s Tactics
Confirm Its Critics\' Worst Suspicions," *New York Times: Bits Blog*
(May 23, 2014), online.

[123](#c2-note-0123a){#c2-note-0123}  Lucas D. Introna and Helen
Nissenbaum, "Shaping the Web: Why the Politics of Search Engines
Matters," *Information Society* 16 (2000): 169--85, at 181.

[124](#c2-note-0124a){#c2-note-0124}  Eli Pariser, *The Filter Bubble:
How the New Personalized Web Is Changing What We Read and How We Think*
(New York: Penguin, 2012).

[125](#c2-note-0125a){#c2-note-0125}  Antoinette Rouvroy, "The End(s) of
Critique: Data-Behaviourism vs. Due-Process," in Katja de Vries and
Mireille Hilde­brandt (eds), *Privacy, Due Process and the Computational
Turn: The Philosophy of Law Meets the Philosophy of Technology* (New
York: Routledge, 2013), pp. 143--65.

[126](#c2-note-0126a){#c2-note-0126}  See B. F. Skinner, *Science and
Human Behavior* (New York: The Free Press, 1953), p. 35: "We undertake
to predict and control the behavior of the individual organism. This is
our 'dependent variable' -- the effect for which we are to find the
cause. Our 'independent variables' -- the causes of behavior -- are the
external conditions of which behavior is a function."

[127](#c2-note-0127a){#c2-note-0127}  Nathan Jurgenson, "View from
Nowhere: On the Cultural Ideology of Big Data," *New Inquiry* (October
9, 2014), online.

[128](#c2-note-0128a){#c2-note-0128}  danah boyd and Kate Crawford,
"Critical Questions for Big Data: Provocations for a Cultural,
Technological and Scholarly Phenomenon," *Information, Communication &
Society* 15 (2012): 662--79.
:::
:::

[III]{.chapterNumber} [Politics]{.chapterTitle} {#c3}

::: {.section}
The show had already been going on for more than three hours, but nobody
was bothered by this. Quite the contrary. The tension in the venue was
approaching its peak, and the ratings were through the roof. Throughout
all of Europe, 195 million people were watching the spectacle on
television, and the social mass media were gaining steam. On Twitter,
more than 47,000 messages were being sent every minute with the hashtag
\#Eurovision.[^1^](#f6-note-0001){#f6-note-0001a} The outcome was
decided shortly after midnight: Conchita Wurst, the bearded diva, was
announced the winner of the 2014 Eurovision Song Contest. Cheers erupted
as the public celebrated the victor -- but also itself. At long last,
there was more to the event than just another round of tacky television
programming ("This is Ljubljana calling!"). Rather, a statement was made
-- a statement in favor of tolerance and against homophobia, for
diversity and for the right to define oneself however one pleases. And
Europe sent this message in the midst of a crisis and despite ongoing
hostilities, not to mention all of the toxic rumblings that could be
heard about decadence, cultural decay, and Gayropa. Visibly moved, the
Austrian singer let out an exclamation -- "We are unity, and we are
unstoppable!" -- as she returned to the stage with wobbly knees to
accept the trophy.

With her aesthetically convincing performance, Conchita succeeded in
unleashing a strong desire for personal []{#Page_1 type="pagebreak"
title="1"}self-discovery, for community, and for overcoming stale
conventions. And she did this through a character that mainstream
society would have considered paradoxical and deviant not long ago but
has since come to understand: attractive beyond the dichotomy of man and
woman, explicitly artificial and yet entirely authentic. This peculiar
conflation of artificiality and naturalness is equally present in
Berndnaut Smilde\'s photographic work of a real indoor cloud (*Nimbus*,
2010) on the cover of this book. Conchita\'s performance was also on a
formal level seemingly paradoxical: extremely focused and completely
open. Unlike most of the other acts, she took the stage alone, and
though she hardly moved at all, she nevertheless incited the audience to
participate in numerous ways and genuinely to act out the motto of the
contest ("Join us!"). Throughout the early rounds of the competition,
the beard, which was at first so provocative, transformed into a
free-floating symbol that the public began to appropriate in various
ways. Men and women painted Conchita-like beards on their faces,
newspapers printed beards to be cut out, and fans crocheted beards. Not
only did someone Photoshop a beard on to a painting of Empress Sissi of
Austria, but King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands even tweeted a
deceptively realistic portrait of his wife, Queen Máxima, wearing a
beard. From one of the biggest stages of all, the evening of Wurst\'s
victory conveyed an impression of how much the culture of Europe had
changed in recent years, both in terms of its content and its forms.
That which had long been restricted to subcultural niches -- the
fluidity of gender iden­tities, appropriation as a cultural technique,
or the conflation of reception and production, for instance -- was now
part of the mainstream. Even while sitting in front of the television,
this mainstream was no longer just a private audience but rather a
multitude of singular producers whose networked activity -- on location
or on social mass media -- lent particular significance to the occasion
as a moment of collective self-perception.

It is more than half a century since Marshall McLuhan announced the end
of the Modern era, a cultural epoch that he called the Gutenberg Galaxy
in honor of the print medium by which it was so influenced. What was
once just an abstract speculation of media theory, however, now
describes []{#Page_2 type="pagebreak" title="2"}the concrete reality of
our everyday life. What\'s more, we have moved well past McLuhan\'s
diagnosis: the erosion of old cultural forms, institutions, and
certainties is not just something we affirm, but new ones have already
formed whose contours are easy to identify not only in niche sectors but
in the mainstream. Shortly before Conchita\'s triumph, Facebook thus
expanded the gender-identity options for its billion-plus users from 2
to 60. In addition to "male" and "female," users of the English version
of the site can now choose from among the following categories:

::: {.extract}
Agender, Androgyne, Androgynes, Androgynous, Asexual, Bigender, Cis, Cis
Female, Cis Male, Cis Man, Cis Woman, Cisgender, Cisgender Female,
Cisgender Male, Cisgender Man, Cisgender Woman, Female to Male (FTM),
Female to Male Trans Man, Female to Male Transgender Man, Female to Male
Transsexual Man, Gender Fluid, Gender Neutral, Gender Nonconforming,
Gender Questioning, Gender Variant, Genderqueer, Hermaphrodite,
Intersex, Intersex Man, Intersex Person, Intersex Woman, Male to Female
(MTF), Male to Female Trans Woman, Male to Female Transgender Woman,
Male to Female Transsexual Woman, Neither, Neutrois, Non-Binary, Other,
Pangender, Polygender, T\*Man, Trans, Trans Female, Trans Male, Trans
Man, Trans Person, Trans\*Female, Trans\*Male, Trans\*Man,
Trans\*Person, Trans\*Woman, Transexual, Transexual Female, Transexual
Male, Transexual Man, Transexual Person, Transexual Woman, Transgender
Female, Transgender Person, Transmasculine, T\*Woman, Two\*Person,
Two-Spirit, Two-Spirit Person.
:::

This enormous proliferation of cultural possibilities is an expression
of what I will refer to below as the digital condition. Far from being
universally welcomed, its growing presence has also instigated waves of
nostalgia, diffuse resentments, and intellectual panic. Conservative and
reactionary movements, which oppose such developments and desire to
preserve or even re-create previous conditions, have been on the rise.
Likewise in 2014, for instance, a cultural dispute broke out in normally
subdued Baden-Würtemberg over which forms of sexual partnership should
be mentioned positively in the sexual education curriculum. Its impetus
was a working paper released at the end of 2013 by the state\'s
[]{#Page_3 type="pagebreak" title="3"}Ministry of Culture. Among other
things, it proposed that adolescents "should confront their own sexual
identity and orientation \[...\] from a position of acceptance with
respect to sexual diversity."[^2^](#f6-note-0002){#f6-note-0002a} In a
short period of time, a campaign organized mainly through social mass
media collected more than 200,000 signatures in opposition to the
proposal and submitted them to the petitions committee at the state
parliament. At that point, the government responded by putting the
initiative on ice. However, according to the analysis presented in this
book, leaving it on ice creates a precarious situation.

The rise and spread of the digital condition is the result of a
wide-ranging and irreversible cultural transformation, the beginnings of
which can in part be traced back to the nineteenth century. Since the
1960s, however, this shift has accelerated enormously and has
encompassed increasingly broader spheres of social life. More and more
people have been participating in cultural processes; larger and larger
dimensions of existence have become battlegrounds for cultural disputes;
and social activity has been intertwined with increasingly complex
technologies, without which it would hardly be possible to conceive of
these processes, let alone achieve them. The number of competing
cultural projects, works, reference points, and reference systems has
been growing rapidly. This, in turn, has caused an escalating crisis for
the established forms and institutions of culture, which are poorly
equipped to deal with such an inundation of new claims to meaning. Since
roughly the year 2000, many previously independent developments have
been consolidating, gaining strength and modifying themselves to form a
new cultural constellation that encompasses broad segments of society --
a new galaxy, as McLuhan might have
said.[^3^](#f6-note-0003){#f6-note-0003a} These days it is relatively
easy to recognize the specific forms that characterize it as a whole and
how these forms have contributed to new, contradictory and
conflict-laden political dynamics.

My argument, which is restricted to cultural developments in the
(transatlantic) West, is divided into three chapters. In the first, I
will outline the *historical* developments that have given rise to this
quantitative and qualitative change and have led to the crisis faced by
the institutions of the late phase of the Gutenberg Galaxy, which
defined the last third []{#Page_4 type="pagebreak" title="4"}of the
twentieth century.[^4^](#f6-note-0004){#f6-note-0004a} The expansion of
the social basis of cultural processes will be traced back to changes in
the labor market, to the self-empowerment of marginalized groups, and to
the dissolution of centralized cultural geography. The broadening of
cultural fields will be discussed in terms of the rise of design as a
general creative discipline, and the growing significance of complex
technologies -- as fundamental components of everyday life -- will be
tracked from the beginnings of independent media up to the development
of the internet as a mass medium. These processes, which at first
unfolded on their own and may have been reversible on an individual
basis, are integrated today and represent a socially domin­ant component
of the coherent digital condition. From the perspective of cultural
studies and media theory, the second chapter will delineate the already
recognizable features of this new culture. Concerned above all with the
analysis of forms, its focus is thus on the question of "how" cultural
practices operate. It is only because specific forms of culture,
exchange, and expression are prevalent across diverse var­ieties of
content, social spheres, and locations that it is even possible to speak
of the digital condition in the singular. Three examples of such forms
stand out in particular. *Referentiality* -- that is, the use of
existing cultural materials for one\'s own production -- is an essential
feature of many methods for inscribing oneself into cultural processes.
In the context of unmanageable masses of shifting and semantically open
reference points, the act of selecting things and combining them has
become fundamental to the production of meaning and the constitution of
the self. The second feature that characterizes these processes is
*communality*. It is only through a collectively shared frame of
reference that meanings can be stabilized, possible courses of action
can be determined, and resources can be made available. This has given
rise to communal formations that generate self-referential worlds, which
in turn modulate various dimensions of existence -- from aesthetic
preferences to the methods of biological reproduction and the rhythms of
space and time. In these worlds, the dynamics of network power have
reconfigured notions of voluntary and involuntary behavior, autonomy,
and coercion. The third feature of the new cultural landscape is its
*algorithmicity*. It is characterized, in other []{#Page_5
type="pagebreak" title="5"}words, by automated decision-making processes
that reduce and give shape to the glut of information, by extracting
information from the volume of data produced by machines. This extracted
information is then accessible to human perception and can serve as the
basis of singular and communal activity. Faced with the enormous amount
of data generated by people and machines, we would be blind were it not
for algorithms.

The third chapter will focus on *political dimensions*. These are the
factors that enable the formal dimensions described in the preceding
chapter to manifest themselves in the form of social, political, and
economic projects. Whereas the first chapter is concerned with long-term
and irreversible histor­ical processes, and the second outlines the
general cultural forms that emerged from these changes with a certain
degree of inevitability, my concentration here will be on open-ended
dynamics that can still be influenced. A contrast will be made between
two political tendencies of the digital condition that are already quite
advanced: *post-democracy* and *commons*. Both take full advantage of
the possibilities that have arisen on account of structural changes and
have advanced them even further, though in entirely different
directions. "Post-democracy" refers to strategies that counteract the
enormously expanded capacity for social communication by disconnecting
the possibility to participate in things from the ability to make
decisions about them. Everyone is allowed to voice his or her opinion,
but decisions are ultimately made by a select few. Even though growing
numbers of people can and must take responsibility for their own
activity, they are unable to influence the social conditions -- the
social texture -- under which this activity has to take place. Social
mass media such as Facebook and Google will receive particular attention
as the most conspicuous manifestations of this tendency. Here, under new
structural provisions, a new combination of behavior and thought has
been implemented that promotes the normalization of post-democracy and
contributes to its otherwise inexplicable acceptance in many areas of
society. "Commons," on the contrary, denotes approaches for developing
new and comprehensive institutions that not only directly combine
participation and decision-making but also integrate economic, social,
and ethical spheres -- spheres that Modernity has tended to keep
apart.[]{#Page_6 type="pagebreak" title="6"}

Post-democracy and commons can be understood as two lines of development
that point beyond the current crisis of liberal democracy and represent
new political projects. One can be characterized as an essentially
authoritarian system, the other as a radical expansion and renewal of
democracy, from the notion of representation to that of participation.

Even though I have brought together a number of broad perspectives, I
have refrained from discussing certain topics that a book entitled *The
Digital Condition* might be expected to address, notably the matter of
copyright, for one example. This is easy to explain. As regards the new
forms at the heart of this book, none of these developments requires or
justifies copyright law in its present form. In any case, my thoughts on
the matter were published not long ago in another book, so there is no
need to repeat them here.[^5^](#f6-note-0005){#f6-note-0005a} The theme
of privacy will also receive little attention. This is not because I
share the view, held by proponents of "post-privacy," that it would be
better for all personal information to be made available to everyone. On
the contrary, this position strikes me as superficial and naïve. That
said, the political function of privacy -- to safeguard a degree of
personal autonomy from powerful institutions -- is based on fundamental
concepts that, in light of the developments to be described below,
urgently need to be updated. This is a task, however, that would take me
far beyond the scope of the present
book.[^6^](#f6-note-0006){#f6-note-0006a}

Before moving on to the first chapter, I should first briefly explain my
somewhat unorthodox understanding of the central concepts in the title
of the book -- "condition" and "digital." In what follows, the term
"condition" will be used to designate a cultural condition whereby the
processes of social meaning -- that is, the normative dimension of
existence -- are explicitly or implicitly negotiated and realized by
means of singular and collective activity. Meaning, however, does not
manifest itself in signs and symbols alone; rather, the practices that
engender it and are inspired by it are consolidated into artifacts,
institutions, and lifeworlds. In other words, far from being a symbolic
accessory or mere overlay, culture in fact directs our actions and gives
shape to society. By means of materialization and repetition, meaning --
both as claim and as reality -- is made visible, productive, and
negotiable. People are free to accept it, reject it, or ignore
[]{#Page_7 type="pagebreak" title="7"}it altogether. Social meaning --
that is, meaning shared by multiple people -- can only come about
through processes of exchange within larger or smaller formations.
Production and reception (to the extent that it makes any sense to
distinguish between the two) do not proceed linearly here, but rather
loop back and reciprocally influence one another. In such processes, the
participants themselves determine, in a more or less binding manner, how
they stand in relation to themselves, to each other, and to the world,
and they determine the frame of reference in which their activity is
oriented. Accordingly, culture is not something static or something that
is possessed by a person or a group, but rather a field of dispute that
is subject to the activities of multiple ongoing changes, each happening
at its own pace. It is characterized by processes of dissolution and
constitution that may be collaborative, oppositional, or simply
operating side by side. The field of culture is pervaded by competing
claims to power and mechanisms for exerting it. This leads to conflicts
about which frames of reference should be adopted for different fields
and within different social groups. In such conflicts,
self-determination and external determination interact until a point is
reached at which both sides are mutually constituted. This, in turn,
changes the conditions that give rise to shared meaning and personal
identity.

In what follows, this broadly post-structuralist perspective will inform
my discussion of the causes and formational conditions of cultural
orders and their practices. Culture will be conceived throughout as
something heterogeneous and hybrid. It draws from many sources; it is
motivated by the widest possible variety of desires, intentions, and
compulsions; and it mobilizes whatever resources might be necessary for
the constitution of meaning. This emphasis on the materiality of culture
is also reflected in the concept of the digital. Media are relational
technologies, which means that they facilitate certain types of
connection between humans and
objects.[^7^](#f6-note-0007){#f6-note-0007a} "Digital" thus denotes the
set of relations that, on the infrastructural basis of digital networks,
is realized today in the production, use, and transform­ation of
material and immaterial goods, and in the constitution and coordination
of personal and collective activity. In this regard, the focus is less
on the dominance of a certain class []{#Page_8 type="pagebreak"
title="8"}of technological artifacts -- the computer, for instance --
and even less on distinguishing between "digital" and "analog,"
"material" and "immaterial." Even in the digital condition, the analog
has not gone away. Rather, it has been re-evaluated and even partially
upgraded. The immaterial, moreover, is never entirely without
materiality. On the contrary, the fleeting impulses of digital
communication depend on global and unmistakably material infrastructures
that extend from mines beneath the surface of the earth, from which rare
earth metals are extracted, all the way into outer space, where
satellites are circling around above us. Such things may be ignored
because they are outside the experience of everyday life, but that does
not mean that they have disappeared or that they are of any less
significance. "Digital" thus refers to historically new possibilities
for constituting and connecting various human and non-human actors,
which is not limited to digital media but rather appears everywhere as a
relational paradigm that alters the realm of possibility for numerous
materials and actors. My understanding of the digital thus approximates
the concept of the "post-digital," which has been gaining currency over
the past few years within critical media cultures. Here, too, the
distinction between "new" and "old" media and all of the ideological
baggage associated with it -- for instance, that the new represents the
future while the old represents the past -- have been rejected. The
aesthetic projects that continue to define the image of the "digital" --
immateriality, perfection, and virtuality -- have likewise been
discarded.[^8^](#f6-note-0008){#f6-note-0008a} Above all, the
"post-digital" is a critical response to this techno-utopian aesthetic
and its attendant economic and political perspectives. According to the
cultural theorist Florian Cramer, the concept accommodates the fact that
"new ethical and cultural conventions which became mainstream with
internet communities and open-source culture are being retroactively
applied to the making of non-digital and post-digital media
products."[^9^](#f6-note-0009){#f6-note-0009a} He thus cites the trend
that process-based practices oriented toward open interaction, which
first developed within digital media, have since begun to appear in more
and more contexts and in an increasing number of
materials.[^10[]{#Page_9 type="pagebreak"
title="9"}^](#f6-note-0010){#f6-note-0010a}

For the historical, cultural-theoretical, and political perspectives
developed in this book, however, the concept of the post-digital is
somewhat problematic, for it requires the narrow context of media art
and its fixation on technology in order to become a viable
counter-position. Without this context, certain misunderstandings are
impossible to avoid. The prefix "post-," for instance, is often
interpreted in the sense that something is over or that we have at least
grasped the matters at hand and can thus turn to something new. The
opposite is true. The most enduringly relevant developments are only now
beginning to adopt a specific form, long after digital infrastructures
and the practices made popular by them have become part of our everyday
lives. Or, as the communication theorist and consultant Clay Shirky puts
it, "Communication tools don\'t get socially interesting until they get
technologically boring."[^11^](#f6-note-0011){#f6-note-0011a} For it is
only today, now that our fascination for this technology has waned and
its promises sound hollow, that culture and society are being defined by
the digital condition in a comprehensive sense. Before, this was the
case in just a few limited spheres. It is this hybridization and
solidification of the digital -- the presence of the digital beyond
digital media -- that lends the digital condition its dominance. As to
the concrete realities in which these things will materialize, this is
currently being decided in an open and ongoing process. The aim of this
book is to contribute to our understanding of this process.[]{#Page_10
type="pagebreak" title="10"}
:::

::: {.section .notesSet type="rearnotes"}
[]{#notesSet}Notes {#f6-ntgp-9999}
------------------

::: {.section .notesList}
[1](#f6-note-0001a){#f6-note-0001}  Dan Biddle, "Five Million Tweets for
\#Eurovision 2014," *Twitter UK* (May 11, 2014), online.

[2](#f6-note-0002a){#f6-note-0002}  Ministerium für Kultus, Jugend und
Sport -- Baden-Württemberg, "Bildungsplanreform 2015/2016 -- Verankerung
von Leitprinzipien," online \[--trans.\].

[3](#f6-note-0003a){#f6-note-0003}  As early as 1995, Wolfgang Coy
suggested that McLuhan\'s metaphor should be supplanted by the concept
of the "Turing Galaxy," but this never caught on. See his introduction
to the German edition of *The Gutenberg Galaxy*: "Von der Gutenbergschen
zur Turingschen Galaxis: Jenseits von Buchdruck und Fernsehen," in
Marshall McLuhan, *Die Gutenberg Galaxis: Das Ende des Buchzeitalters*,
(Cologne: Addison-Wesley, 1995), pp. vii--xviii.[]{#Page_176
type="pagebreak" title="176"}

[4](#f6-note-0004a){#f6-note-0004}  According to the analysis of the
Spanish sociologist Manuel Castells, this crisis began almost
simultaneously in highly developed capitalist and socialist societies,
and it did so for the same reason: the paradigm of "industrialism" had
reached the limits of its productivity. Unlike the capitalist societies,
which were flexible enough to tame the crisis and reorient their
economies, the socialism of the 1970s and 1980s experienced stagnation
until it ultimately, in a belated effort to reform, collapsed. See
Manuel Castells, *End of Millennium*, 2nd edn (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell,
2010), pp. 5--68.

[5](#f6-note-0005a){#f6-note-0005}  Felix Stalder, *Der Autor am Ende
der Gutenberg Galaxis* (Zurich: Buch & Netz, 2014).

[6](#f6-note-0006a){#f6-note-0006}  For my preliminary thoughts on this
topic, see Felix Stalder, "Autonomy and Control in the Era of
Post-Privacy," *Open: Cahier on Art and the Public Domain* 19 (2010):
78--86; and idem, "Privacy Is Not the Antidote to Surveillance,"
*Surveillance & Society* 1 (2002): 120--4. For a discussion of these
approaches, see the working paper by Maja van der Velden, "Personal
Autonomy in a Post-Privacy World: A Feminist Technoscience Perspective"
(2011), online.

[7](#f6-note-0007a){#f6-note-0007}  Accordingly, the "new social" media
are mass media in the sense that they influence broadly disseminated
patterns of social relations and thus shape society as much as the
traditional mass media had done before them.

[8](#f6-note-0008a){#f6-note-0008}  Kim Cascone, "The Aesthetics of
Failure: 'Post-Digital' Tendencies in Contemporary Computer Music,"
*Computer Music Journal* 24/2 (2000): 12--18.

[9](#f6-note-0009a){#f6-note-0009}  Florian Cramer, "What Is
'Post-Digital'?" *Post-Digital Research* 3 (2014), online.

[10](#f6-note-0010a){#f6-note-0010}  In the field of visual arts,
similar considerations have been made regarding "post-internet art." See
Artie Vierkant, "The Image Object Post-Internet,"
[jstchillin.org](http://jstchillin.org) (December 2010), online; and Ian
Wallace, "What Is Post-Internet Art? Understanding the Revolutionary New
Art Movement," *Artspace* (March 18, 2014), online.

[11](#f6-note-0011a){#f6-note-0011}  Clay Shirky, *Here Comes Everybody:
The Power of Organizing without Organizations* (New York: Penguin,
2008), p. 105.
:::
:::

[I]{.chapterNumber} [Evolution]{.chapterTitle} {#c1}

=

::: {.section}
Many authors have interpreted the new cultural realities that
characterize our daily lives as a direct consequence of technological
developments: the internet is to blame! This assumption is not only
empirically untenable; it also leads to a problematic assessment of the
current situation. Apparatuses are represented as "central actors," and
this suggests that new technologies have suddenly revolutionized a
situation that had previously been stable. Depending on one\'s point of
view, this is then regarded as "a blessing or a
curse."[^1^](#c1-note-0001){#c1-note-0001a} A closer examination,
however, reveals an entirely different picture. Established cultural
practices and social institutions had already been witnessing the
erosion of their self-evident justification and legitimacy, long before
they were faced with new technologies and the corresponding demands
these make on individuals. Moreover, the allegedly new types of
coordination and cooperation are also not so new after all. Many of them
have existed for a long time. At first most of them were totally
separate from the technologies for which, later on, they would become
relevant. It is only in retrospect that these developments can be
identified as beginnings, and it can be seen that much of what we regard
today as novel or revolutionary was in fact introduced at the margins of
society, in cultural niches that were unnoticed by the dominant actors
and institutions. The new technologies thus evolved against a
[]{#Page_11 type="pagebreak" title="11"}background of processes of
societal transformation that were already under way. They could only
have been developed once a vision of their potential had been
formulated, and they could only have been disseminated where demand for
them already existed. This demand was created by social, political, and
economic crises, which were themselves initiated by changes that were
already under way. The new technologies seemed to provide many differing
and promising answers to the urgent questions that these crises had
prompted. It was thus a combination of positive vision and pressure that
motivated a great variety of actors to change, at times with
considerable effort, the established processes, mature institutions, and
their own behavior. They intended to appropriate, for their own
projects, the various and partly contradictory possibilities that they
saw in these new technologies. Only then did a new technological
infrastructure arise.

This, in turn, created the preconditions for previously independent
developments to come together, strengthening one another and enabling
them to spread beyond the contexts in which they had originated. Thus,
they moved from the margins to the center of culture. And by
intensifying the crisis of previously established cultural forms and
institutions, they became dominant and established new forms and
institutions of their own.
:::

::: {.section}
The Expansion of the Social Basis of Culture {#c1-sec-0002}
--------------------------------------------

Watching television discussions from the 1950s and 1960s today, one is
struck not only by the billows of cigarette smoke in the studio but also
by the homogeneous spectrum of participants. Usually, it was a group of
white and heteronormatively behaving men speaking with one
another,[^2^](#c1-note-0002){#c1-note-0002a} as these were the people
who held the important institutional positions in the centers of the
West. As a rule, those involved were highly specialized representatives
from the cultural, economic, scientific, and political spheres. Above
all, they were legitimized to appear in public to articulate their
opinions, which were to be regarded by others as relevant and worthy of
discussion. They presided over the important debates of their time. With
few exceptions, other actors and their deviant opinions -- there
[]{#Page_12 type="pagebreak" title="12"}has never been a time without
them -- were either not taken seriously at all or were categorized as
indecent, incompetent, perverse, irrelevant, backward, exotic, or
idiosyncratic.[^3^](#c1-note-0003){#c1-note-0003a} Even at that time,
the social basis of culture was beginning to expand, though the actors
at the center of the discourse had failed to notice this. Communicative
and cultural pro­cesses were gaining significance in more and more
places, and excluded social groups were self-consciously developing
their own language in order to intervene in the discourse. The rise of
the knowledge economy, the increasingly loud critique of
heteronormativity, and a fundamental cultural critique posed by
post-colonialism enabled a greater number of people to participate in
public discussions. In what follows, I will subject each of these three
phenomena to closer examin­ation. In order to do justice to their
complexity, I will treat them on different levels: I will depict the
rise of the knowledge economy as a structural change in labor; I will
reconstruct the critique of heteronormativity by outlining the origins
and transformations of the gay movement in West Germany; and I will
discuss post-colonialism as a theory that introduced new concepts of
cultural multiplicity and hybridization -- concepts that are now
influencing the digital condition far beyond the limits of the
post-colonial discourse, and often without any reference to this
discourse at all.

::: {.section}
### The growth of the knowledge economy {#c1-sec-0003}

At the beginning of the 1950s, the Austrian-American economist Fritz
Machlup was immersed in his study of the polit­ical economy of
monopoly.[^4^](#c1-note-0004){#c1-note-0004a} Among other things, he was
concerned with patents and copyright law. In line with the neo-classical
Austrian School, he considered both to be problematic (because
state-created) monopolies.[^5^](#c1-note-0005){#c1-note-0005a} The
longer he studied the monopoly of the patent system in particular, the
more far-reaching its consequences seemed to him. He maintained that the
patent system was intertwined with something that might be called the
"economy of invention" -- ultimately, patentable insights had to be
produced in the first place -- and that this was in turn part of a much
larger economy of knowledge. The latter encompassed government agencies
as well as institutions of education, research, and development
[]{#Page_13 type="pagebreak" title="13"}(that is, schools, universities,
and certain corporate laboratories), which had been increasing steadily
in number since Roosevelt\'s New Deal. Yet it also included the
expanding media sector and those industries that were responsible for
providing technical infrastructure. Machlup subsumed all of these
institutions and sectors under the concept of the "knowledge economy," a
term of his own invention. Their common feature was that essential
aspects of their activities consisted in communicating things to other
people ("telling anyone anything," as he put it). Thus, the employees
were not only recipients of information or instructions; rather, in one
way or another, they themselves communicated, be it merely as a
secretary who typed up, edited, and forwarded a piece of shorthand
dictation. In his book *The Production and Distribution of Knowledge in
the United States*, published in 1962, Machlup gathered empirical
material to demonstrate that the American economy had entered a new
phase that was distinguished by the production, exchange, and
application of abstract, codified
knowledge.[^6^](#c1-note-0006){#c1-note-0006a} This opinion was no
longer entirely novel at the time, but it had never before been
presented in such an empirically detailed and comprehensive
manner.[^7^](#c1-note-0007){#c1-note-0007a} The extent of the knowledge
economy surprised Machlup himself: in his book, he concluded that as
much as 43 percent of all labor activity was already engaged in this
sector. This high number came about because, until then, no one had put
forward the idea of understanding such a variety of activities as a
single unit.

Machlup\'s categorization was indeed quite innovative, for the dynamics
that propelled the sectors that he associated with one another not only
were very different but also had originated as an integral component in
the development of the industrial production of goods. They were more of
an extension of such production than a break with it. The production and
circulation of goods had been expanding and accelerating as early as the
nineteenth century, though at highly divergent rates from one region or
sector to another. New markets were created in order to distribute goods
that were being produced in greater numbers; new infrastructure for
transportation and communication was established in order to serve these
large markets, which were mostly in the form of national territories
(including their colonies). This []{#Page_14 type="pagebreak"
title="14"}enabled even larger factories to be built in order to
exploit, to an even greater extent, the cost advantages of mass
production. In order to control these complex processes, new professions
arose with different types of competencies and working conditions. The
office became a workplace for an increasing number of people -- men and
women alike -- who, in one form or another, had something to do with
information processing and communication. Yet all of this required not
only new management techniques. Production and products also became more
complex, so that entire corporate sectors had to be restructured.
Whereas the first decisive inventions of the industrial era were still
made by more or less educated tinkerers, during the last third of the
nineteenth century, invention itself came to be institutionalized. In
Germany, Siemens (founded in 1847 as the Telegraphen-Bauanstalt von
Siemens & Halske) exemplifies this transformation. Within 50 years, a
company that began in a proverbial workshop in a Berlin backyard became
a multinational high-tech corporation. It was in such corporate
laboratories, which were established around the year 1900, that the
"industrialization of invention" or the "scientification of industrial
production" took place.[^8^](#c1-note-0008){#c1-note-0008a} In other
words, even the processes employed in factories and the goods that they
produced became knowledge-intensive. Their invention, planning, and
production required a steadily growing expansion of activities, which
today we would refer to as research and development. The informatization
of the economy -- the acceleration of mass production, the comprehensive
application of scientific methods to the organization of labor, and the
central role of research and development in industry -- was hastened
enormously by a world war that was waged on an industrial scale to an
extent that had never been seen before.

Another important factor for the increasing significance of the
knowledge economy was the development of the consumer society. Over the
course of the last third of the nineteenth century, despite dramatic
regional and social disparities, an increasing number of people profited
from the economic growth that the Industrial Revolution had instigated.
Wages increased and basic needs were largely met, so that a new social
stratum arose, the middle class, which was able to spend part of its
income on other things. But on what? First, []{#Page_15 type="pagebreak"
title="15"}new needs had to be created. The more production capacities
increased, the more they had to be rethought in terms of consumption.
Thus, in yet another way, the economy became more knowledge-intensive.
It was now necessary to become familiar with, understand, and stimulate
the interests and preferences of consumers, in order to entice them to
purchase products that they did not urgently need. This knowledge did
little to enhance the material or logistical complexity of goods or
their production; rather, it was reflected in the increasingly extensive
communication about and through these goods. The beginnings of this
development were captured by Émile Zola in his 1883 novel *The Ladies\'
Paradise*, which was set in the new world of a semi-fictitious
department store bearing that name. In its opening scene, the young
protagonist Denise Baudu and her brother Jean, both of whom have just
moved to Paris from a provincial town, encounter for the first time the
artfully arranged women\'s clothing -- exhibited with all sorts of
tricks involving lighting, mirrors, and mannequins -- in the window
displays of the store. The sensuality of the staged goods is so
overwhelming that both of them are not only struck dumb, but Jean even
"blushes."

It was the economy of affects that brought blood to Jean\'s cheeks. At
that time, strategies for attracting the attention of customers did not
yet have a scientific and systematic basis. Just as the first inventions
in the age of industrialization were made by amateurs, so too was the
economy of affects developed intuitively and gradually rather than as a
planned or conscious paradigm shift. That it was possible to induce and
direct affects by means of targeted communication was the pioneering
discovery of the Austrian-American Edward Bernays. During the 1920s, he
combined the ideas of his uncle Sigmund Freud about unconscious
motivations with the sociological research methods of opinion surveys to
form a new discipline: market
research.[^9^](#c1-note-0009){#c1-note-0009a} It became the scientific
basis of a new field of activity, which he at first called "propa­ganda"
but then later referred to as "public
relations."[^10^](#c1-note-0010){#c1-note-0010a} Public communication,
be it for economic or political ends, was now placed on a systematic
foundation that came to distance itself more and more from the pure
"conveyance of information." Communication became a strategic field for
corporate and political disputes, and the mass media []{#Page_16
type="pagebreak" title="16"}became their locus of negotiation. Between
1880 and 1917, for instance, commercial advertising costs in the United
States increased by more than 800 percent, and the leading advertising
firms, using the same techniques with which they attracted consumers to
products, were successful in selling to the American public the idea of
their nation entering World War I. Thus, a media industry in the modern
sense was born, and it expanded along with the rapidly growing market
for advertising.[^11^](#c1-note-0011){#c1-note-0011a}

In his studies of labor markets conducted at the beginning of the 1960s,
Machlup brought these previously separ­ate developments together and
thus explained the existence of an already advanced knowledge economy in
the United States. His arguments fell on extremely fertile soil, for an
intellectual transformation had taken place in other areas of science as
well. A few years earlier, for instance, cybernetics had given the
concepts "information" and "communication" their first scientifically
precise (if somewhat idiosyncratic) definitions and had assigned to them
a position of central importance in all scientific disciplines, not to
mention life in general.[^12^](#c1-note-0012){#c1-note-0012a} Machlup\'s
investigation seemed to confirm this in the case of the economy, given
that the knowledge economy was primarily concerned with information and
communication. Since then, numerous analyses, formulas, and slogans have
repeated, modified, refined, and criticized the idea that the
knowledge-based activities of the economy have become increasingly
important. In the 1970s this discussion was associated above all with
the notion of the "post-industrial
society,"[^13^](#c1-note-0013){#c1-note-0013a} in the 1980s the guiding
idea was the "information society,"[^14^](#c1-note-0014){#c1-note-0014a}
and in the 1990s the debate revolved around the "network
society"[^15^](#c1-note-0015){#c1-note-0015a} -- to name just the most
popular concepts. What these approaches have in common is that they each
diagnose a comprehensive societal transformation that, as regards the
creation of economic value or jobs, has shifted the balance from
productive to communicative activ­ities. Accordingly, they presuppose
that we know how to distinguish the former from the latter. This is not
unproblematic, however, because in practice the two are usually tightly
intertwined. Moreover, whoever maintains that communicative activities
have taken the place of industrial production in our society has adopted
a very narrow point of []{#Page_17 type="pagebreak" title="17"}view.
Factory jobs have not simply disappeared; they have just been partially
relocated outside of Western economies. The assertion that communicative
activities are somehow of "greater value" hardly chimes with the reality
of today\'s new "service jobs," many of which pay no more than the
minimum wage.[^16^](#c1-note-0016){#c1-note-0016a} Critiques of this
sort, however, have done little to reduce the effectiveness of this
analysis -- especially its political effectiveness -- for it does more
than simply describe a condition. It also contains a set of political
instructions that imply or directly demand that precisely those sectors
should be promoted that it considers economically promising, and that
society should be reorganized accordingly. Since the 1970s, there has
thus been a feedback loop between scientific analysis and political
agendas. More often than not, it is hardly possible to distinguish
between the two. Especially in Britain and the United States, the
economic transformation of the 1980s was imposed insistently and with
political calculation (the weakening of labor unions).

There are, however, important differences between the developments of
the so-called "post-industrial society" of the 1970s and those of the
so-called "network society" of the 1990s, even if both terms are
supposed to stress the increased significance of information, knowledge,
and communication. With regard to the digital condition, the most
important of these differences are the greater flexibility of economic
activity in general and employment relations in particular, as well as
the dismantling of social security systems. Neither phenomenon played
much of a role in analyses of the early 1970s. The development since
then can be traced back to two currents that could not seem more
different from one another. At first, flexibility was demanded in the
name of a critique of the value system imposed by bureaucratic-bourgeois
society (including the traditional organization of the workforce). It
originated in the new social movements that had formed in the late
1960s. Later on, toward the end of the 1970s, it then became one of the
central points of the neoliberal critique of the welfare state. With
completely different motives, both sides sang the praises of autonomy
and spontaneity while rejecting the disciplinary nature of hierarchical
organization. They demanded individuality and diversity rather than
conformity to prescribed roles. Experimentation, openness to []{#Page_18
type="pagebreak" title="18"}new ideas, flexibility, and change were now
established as fundamental values with positive connotations. Both
movements operated with the attractive idea of personal freedom. The new
social movements understood this in a social sense as the freedom of
personal development and coexistence, whereas neoliberals understood it
in an economic sense as the freedom of the market. In the 1980s, the
neoliberal ideas prevailed in large part because some of the values,
strategies, and methods propagated by the new social movements were
removed from their political context and appropriated in order to
breathe new life -- a "new spirit" -- into capitalism and thus to rescue
industrial society from its crisis.[^17^](#c1-note-0017){#c1-note-0017a}
An army of management consultants, restructuring experts, and new
companies began to promote flat hierarchies, self-responsibility, and
innovation; with these aims in mind, they set about reorganizing large
corporations into small and flexible units. Labor and leisure were no
longer supposed to be separated, for all aspects of a given person could
be integrated into his or her work. In order to achieve economic success
in this new capitalism, it became necessary for every individual to
identify himself or herself with his or her profession. Large
corporations were restructured in such a way that entire departments
found themselves transformed into independent "profit centers." This
happened in the name of creating more leeway for decision-making and of
optimizing the entrepreneurial spirit on all levels, the goals being to
increase value creation and to provide management with more fine-grained
powers of intervention. These measures, in turn, created the need for
computers and the need for them to be networked. Large corporations
reacted in this way to the emergence of highly specialized small
companies which, by networking and cooperating with other firms,
succeeded in quickly and flexibly exploiting niches in the expanding
global markets. In the management literature of the 1980s, the
catchphrases for this were "company networks" and "flexible
specialization."[^18^](#c1-note-0018){#c1-note-0018a} By the middle of
the 1990s, the sociologist Manuel Castells was able to conclude that the
actual productive entity was no longer the individual company but rather
the network consisting of companies and corporate divisions of various
sizes. In Castells\'s estimation, the decisive advantage of the network
is its ability to customize its elements and their configuration
[]{#Page_19 type="pagebreak" title="19"}to suit the rapidly changing
requirements of the "project" at
hand.[^19^](#c1-note-0019){#c1-note-0019a} Aside from a few exceptions,
companies in their trad­itional forms came to function above all as
strategic control centers and as economic and legal units.

This economic structural transformation was already well under way when
the internet emerged as a mass medium around the turn of the millennium.
As a consequence, change became more radical and penetrated into an
increasing number of areas of value creation. The political agenda
oriented itself toward the vision of "creative industries," a concept
developed in 1997 by the newly elected British government under Tony
Blair. A Creative Industries Task Force was established right away, and
its first step was to identify "those activities which have their
origins in individual creativity, skill and talent and which have the
potential for wealth and job creation through the generation and
exploit­ation of intellectual
property."[^20^](#c1-note-0020){#c1-note-0020a} Like Fritz Machlup at
the beginning of the 1960s, the task force brought together existing
areas of activity into a new category. Such activities included
advertising, computer games, architecture, music, arts and antique
markets, publishing, design, software and computer services, fashion,
television and radio, and film and video. The latter were elevated to
matters of political importance on account of their potential to create
wealth and jobs. Not least because of this clever presentation of
categories -- no distinction was made between the BBC, an almighty
public-service provider, and fledgling companies in precarious
circumstances -- it was possible to proclaim not only that the creative
industries were contributing a relevant portion of the nation\'s
economic output, but also that this sector was growing at an especially
fast rate. It was reported that, in London, the creative industries were
already responsible for one out of every five new jobs. When compared
with traditional terms of employment as regards income, benefits, and
prospects for advancement, however, many of these positions entailed a
considerable downgrade for the employees in question (who were now
treated as independent contractors). This fact was either ignored or
explicitly interpreted as a sign of the sector\'s particular
dynamism.[^21^](#c1-note-0021){#c1-note-0021a} Around the turn of the
new millennium, the idea that individual creativity plays a central role
in the economy was given further traction by []{#Page_20
type="pagebreak" title="20"}the sociologist and consultant Richard
Florida, who argued that creativity was essential to the future of
cities and even announced the rise of the "creative class." As to the
preconditions that have to be met in order to tap into this source of
wealth, he devised a simple formula that would be easy for municipal
bureaucrats to understand: "technology, tolerance and talent." Talent,
as defined by Florida, is based on individual creativity and education
and manifests itself in the ability to generate new jobs. He was thus
able to declare talent a central element of economic
growth.[^22^](#c1-note-0022){#c1-note-0022a} In order to "unleash" these
resources, what we need in addition to technology is, above all,
tolerance; that is, "an open culture -- one that does not discriminate,
does not force people into boxes, allows us to be ourselves, and
validates various forms of family and of human
identity."[^23^](#c1-note-0023){#c1-note-0023a}

The idea that a public welfare state should ensure the social security
of individuals was considered obsolete. Collective institutions, which
could have provided a degree of stability for people\'s lifestyles, were
dismissed or regarded as bureaucratic obstacles. The more or less
directly evoked role model for all of this was the individual artist,
who was understood as an individual entrepreneur, a sort of genius
suitable for the masses. For Florida, a central problem was that,
according to his own calculations, only about a third of the people
living in North American and European cities were working in the
"creative sector," while the innate creativity of everyone else was
going to waste. Even today, the term "creative industry," along with the
assumption that the internet will provide increased opportunities,
serves to legitimize the effort to restructure all areas of the economy
according to the needs of the knowledge economy and to privilege the
network over the institution. In times of social cutbacks and empty
public purses, especially in municipalities, this message was warmly
received. One mayor, who as the first openly gay top politician in
Germany exemplified tolerance for diverse lifestyles, even adopted the
slogan "poor but sexy" for his city. Everyone was supposed to exploit
his or her own creativity to discover new niches and opportunities for
monet­ization -- a magic formula that was supposed to bring about a new
urban revival. Today there is hardly a city in Europe that does not
issue a report about its creative economy, []{#Page_21 type="pagebreak"
title="21"}and nearly all of these reports cite, directly or indirectly,
Richard Florida.

As already seen in the context of the knowledge economy, so too in the
case of creative industries do measurable social change, wishful
thinking, and political agendas blend together in such a way that it is
impossible to identify a single cause for the developments taking place.
The consequences, however, are significant. Over the last two
generations, the demands of the labor market have fundamentally changed.
Higher education and the ability to acquire new knowledge independently
are now, to an increasing extent, required and expected as
qualifications and personal attributes. The desired or enforced ability
to be flexible at work, the widespread cooperation across institutions,
the uprooted nature of labor, and the erosion of collective models for
social security have displaced many activities, which once took place
within clearly defined institutional or personal limits, into a new
interstitial space that is neither private nor public in the classical
sense. This is the space of networks, communities, and informal
cooperation -- the space of sharing and exchange that has since been
enabled by the emergence of ubiquitous digital communication. It allows
an increasing number of people, whether willingly or otherwise, to
envision themselves as active producers of information, knowledge,
capability, and meaning. And because it is associated in various ways
with the space of market-based exchange and with the bourgeois political
sphere, it has lasting effects on both. This interstitial space becomes
all the more important as fewer people are willing or able to rely on
traditional institutions for their economic security. For, within it,
personal and digital-based networks can and must be developed as
alternatives, regardless of whether they prove sustainable for the long
term. As a result, more and more actors, each with their own claims to
meaning, have been rushing away from the private personal sphere into
this new interstitial space. By now, this has become such a normal
practice that whoever is *not* active in this ever-expanding
interstitial space, which is rapidly becoming the main social sphere --
whoever, that is, lacks a publicly visible profile on social mass media
like Facebook, or does not number among those producing information and
meaning and is thus so inconspicuous online as []{#Page_22
type="pagebreak" title="22"}to yield no search results -- now stands out
in a negative light (or, in far fewer cases, acquires a certain prestige
on account of this very absence).
:::

::: {.section}
### The erosion of heteronormativity {#c1-sec-0004}

In this (sometimes more, sometimes less) public space for the continuous
production of social meaning (and its exploit­ation), there is no
question that the professional middle class is
over-represented.[^24^](#c1-note-0024){#c1-note-0024a} It would be
short-sighted, however, to reduce those seeking autonomy and the
recognition of individuality and social diversity to the role of poster
children for the new spirit of
capitalism.[^25^](#c1-note-0025){#c1-note-0025a} The new social
movements, for instance, initiated a social shift that has allowed an
increasing number of people to demand, if nothing else, the right to
participate in social life in a self-determined manner; that is,
according to their own standards and values.

Especially effective was the critique of patriarchal and heteronormative
power relations, modes of conduct, and
identities.[^26^](#c1-note-0026){#c1-note-0026a} In the context of the
political upheavals at the end of the 1960s, the new women\'s and gay
movements developed into influential actors. Their greatest achievement
was to establish alternative cultural forms, lifestyles, and strategies
of action in or around the mainstream of society. How this was done can
be demonstrated by tracing, for example, the development of the gay
movement in West Germany.

In the fall of 1969, the liberalization of Paragraph 175 of the German
Criminal Code came into effect. From then on, sexual activity between
adult men was no longer punishable by law (women were not mentioned in
this context). For the first time, a man could now express himself as a
homosexual outside of semi-private space without immediately being
exposed to the risk of criminal prosecution. This was a necessary
precondition for the ability to defend one\'s own rights. As early as
1971, the struggle for the recognition of gay life experiences reached
the broader public when Rosa von Praunheim\'s film *It Is Not the
Homosexual Who Is Perverse, but the Society in Which He Lives* was
screened at the Berlin International Film Festival and then, shortly
thereafter, broadcast on public television in North Rhine-Westphalia.
The film, which is firmly situated in the agitprop tradition,
[]{#Page_23 type="pagebreak" title="23"}follows a young provincial man
through the various milieus of Berlin\'s gay subcultures: from a
monogamous relationship to nightclubs and public bathrooms until, at the
end, he is enlightened by a political group of men who explain that it
is not possible to lead a free life in a niche, as his own emancipation
can only be achieved by a transformation of society as a whole. The film
closes with a not-so-subtle call to action: "Out of the closets, into
the streets!" Von Praunheim understood this emancipation to be a process
that encompassed all areas of life and had to be carried out in public;
it could only achieve success, moreover, in solidarity with other
freedom movements such as the Black Panthers in the United States and
the new women\'s movement. The goal, according to this film, is to
articulate one\'s own identity as a specific and differentiated identity
with its own experiences, values, and reference systems, and to anchor
this identity within a society that not only tolerates it but also
recognizes it as having equal validity.

At first, however, the film triggered vehement controversies, even
within the gay scene. The objection was that it attacked the gay
subculture, which was not yet prepared to defend itself publicly against
discrimination. Despite or (more likely) because of these controversies,
more than 50 groups of gay activists soon formed in Germany. Such
groups, largely composed of left-wing alternative students, included,
for instance, the Homosexuelle Aktion Westberlin (HAW) and the Rote
Zelle Schwul (RotZSchwul) in Frankfurt am
Main.[^27^](#c1-note-0027){#c1-note-0027a} One focus of their activities
was to have Paragraph 175 struck entirely from the legal code (which was
not achieved until 1994). This cause was framed within a general
struggle to overcome patriarchy and capitalism. At the earliest gay
demonstrations in Germany, which took place in Münster in April 1972,
protesters rallied behind the following slogan: "Brothers and sisters,
gay or not, it is our duty to fight capitalism." This was understood as
a necessary subordination to the greater struggle against what was known
in the terminology of left-wing radical groups as the "main
contradiction" of capitalism (that between capital and labor), and it
led to strident differences within the gay movement. The dispute
escalated during the next year. After the so-called *Tuntenstreit*, or
"Battle of the Queens," which was []{#Page_24 type="pagebreak"
title="24"}initiated by activists from Italy and France who had appeared
in drag at the closing ceremony of the HAW\'s Spring Meeting in West
Berlin, the gay movement was divided, or at least moving in a new
direction. At the heart of the matter were the following questions: "Is
there an inherent (many speak of an autonomous) position that gays hold
with respect to the issue of homosexuality? Or can a position on
homosexuality only be derived in association with the traditional
workers\' movement?"[^28^](#c1-note-0028){#c1-note-0028a} In other
words, was discrimination against homosexuality part of the social
divide caused by capitalism (that is, one of its "ancillary
contradictions") and thus only to be overcome by overcoming capitalism
itself, or was it something unrelated to the "essence" of capitalism, an
independent conflict requiring different strategies and methods? This
conflict could never be fully resolved, but the second position, which
was more interested in overcoming legal, social, and cultural
discrimination than in struggling against economic exploitation, and
which focused specifically on the social liberation of gays, proved to
be far more dynamic in the long term. This was not least because both
the old and new left were themselves not free of homophobia and because
the entire radical student movement of the 1970s fell into crisis.

Over the course of the 1970s and 1980s, "aesthetic self-empowerment" was
realized through the efforts of artistic and (increasingly) commercial
producers of images, texts, and
sounds.[^29^](#c1-note-0029){#c1-note-0029a} Activists, artists, and
intellectuals developed a language with which they could speak
assertively in public about topics that had previously been taboo.
Inspired by the expression "gay pride," which originated in the United
States, they began to use the term *schwul* ("gay"), which until then
had possessed negative connotations, with growing confidence. They
founded numerous gay and lesbian cultural initiatives, theaters,
publishing houses, magazines, bookstores, meeting places, and other
associations in order to counter the misleading or (in their eyes)
outright false representations of the mass media with their own
multifarious media productions. In doing so, they typically followed a
dual strategy: on the one hand, they wanted to create a space for the
members of the movement in which it would be possible to formulate and
live different identities; on the other hand, they were fighting to be
accepted by society at large. While []{#Page_25 type="pagebreak"
title="25"}a broader and broader spectrum of gay positions, experiences,
and aesthetics was becoming visible to the public, the connection to
left-wing radical contexts became weaker. Founded as early as 1974, and
likewise in West Berlin, the General Homosexual Working Group
(Allgemeine Homosexuelle Arbeitsgemeinschaft) sought to integrate gay
politics into mainstream society by defining the latter -- on the basis
of bourgeois, individual rights -- as a "politics of
anti-discrimination." These efforts achieved a milestone in 1980 when,
in the run-up to the parliamentary election, a podium discussion was
held with representatives of all major political parties on the topic of
the law governing sexual offences. The discussion took place in the
Beethovenhalle in Bonn, which was the largest venue for political events
in the former capital. Several participants considered the event to be a
"disaster,"[^30^](#c1-note-0030){#c1-note-0030a} for it revived a number
of internal conflicts (not least that between revolutionary and
integrative positions). Yet the fact remains that representatives were
present from every political party, and this alone was indicative of an
unprecedented amount of public awareness for those demanding equal
rights.

The struggle against discrimination and for social recognition reached
an entirely new level of urgency with the outbreak of HIV/AIDS. In 1983,
the magazine *Der Spiegel* devoted its first cover story to the disease,
thus bringing it to the awareness of the broader public. In the same
year, the non-profit organization Deutsche Aids-Hilfe was founded to
prevent further cases of discrimination, for *Der Spiegel* was not the
only publication at the time to refer to AIDS as a "homosexual
epidemic."[^31^](#c1-note-0031){#c1-note-0031a} The struggle against
HIV/AIDS required a comprehensive mobilization. Funding had to be raised
in order to deal with the social repercussions of the epidemic, to teach
people about safe sexual practices for everyone and to direct research
toward discovering causes and developing potential cures. The immediate
threat that AIDS represented, especially while so little was known about
the illness and its treatment remained a distant hope, created an
impetus for mobilization that led to alliances between the gay movement,
the healthcare system, and public authorities. Thus, the AIDS Inquiry
Committee, sponsored by the conservative Christian Democratic Union,
concluded in 1988 that, in the fight against the illness, "the
homosexual subculture is []{#Page_26 type="pagebreak"
title="26"}especially important. This informal structure should
therefore neither be impeded nor repressed but rather, on the contrary,
recognized and supported."[^32^](#c1-note-0032){#c1-note-0032a} The AIDS
crisis proved to be a catalyst for advancing the integration of gays
into society and for expanding what could be regarded as acceptable
lifestyles, opinions, and cultural practices. As a consequence,
homosexuals began to appear more frequently in the media, though their
presence would never match that of hetero­sexuals. As of 1985, the
television show *Lindenstraße* featured an openly gay protagonist, and
the first kiss between men was aired in 1987. The episode still provoked
a storm of protest -- Bayerische Rundfunk refused to broadcast it a
second time -- but this was already a rearguard action and the
integration of gays (and lesbians) into the social mainstream continued.
In 1993, the first gay and lesbian city festival took place in Berlin,
and the first Rainbow Parade was held in Vienna in 1996. In 2002, the
Cologne Pride Day involved 1.2 million participants and attendees, thus
surpassing for the first time the attendance at the traditional Rose
Monday parade. By the end of the 1990s, the sociologist Rüdiger Lautmann
was already prepared to maintain: "To be homosexual has become
increasingly normalized, even if homophobia lives on in the depths of
the collective disposition."[^33^](#c1-note-0033){#c1-note-0033a} This
normalization was also reflected in a study published by the Ministry of
Justice in the year 2000, which stressed "the similarity between
homosexual and heterosexual relationships" and, on this basis, made an
argument against discrimination.[^34^](#c1-note-0034){#c1-note-0034a}
Around the year 2000, however, the classical gay movement had already
passed its peak. A profound transformation had begun to take place in
the middle of the 1990s. It lost its character as a new social movement
(in the style of the 1970s) and began to splinter inwardly and
outwardly. One could say that it transformed from a mass movement into a
multitude of variously networked communities. The clearest sign of this
transformation is the abbreviation "LGBT" (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and
transgender), which, since the mid-1990s, has represented the internal
heterogeneity of the movement as it has shifted toward becoming a
network.[^35^](#c1-note-0035){#c1-note-0035a} At this point, the more
radical actors were already speaking against the normalization of
homosexuality. Queer theory, for example, was calling into question the
"essentialist" definition of gender []{#Page_27 type="pagebreak"
title="27"}-- that is, any definition reducing it to an immutable
essence -- with respect to both its physical dimension (sex) and its
social and cultural dimension (gender
proper).[^36^](#c1-note-0036){#c1-note-0036a} It thus opened up a space
for the articulation of experiences, self-descriptions, and lifestyles
that, on every level, are located beyond the classical attributions of
men and women. A new generation of intellectuals, activists, and artists
took the stage and developed -- yet again through acts of aesthetic
self-empowerment -- a language that enabled them to import, with
confidence, different self-definitions into the public sphere. An
example of this is the adoption of inclusive plural forms in German
(*Aktivist\_innen* "activists," *Künstler\_innen* "artists"), which draw
attention to the gaps and possibilities between male and female
identities that are also expressed in the language itself. Just as with
the terms "gay" or *schwul* some 30 years before, in this case, too, an
important element was the confident and public adoption and semantic
conversion of a formerly insulting word ("queer") by the very people and
communities against whom it used to be
directed.[^37^](#c1-note-0037){#c1-note-0037a} Likewise observable in
these developments was the simultaneity of social (amateur) and
artistic/scientific (professional) cultural production. The goal,
however, was less to produce a clear antithesis than it was to oppose
rigid attributions by underscoring mutability, hybridity, and
uniqueness. Both the scope of what could be expressed in public and the
circle of potential speakers expanded yet again. And, at least to some
extent, the drag queen Conchita Wurst popularized complex gender
constructions that went beyond the simple woman/man dualism. All of that
said, the assertion by Rüdiger Lautmann quoted above -- "homophobia
lives on in the depths of the collective dis­position" -- continued to
hold true.

If the gay movement is representative of the social liber­ation of the
1970s and 1980s, then it is possible to regard its transformation into
the LGBT movement during the 1990s -- with its multiplicity and fluidity
of identity models and its stress on mutability and hybridity -- as a
sign of the reinvention of this project within the context of an
increasingly dominant digital condition. With this transformation,
however, the diversification and fluidification of cultural practices
and social roles have not yet come to an end. Ways of life that were
initially subcultural and facing existential pressure []{#Page_28
type="pagebreak" title="28"}are gradually entering the mainstream. They
are expanding the range of readily available models of identity for
anyone who might be interested, be it with respect to family forms
(e.g., patchwork families, adoption by same-sex couples), diets (e.g.,
vegetarianism and veganism), healthcare (e.g., anti-vaccination), or
other principles of life and belief. All of them are seeking public
recognition for a new frame of reference for social meaning that has
originated from their own activity. This is necessarily a process
characterized by conflicts and various degrees of resistance, including
right-wing populism that seeks to defend "traditional values," but many
of these movements will ultimately succeed in providing more people with
the opportunity to speak in public, thus broadening the palette of
themes that are considered to be important and legitimate.
:::

::: {.section}
### Beyond center and periphery {#c1-sec-0005}

In order to reach a better understanding of the complexity involved in
the expanding social basis of cultural production, it is necessary to
shift yet again to a different level. For, just as it would be myopic to
examine the multiplication of cultural producers only in terms of
professional knowledge workers from the middle class, it would likewise
be insufficient to situate this multiplication exclusively in the
centers of the West. The entire system of categories that justified the
differentiation between the cultural "center" and the cultural
"periphery" has begun to falter. This complex and multilayered process
has been formulated and analyzed by the theory of "post-colonialism."
Long before digital media made the challenge of cultural multiplicity a
quotidian issue in the West, proponents of this theory had developed
languages and terminologies for negotiating different positions without
needing to impose a hierarchical order.

Since the 1970s, the theoretical current of post-colonialism has been
examining the cultural and epistemic dimensions of colonialism that,
even after its end as a territorial system, have remained responsible
for the continuation of dependent relations and power differentials. For
my purposes -- which are to develop a European perspective on the
factors ensuring that more and more people are able to participate in
cultural []{#Page_29 type="pagebreak" title="29"}production -- two
points are especially relevant because their effects reverberate in
Europe itself. First is the deconstruction of the categories "West" (in
the sense of the center) and "East" (in the sense of the periphery). And
second is the focus on hybridity as a specific way for non-Western
actors to deal with the dominant cultures of former colonial powers,
which have continued to determine significant portions of globalized
culture. The terms "West" and "East," "center" and "periphery," do not
simply describe existing conditions; rather, they are categories that
contribute, in an important way, to the creation of the very conditions
that they presume to describe. This may sound somewhat circular, but it
is precisely from this circularity that such cultural classifications
derive their strength. The world that they illuminate is immersed in
their own light. The category "East" -- or, to use the term of the
literary theorist Edward Said,
"orientalism"[^38^](#c1-note-0038){#c1-note-0038a} -- is a system of
representation that pervades Western thinking. Within this system,
Europe or the West (as the center) and the East (as the periphery)
represent asymmetrical and antithetical concepts. This construction
achieves a dual effect. As a self-description, on the one hand, it
contributes to the formation of our own identity, for Europeans
attrib­ute to themselves and to their continent such features as
"rationality," "order," and "progress," while on the other hand
identifying the alternative with "superstition," "chaos," or
"stagnation." The East, moreover, is used as an exotic projection screen
for our own suppressed desires. According to Said, a representational
system of this sort can only take effect if it becomes "hegemonic"; that
is, if it is perceived as self-evident and no longer as an act of
attribution but rather as one of description, even and precisely by
those against whom the system discriminates. Said\'s accomplishment is
to have worked out how far-reaching this system was and, in many areas,
it remains so today. It extended (and extends) from scientific
disciplines, whose researchers discussed (until the 1980s) the theory of
"oriental despotism,"[^39^](#c1-note-0039){#c1-note-0039a} to literature
and art -- the motif of the harem was especially popular, particularly
in paintings of the late nineteenth
century[^40^](#c1-note-0040){#c1-note-0040a} -- all the way to everyday
culture, where, as of 1913 in the United States, the cigarette brand
Camel (introduced to compete with the then-leading brand, Fatima) was
meant to evoke the []{#Page_30 type="pagebreak" title="30"}mystique and
sensuality of the Orient.[^41^](#c1-note-0041){#c1-note-0041a} This
system of representation, however, was more than a means of describing
oneself and others; it also served to legitimize the allocation of all
knowledge and agency on to one side, that of the West. Such an order was
not restricted to culture; it also created and legitimized a sense of
domination for colonial projects.[^42^](#c1-note-0042){#c1-note-0042a}
This cultural legitimation, as Said points out, also persists after the
end of formal colonial domination and continues to marginalize the
postcolonial subjects. As before, they are unable to speak for
themselves and therefore remain in the dependent periphery, which is
defined by their subordinate position in relation to the center. Said
directed the focus of critique to this arrangement of center and
periphery, which he saw as being (re)produced and legitimized on the
cultural level. From this arose the demand that everyone should have the
right to speak, to place him- or herself in the center. To achieve this,
it was necessary first of all to develop a language -- indeed, a
cultural landscape -- that can manage without a hegemonic center and is
thus oriented toward multiplicity instead of
uniformity.[^43^](#c1-note-0043){#c1-note-0043a}

A somewhat different approach has been taken by the literary theorist
Homi K. Bhabha. He proceeds from the idea that the colonized never fully
passively adopt the culture of the colonialists -- the "English book,"
as he calls it. Their previous culture is never simply wiped out and
replaced by another. What always and necessarily occurs is rather a
process of hybridization. This concept, according to Bhabha,

::: {.extract}
suggests that all of culture is constructed around negotiations and
conflicts. Every cultural practice involves an attempt -- sometimes
good, sometimes bad -- to establish authority. Even classical works of
art, such as a painting by Brueghel or a composition by Beethoven, are
concerned with the establishment of cultural authority. Now, this poses
the following question: How does one function as a negotiator when
one\'s own sense of agency is limited, for instance, on account of being
excluded or oppressed? I think that, even in the role of the underdog,
there are opportunities to upend the imposed cultural authorities -- to
accept some aspects while rejecting others. It is in this way that
symbols of authority are hybridized and made into something of one\'s
own. For me, hybridization is not simply a mixture but rather a
[]{#Page_31 type="pagebreak" title="31"}strategic and selective
appropriation of meanings; it is a way to create space for negotiators
whose freedom and equality are
endangered.[^44^](#c1-note-0044){#c1-note-0044a}
:::

Hybridization is thus a cultural strategy for evading marginality that
is imposed from the outside: subjects, who from the dominant perspective
are incapable of doing so, appropriate certain aspects of culture for
themselves and transform them into something else. What is decisive is
that this hybrid, created by means of active and unauthorized
appropriation, opposes the dominant version and the resulting speech is
thus legitimized from another -- that is, from one\'s own -- position.
In this way, a cultural engagement is set under way and the superiority
of one meaning or another is called into question. Who has the right to
determine how and why a relationship with others should be entered,
which resources should be appropriated from them, and how these
resources should be used? At the heart of the matter lie the abilities
of speech and interpretation; these can be seized in order to create
space for a "cultural hybridity that entertains difference without an
assumed or imposed hierarchy."[^45^](#c1-note-0045){#c1-note-0045a}

At issue is thus a strategy for breaking down hegemonic cultural
conditions, which distribute agency in a highly uneven manner, and for
turning one\'s own cultural production -- which has been dismissed by
cultural authorities as flawed, misconceived, or outright ignorant --
into something negotiable and independently valuable. Bhabha is thus
interested in fissures, differences, diversity, multiplicity, and
processes of negotiation that generate something like shared meaning --
culture, as he defines it -- instead of conceiving of it as something
that precedes these processes and is threatened by them. Accordingly, he
proceeds not from the idea of unity, which is threatened whenever
"others" are empowered to speak and needs to be preserved, but rather
from the irreducible multiplicity that, through laborious processes, can
be brought into temporary and limited consensus. Bhabha\'s vision of
culture is one without immutable authorities, interpretations, and
truths. In theory, everything can be brought to the table. This is not a
situation in which anything goes, yet the central meaning of
negotiation, the contextuality of consensus, and the mutability of every
frame of reference []{#Page_32 type="pagebreak" title="32"}-- none of
which can be shared equally by everyone -- are always potentially
negotiable.

Post-colonialism draws attention to the "disruptive power of the
excluded-included third," which becomes especially virulent when it
"emerges in the middle of semantic
structures."[^46^](#c1-note-0046){#c1-note-0046a} The recognition of
this power reveals the increasing cultural independence of those
formerly colonized, and it also transforms the cultural self-perception
of the West, for, even in Western nations that were not significant
colonial powers, there are multifaceted tensions between dominant
cultures and those who are on the defensive against discrimination and
attributions by others. Instead of relying on the old recipe of
integration through assimilation (that is, the dissolution of the
"other"), the right to self-determined difference is being called for
more emphatically. In such a manner, collective identities, such as
national identities, are freed from their questionable appeals to
cultural homogeneity and essentiality, and reconceived in terms of the
experience of immanent difference. Instead of one binding and
unnegotiable frame of reference for everyone, which hierarchizes
individual pos­itions and makes them appear unified, a new order without
such limitations needs to be established. Ultimately, the aim is to
provide nothing less than an "alternative reading of
modernity,"[^47^](#c1-note-0047){#c1-note-0047a} which influences both
the construction of the past and the modalities of the future. For
European culture in particular, such a project is an immense challenge.

Of course, these demands do not derive their everyday relevance
primarily from theory but rather from the experiences of
(de)colonization, migration, and globalization. Multifaceted as it is,
however, the theory does provide forms and languages for articulating
these phenomena, legitimizing new positions in public debates, and
attacking persistent mechanisms of cultural marginalization. It helps to
empower broader societal groups to become actively involved in cultural
processes, namely people, such as migrants and their children, whose
identity and experience are essentially shaped by non-Western cultures.
The latter have been giving voice to their experiences more frequently
and with greater confidence in all areas of public life, be it in
politics, literature, music, or
art.[^48^](#c1-note-0048){#c1-note-0048a} In Germany, for instance, the
films by Fatih Akin (*Head-On* from 2004 and *Soul Kitchen* from 2009,
to []{#Page_33 type="pagebreak" title="33"}name just two), in which the
experience of immigration is represented as part of the German
experience, have reached a wide public audience. In 2002, the group
Kanak Attak organized a series of conferences with the telling motto *no
integración*, and these did much to introduce postcolonial positions to
the debates taking place in German-speaking
countries.[^49^](#c1-note-0049){#c1-note-0049a} For a long time,
politicians with "migration backgrounds" were considered to be competent
in only one area, namely integration policy. This has since changed,
though not entirely. In 2008, for instance, Cem Özdemir was elected
co-chair of the Green Party and thus shares responsibility for all of
its political positions. Developments of this sort have been enabled
(and strengthened) by a shift in society\'s self-perception. In 2014,
Cemile Giousouf, the integration commissioner for the conservative
CDU/CSU alliance in the German Parliament, was able to make the
following statement without inciting any controversy: "Over the past few
years, Germany has become a modern land of
immigration."[^50^](#c1-note-0050){#c1-note-0050a} A remarkable
proclamation. Not ten years earlier, her party colleague Norbert Lammert
had expressed, in his function as parliamentary president, interest in
reviving the debate about the term "leading culture." The increasingly
well-educated migrants of the first, second, or third gener­ation no
longer accept the choice of being either marginalized as an exotic
representative of the "other" or entirely assimilated. Rather, they are
insisting on being able to introduce their specific experience as a
constitutive contribution to the formation of the present -- in
association and in conflict with other contributions, but at the same
level and with the same legitimacy. It is no surprise that various forms
of discrimin­ation and violence against "foreigners" not only continue
in everyday life but have also been increasing in reaction to this new
situation. Ultimately, established claims to power are being called into
question.

To summarize, at least three secular historical tendencies or movements,
some of which can be traced back to the late nineteenth century but each
of which gained considerable momentum during the last third of the
twentieth (the spread of the knowledge economy, the erosion of
heteronormativity, and the focus of post-colonialism on cultural
hybridity), have greatly expanded the sphere of those who actively
negotiate []{#Page_34 type="pagebreak" title="34"}social meaning. In
large part, the patterns and cultural foundations of these processes
developed long before the internet. Through the use of the internet, and
through the experiences of dealing with it, they have encroached upon
far greater portions of all societies.
:::
:::

::: {.section}
The Culturalization of the World {#c1-sec-0006}
--------------------------------

The number of participants in cultural processes, however, is not the
only thing that has increased. Parallel to that development, the field
of the cultural has expanded as well -- that is, those areas of life
that are not simply characterized by unalterable necessities, but rather
contain or generate competing options and thus require conscious
decisions.

The term "culturalization of the economy" refers to the central position
of knowledge-based, meaning-based, and affect-oriented processes in the
creation of value. With the emergence of consumption as the driving
force behind the production of goods and the concomitant necessity of
having not only to satisfy existing demands but also to create new ones,
the cultural and affective dimensions of the economy began to gain
significance. I have already discussed the beginnings of product
staging, advertising, and public relations. In addition to all of the
continuities that remain with us from that time, it is also possible to
point out a number of major changes that consumer society has undergone
since the late 1960s. These changes can be delineated by examining the
greater role played by design, which has been called the "core
discipline of the creative
economy."[^51^](#c1-note-0051){#c1-note-0051a}

As a field of its own, design originated alongside industrialization,
when, in collaborative processes, the activities of planning and
designing were separated from those of carrying out
production.[^52^](#c1-note-0052){#c1-note-0052a} It was not until the
modern era that designers consciously endeavored to seek new forms for
the logic inherent to mass production. With the aim of economic
efficiency, they intended their designs to optimize the clearly defined
functions of anonymous and endlessly reproducible objects. At the end of
the nineteenth century, the architect Louis Sullivan, whose buildings
still distinguish the skyline of Chicago, condensed this new attitude
into the famous axiom []{#Page_35 type="pagebreak" title="35"}"form
follows function." Mies van der Rohe, working as an architect in Chicago
in the middle of the twentieth century, supplemented this with a pithy
and famous formulation of his own: "less is more." The rationality of
design, in the sense of isolating and improving specific functions, and
the economical use of resources were of chief importance to modern
(industrial) designers. Even the ten design principles of Dieter Rams,
who led the design division of the consumer products company Braun from
1965 to 1991 -- one of the main sources of inspiration for Jonathan Ive,
Apple\'s chief design officer -- aimed to make products "usable,"
"understandable," "honest," and "long-lasting." "Good design," according
to his guiding principle, "is as little design as
possible."[^53^](#c1-note-0053){#c1-note-0053a} This orientation toward
the technical and functional promised to solve problems for everyone in
a long-term and binding manner, for the inherent material and design
qual­ities of an object were supposed to make it independent from
changing times and from the tastes of consumers.

::: {.section}
### Beyond the object {#c1-sec-0007}

At the end of the 1960s, a new generation of designers rebelled against
this industrial and instrumental rationality, which was now felt to be
authoritarian, soulless, and reductionist. In the works associated with
"anti-design" or "radical design," the objectives of the discipline were
redefined and a new formal language was developed. In the place of
tech­nical and functional optimization, recombination -- ecological
recycling or the postmodern interplay of forms -- emerged as a design
method and aesthetic strategy. Moreover, the aspiration of design
shifted from the individual object to its entire social and material
environment. The processes of design and production, which had been
closed off from one another and restricted to specialists, were opened
up precisely to encourage the participation of non-designers, be it
through interdisciplinary cooperation with other types of professions or
through the empowerment of laymen. The objectives of design were
radically expanded: rather than ending with the completion of an
individual product, it was now supposed to engage with society. In the
sense of cybernetics, this was regarded as a "system," controlled by
feedback processes, []{#Page_36 type="pagebreak" title="36"}which
connected social, technical, and biological dimensions to one
another.[^54^](#c1-note-0054){#c1-note-0054a} Design, according to this
new approach, was meant to be a "socially significant
activity."[^55^](#c1-note-0055){#c1-note-0055a}

Embedded in the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s, this new
generation of designers was curious about the social and political
potential of their discipline, and about possibilities for promoting
flexibility and autonomy instead of rigid industrial efficiency. Design
was no longer expected to solve problems once and for all, for such an
idea did not correspond to the self-perception of an open and mutable
society. Rather, it was expected to offer better opportun­ities for
enabling people to react to continuously changing conditions. A radical
proposal was developed by the Italian designer Enzo Mari, who in 1974
published his handbook *Autoprogettazione* (Self-Design). It contained
19 simple designs with which people could make, on their own,
aesthetically and functionally sophisticated furniture out of pre-cut
pieces of wood. In this case, the designs themselves were less important
than the critique of conventional design as elitist and of consumer
society as alienated and wasteful. Mari\'s aim was to reconceive the
relations among designers, the manufacturing industry, and users.
Increasingly, design came to be understood as a holistic and open
process. Victor Papanek, the founder of ecological design, took things a
step further. For him, design was "basic to all human activity. The
planning and patterning of any act towards a desired, foreseeable end
constitutes the design process. Any attempt to separate design, to make
it a thing-by-itself, works counter to the inherent value of design as
the primary underlying matrix of
life."[^56^](#c1-note-0056){#c1-note-0056a}

Potentially all aspects of life could therefore fall under the purview
of design. This came about from the desire to oppose industrialism,
which was blind to its catastrophic social and ecological consequences,
with a new and comprehensive manner of seeing and acting that was
unrestricted by economics.

Toward the end of the 1970s, this expanded notion of design owed less
and less to emancipatory social movements, and its socio-political goals
began to fall by the wayside. Three fundamental patterns survived,
however, which go beyond design and remain characteristic of the
culturalization []{#Page_37 type="pagebreak" title="37"}of the economy:
the discovery of the public as emancipated users and active
participants; the use of appropriation, transformation, and
recombination as methods for creating ever-new aesthetic
differentiations; and, finally, the intention of shaping the lifeworld
of the user.[^57^](#c1-note-0057){#c1-note-0057a}

As these patterns became depoliticized and commercialized, the focus of
designing the "lifeworld" shifted more and more toward designing the
"experiential world." By the end of the 1990s, this had become so
normalized that even management consultants could assert that
"\[e\]xperiences represent an existing but previously unarticulated
*genre of economic output*."[^58^](#c1-note-0058){#c1-note-0058a} It was
possible to define the dimensions of the experiential world in various
ways. For instance, it could be clearly delimited and product-oriented,
like the flagship stores introduced by Nike in 1990, which, with their
elaborate displays, were meant to turn shopping into an experience. This
experience, as the company\'s executives hoped, radiated outward and
influenced how the brand was perceived as a whole. The experiential
world could also, however, be conceived in somewhat broader terms, for
instance by design­ing entire institutions around the idea of creating a
more attractive work environment and thereby increasing the commitment
of employees. This approach is widespread today in creative industries
and has become popularized through countless stories about ping-pong
tables, gourmet cafeterias, and massage rooms in certain offices. In
this case, the process of creativity is applied back to itself in order
to systematize and optimize a given workplace\'s basis of operation. The
development is comparable to the "invention of invention" that
characterized industrial research around the end of the nineteenth
century, though now the concept has been re­located to the field of
knowledge production.

Yet the "experiential world" can be expanded even further, for instance
when entire cities attempt to make themselves attractive to
international clientele and compete with others by building spectacular
museums or sporting arenas. Displays in cities, as well as a few other
central locations, are regularly constructed in order to produce a
particular experience. This also entails, however, that certain forms of
use that fail to fit the "urban
script"[^59^](#c1-note-0059){#c1-note-0059a} are pushed to the margins
or driven away.[^60^](#c1-note-0060){#c1-note-0060a} Thus, today, there
is hardly a single area of life to []{#Page_38 type="pagebreak"
title="38"}which the strategies and methods of design do not have
access, and this access occurs at all levels. For some time, design has
not been a purely visible matter, restricted to material objects; it
rather forms and controls all of the senses. Cities, for example, have
come to be understood increasingly as "sound spaces" and have
accordingly been reconfigured with the goal of modulating their various
noises.[^61^](#c1-note-0061){#c1-note-0061a} Yet design is no longer
just a matter of objects, processes, and experiences. By now, in the
context of reproductive medicine, it has even been applied to the
biological foundations of life ("designer babies"). I will revisit this
topic below.
:::

::: {.section}
### Culture everywhere {#c1-sec-0008}

Of course, design is not the only field of culture that has imposed
itself over society as a whole. A similar development has occurred in
the field of advertising, which, since the 1970s, has been integrated
into many more physical and social spaces and by now has a broad range
of methods at its disposal. Advertising is no longer found simply on
billboards or in display windows. In the form of "guerilla marketing" or
"product placement," it has penetrated every space and occupied every
discourse -- by blending with political messages, for instance -- and
can now even be spread, as "viral marketing," by the addressees of the
advertisements themselves. Similar processes can be observed in the
fields of art, fashion, music, theater, and sports. This has taken place
perhaps most radically in the field of "gaming," which has drawn upon
technical progress in the most direct possible manner and, with the
spread of powerful computers and mobile applications, has left behind
the confines of the traditional playing field. In alternate reality
games, the realm of the virtual and fictitious has also been
transcended, as physical spaces have been overlaid with their various
scripts.[^62^](#c1-note-0062){#c1-note-0062a}

This list could be extended, but the basic trend is clear enough,
especially as the individual fields overlap and mutually influence one
another. They are blending into a single interdependent field for
generating social meaning in the form of economic activity. Moreover,
through digitalization and networking, many new opportunities have
arisen for large-scale involvement by the public in design processes.
Thanks []{#Page_39 type="pagebreak" title="39"}to new communication
technologies and flexible production processes, today\'s users can
personalize and create products to suit their wishes. Here, the spectrum
extends from tiny batches of creative-industrial products all the way to
global processes of "mass customization," in which factory-based mass
production is combined with personalization. One of the first
applications of this was introduced in 1999 when, through its website, a
sporting-goods company allowed customers to design certain elements of a
shoe by altering it within a set of guidelines. This was taken a step
further by the idea of "user-centered innovation," which relies on the
specific knowledge of users to enhance a product, with the additional
hope of discovering unintended applications and transforming these into
new areas of business.[^63^](#c1-note-0063){#c1-note-0063a} It has also
become possible for end users to take over the design process from the
beginning, which has become considerably easier with the advent of
specialized platforms for exchanging knowledge, alongside semi-automated
production tools such as mechanical mills and 3D printers.
Digitalization, which has allowed all content to be processed, and
networking, which has created an endless amount of content ("raw
material"), have turned appropriation and recombination into general
methods of cultural production.[^64^](#c1-note-0064){#c1-note-0064a}
This phenomenon will be examined more closely in the next chapter.

Both the involvement of users in the production process and the methods
of appropriation and recombination are extremely information-intensive
and communication-intensive. Without the corresponding technological
infrastructure, neither could be achieved efficiently or on a large
scale. This was evident in the 1970s, when such approaches never made it
beyond subcultures and conceptual studies. With today\'s search engines,
every single user can trawl through an amount of information that, just
a generation ago, would have been unmanageable even by professional
archivists. A broad array of communication platforms (together with
flexible production capacities and efficient logistics) not only weakens
the contradiction between mass fabrication and personalization; it also
allows users to network directly with one another in order to develop
specialized knowledge together and thus to enable themselves to
intervene directly in design processes, both as []{#Page_40
type="pagebreak" title="40"}willing participants in and as critics of
flexible global production processes.
:::
:::

::: {.section}
The Technologization of Culture {#c1-sec-0009}
-------------------------------

That society is dependent on complex information technologies in order
to organize its constitutive processes is, in itself, nothing new.
Rather, this began as early as the late nineteenth century. It is
directly correlated with the expansion and acceleration of the
circulation of goods, which came about through industrialization. As the
historian and sociologist James Beniger has noted, this led to a
"control crisis," for administrative control centers were faced with the
problem of losing sight of what was happening in their own factories,
with their suppliers, and in the important markets of the time.
Management was in a bind: decisions had to be made either on the basis
of insufficient information or too late. The existing administrative and
control mechanisms could no longer deal with the rapidly increasing
complexity and time-sensitive nature of extensively organized production
and distribution. The office became more important, and ever more people
were needed there to fulfill a growing number of functions. Yet this was
not enough for the crisis to subside. The old administrative methods,
which involved manual information processing, simply could no longer
keep up. The crisis reached its first dramatic peak in 1889 in the
United States, with the realization that the census data from the year
1880 had not yet been analyzed when the next census was already
scheduled to take place during the subsequent year. In the same year,
the Secretary of the Interior organized a conference to investigate
faster methods of data processing. Two methods were tested for making
manual labor more efficient, one of which had the potential to achieve
greater efficiency by means of novel data-processing machines. The
latter system emerged as the clear victor; developed by an engineer
named Hermann Hollerith, it mechanically processed and stored data on
punch cards. The idea was based on Hollerith\'s observations of the
coup­ling and decoupling of railroad cars, which he interpreted as
modular units that could be combined in any desired order. The punch
card transferred this approach to information []{#Page_41
type="pagebreak" title="41"}management. Data were no longer stored in
fixed, linear arrangements (tables and lists) but rather in small units
(the punch cards) that, like railroad cars, could be combined in any
given way. The increase in efficiency -- with respect to speed *and*
flexibility -- was enormous, and nearly a hundred of Hollerith\'s
machines were used by the Census
Bureau.[^65^](#c1-note-0065){#c1-note-0065a} This marked a turning point
in the history of information processing, with technical means no longer
being used exclusively to store data, but to process data as well. This
was the only way to avoid the impending crisis, ensuring that
bureaucratic management could maintain centralized control. Hollerith\'s
machines proved to be a resounding success and were implemented in many
more branches of government and corporate administration, where
data-intensive processes had increased so rapidly they could not have
been managed without such machines. This growth was accompanied by that
of Hollerith\'s Tabulating Machine Company, which he founded in 1896 and
which, after a number of mergers, was renamed in 1924 as the
International Business Machines Corporation (IBM). Throughout the
following decades, dependence on information-processing machines only
deepened. The growing number of social, commercial, and military
processes could only be managed by means of information technology. This
largely took place, however, outside of public view, namely in the
specialized divisions of large government and private organizations.
These were the only institutions in command of the necessary resources
for operating the complex technical infrastructure -- so-called
mainframe computers -- that was essential to automatic information
processing.

::: {.section}
### The independent media {#c1-sec-0010}

As with so much else, this situation began to change in the 1960s. Mass
media and information-processing technologies began to attract
criticism, even though all of the involved subcultures, media activists,
and hackers continued to act independently from one another until the
1990s. The freedom-oriented social movements of the 1960s began to view
the mass media as part of the political system against which they were
struggling. The connections among the economy, politics, and the media
were becoming more apparent, not []{#Page_42 type="pagebreak"
title="42"}least because many mass media companies, especially those in
Germany related to the Springer publishing house, were openly inimical
to these social movements. Critical theor­ies arose that, borrowing
Louis Althusser\'s influential term, regarded the media as part of the
"ideological state apparatus"; that is, as one of the authorities whose
task is to influence people to accept social relations to such a degree
that the "repressive state apparatuses" (the police, the military, etc.)
form a constant background in everyday
life.[^66^](#c1-note-0066){#c1-note-0066a} Similarly influential,
Antonio Gramsci\'s theory of "cultural hegemony" emphasized the
condition in which the governed are manipulated to form a cultural
consensus with the ruling class; they accept the latter\'s
presuppositions (and the politics which are thus justified) even though,
by doing so, they are forced to suffer economic
disadvantages.[^67^](#c1-note-0067){#c1-note-0067a} Guy Debord and the
Situationists attributed to the media a central role in the new form of
rule known as "the spectacle," the glittery surfaces and superficial
manifestations of which served to conceal society\'s true
relations.[^68^](#c1-note-0068){#c1-note-0068a} In doing so, they
aligned themselves with the critique of the "culture industry," which
had been formulated by Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno at the
beginning of the 1940s and had become a widely discussed key text by the
1960s.

Their differences aside, these perspectives were united in that they no
longer understood the "public" as a neutral sphere, in which citizens
could inform themselves freely and form their opinions, but rather as
something that was created with specific intentions and consequences.
From this grew an interest in "counter-publics"; that is, in forums
where other actors could appear and negotiate theories of their own. The
mass media thus became an important instrument for organizing the
bourgeois--capitalist public, but they were also responsible for the
development of alternatives. Media, according to one of the core ideas
of these new approaches, are less a sphere in which an external reality
is depicted; rather, they are themselves a constitutive element of
reality.
:::

::: {.section}
### Media as lifeworlds {#c1-sec-0011}

Another branch of new media theories, that of Marshall McLuhan and the
Toronto School of Communication,[^69^](#c1-note-0069){#c1-note-0069a}
[]{#Page_43 type="pagebreak" title="43"}reached a similar conclusion on
different grounds. In 1964, McLuhan aroused a great deal of attention
with his slogan "the medium is the message." He maintained that every
medium of communication, by means of its media-specific characteristics,
directly affected the consciousness, self-perception, and worldview of
every individual.[^70^](#c1-note-0070){#c1-note-0070a} This, he
believed, happens independently of and in addition to whatever specific
message a medium might be conveying. From this perspective, reality does
not exist outside of media, given that media codetermine our personal
relation to and behavior in the world. For McLuhan and the Toronto
School, media were thus not channels for transporting content but rather
the all-encompassing environments -- galaxies -- in which we live.

Such ideas were circulating much earlier and were intensively developed
by artists, many of whom were beginning to experiment with new
electronic media. An important starting point in this regard was the
1963 exhibit *Exposition of Music -- Electronic Television* by the
Korean artist Nam June Paik, who was then collaborating with Karlheinz
Stockhausen in Düsseldorf. Among other things, Paik presented 12
television sets, the screens of which were "distorted" by magnets. Here,
however, "distorted" is a problematic term, for, as Paik explicitly
noted, the electronic images were "a beautiful slap in the face of
classic dualism in philosophy since the time of Plato. \[...\] Essence
AND existence, essentia AND existentia. In the case of the electron,
however, EXISTENTIA IS ESSENTIA."[^71^](#c1-note-0071){#c1-note-0071a}
Paik no longer understood the electronic image on the television screen
as a portrayal or representation of anything. Rather, it engendered in
the moment of its appearance an autonomous reality beyond and
independent of its representational function. A whole generation of
artists began to explore forms of existence in electronic media, which
they no longer understood as pure media of information. In his work
*Video Corridor* (1969--70), Bruce Nauman stacked two monitors at the
end of a corridor that was approximately 10 meters long but only 50
centimeters wide. On the lower monitor ran a video showing the empty
hallway. The upper monitor displayed an image captured by a camera
installed at the entrance of the hall, about 3 meters high. If the
viewer moved down the corridor toward the two []{#Page_44
type="pagebreak" title="44"}monitors, he or she would thus be recorded
by the latter camera. Yet the closer one came to the monitor, the
farther one would be from the camera, so that one\'s image on the
monitor would become smaller and smaller. Recorded from behind, viewers
would thus watch themselves walking away from themselves. Surveillance
by others, self-surveillance, recording, and disappearance were directly
and intuitively connected with one another and thematized as fundamental
issues of electronic media.

Toward the end of the 1960s, the easier availability and mobility of
analog electronic production technologies promoted the search for
counter-publics and the exploration of media as comprehensive
lifeworlds. In 1967, Sony introduced its first Portapak system: a
battery-powered, self-contained recording system -- consisting of a
camera, a cord, and a recorder -- with which it was possible to make
(black-and-white) video recordings outside of a studio. Although the
recording apparatus, which required additional devices for editing and
projection, was offered at the relatively expensive price of \$1,500
(which corresponds to about €8,000 today), it was still affordable for
interested groups. Compared with the situation of traditional film
cameras, these new cameras considerably lowered the initial hurdle for
media production, for video tapes were not only much cheaper than film
reels (and could be used for multiple recordings); they also made it
possible to view recorded material immediately and on location. This
enabled the production of works that were far more intuitive and
spontaneous than earlier ones. The 1970s saw the formation of many video
groups, media workshops, and other initiatives for the independent
production of electronic media. Through their own distribution,
festivals, and other channels, such groups created alternative public
spheres. The latter became especially prominent in the United States
where, at the end of the 1960s, the providers of cable networks were
legally obligated to establish public-access channels, on which citizens
were able to operate self-organized and non-commercial television
programs. This gave rise to a considerable public-access movement there,
which at one point extended across 4,000 cities and was responsible for
producing programs from and for these different
communities.[^72[]{#Page_45 type="pagebreak"
title="45"}^](#c1-note-0072){#c1-note-0072a}

What these initiatives shared in common, in Western Europe and the
United States, was their attempt to close the gap between the
consumption and production of media, to activate the public, and at
least in part to experiment with the media themselves. Non-professional
producers were empowered with the ability to control who told their
stories and how this happened. Groups that previously had no access to
the medial public sphere now had opportunities to represent themselves
and their own interests. By working together on their own productions,
such groups demystified the medium of television and simultaneously
equipped it with a critical consciousness.

Especially well received in Germany was the work of Hans Magnus
Enzensberger, who in 1970 argued (on the basis of Bertolt Brecht\'s
radio theory) in favor of distinguishing between "repressive" and
"emancipatory" uses of media. For him, the emancipatory potential of
media lay in the fact that "every receiver is \[...\] a potential
transmitter" that can participate "interactively" in "collective
production."[^73^](#c1-note-0073){#c1-note-0073a} In the same year, the
first German video group, Telewissen, debuted in public with a
demonstration in downtown Darmstadt. In 1980, at the peak of the
movement for independent video production, there were approximately a
hundred such groups throughout (West) Germany. The lack of distribution
channels, however, represented a nearly insuperable obstacle and ensured
that many independent productions were seldom viewed outside of
small-scale settings. Tapes had to be exchanged between groups through
the mail, and they were mainly shown at gatherings and events, and in
bars. The dynamic of alternative media shifted toward a small subculture
(though one networked throughout all of Europe) of pirate radio and
television broadcasters. At the beginning of the 1980s and in the space
of Radio Dreyeckland in Freiburg, which had been founded in 1977 as
Radio Verte Fessenheim, operations began at Germany\'s first pirate or
citizens\' radio station, which regularly broadcast information about
the political protest movements that had arisen against the use of
nuclear power in Fessenheim (France), Wyhl (Germany), and Kaiseraugst
(Switzerland). The epicenter of the scene, however, was located in
Amsterdam, where the group known as Rabotnik TV, which was an offshoot
[]{#Page_46 type="pagebreak" title="46"}of the squatter scene there,
would illegally feed its signal through official television stations
after their programming had ended at night (many stations then stopped
broadcasting at midnight). In 1988, the group acquired legal
broadcasting slots on the cable network and reached up to 50,000 viewers
with their weekly experimental shows, which largely consisted of footage
appropriated freely from elsewhere.[^74^](#c1-note-0074){#c1-note-0074a}
Early in 1990, the pirate television station Kanal X was created in
Leipzig; it produced its own citizens\' television programming in the
quasi-lawless milieu of the GDR before
reunification.[^75^](#c1-note-0075){#c1-note-0075a}

These illegal, independent, or public-access stations only managed to
establish themselves as real mass media to a very limited extent.
Nevertheless, they played an important role in sensitizing an entire
generation of media activists, whose opportunities expanded as the means
of production became both better and cheaper. In the name of "tactical
media," a new generation of artistic and political media activists came
together in the middle of the
1990s.[^76^](#c1-note-0076){#c1-note-0076a} They combined the "camcorder
revolution," which in the late 1980s had made video equipment available
to broader swaths of society, stirring visions of democratic media
production, with the newly arrived medium of the internet. Despite still
struggling with numerous technical difficulties, they remained constant
in their belief that the internet would solve the hitherto intractable
problem of distributing content. The transition from analog to digital
media lowered the production hurdle yet again, not least through the
ongoing development of improved software. Now, many stages of production
that had previously required professional or semi-professional expertise
and equipment could also be carried out by engaged laymen. As a
consequence, the focus of interest broadened to include not only the
development of alternative production groups but also the possibility of
a flexible means of rapid intervention in existing structures. Media --
both television and the internet -- were understood as environments in
which one could act without directly representing a reality outside of
the media. Television was analyzed down to its own legalities, which
could then be manipulated to affect things beyond the media.
Increasingly, culture jamming and the campaigns of so-called
communication guerrillas were blurring the difference between media and
political activity.[^77[]{#Page_47 type="pagebreak"
title="47"}^](#c1-note-0077){#c1-note-0077a}

This difference was dissolved entirely by a new generation of
politically motivated artists, activists, and hackers, who transferred
the tactics of civil disobedience -- blockading a building with a
sit-in, for instance -- to the
internet.[^78^](#c1-note-0078){#c1-note-0078a} When, in 1994, the
Zapatista Army of National Liberation rose up in the south of Mexico,
several media projects were created to support its mostly peaceful
opposition and to make the movement known in Europe and North America.
As part of this loose network, in 1998 the American artist collective
Electronic Disturbance Theater developed a relatively simple computer
program called FloodNet that enabled networked sympathizers to shut down
websites, such as those of the Mexican government, in a targeted and
temporary manner. The principle was easy enough: the program would
automatic­ally reload a certain website over and over again in order to
exhaust the capacities of its network
servers.[^79^](#c1-note-0079){#c1-note-0079a} The goal was not to
destroy data but rather to disturb the normal functioning of an
institution in order to draw attention to the activities and interests
of the protesters.
:::

::: {.section}
### Networks as places of action {#c1-sec-0012}

What this new generation of media activists shared in common with the
hackers and pioneers of computer networks was the idea that
communication media are spaces for agency. During the 1960s, these
programmers were also in search of alternatives. The difference during
the 1960s is that they did not pursue these alternatives in
counter-publics, but rather in alternative lifestyles and communication.
The rejection of bureaucracy as a form of social organization played a
significant role in the critique of industrial society formulated by
freedom-oriented social movements. At the beginning of the previous
century, Max Weber had still regarded bureaucracy as a clear sign of
progress toward a rational and method­ical
organization.[^80^](#c1-note-0080){#c1-note-0080a} He based this
assessment on processes that were impersonal, rule-bound, and
transparent (in the sense that they were documented with files). But
now, in the 1960s, bureaucracy was being criticized as soulless,
alienated, oppressive, non-transparent, and unfit for an increasingly
complex society. Whereas the first four of these points are in basic
agreement with Weber\'s thesis about "disenchanting" []{#Page_48
type="pagebreak" title="48"}the world, the last point represents a
radical departure from his analysis. Bureaucracies were no longer
regarded as hyper-efficient but rather as inefficient, and their size
and rule-bound nature were no longer seen as strengths but rather as
decisive weaknesses. The social bargain of offering prosperity and
security in exchange for subordination to hierarchical relations struck
many as being anything but attractive, and what blossomed instead was a
broad interest in alternative forms of coexistence. New institutions
were expected to be more flexible and more open. The desire to step away
from the system was widespread, and many (mostly young) people set about
doing exactly that. Alternative ways of life -- communes, shared
apartments, and cooperatives -- were explored in the country and in
cities. They were meant to provide the individual with greater autonomy
and the opportunity to develop his or her own unique potential. Despite
all of the differences between these concepts of life, they nevertheless
shared something of a common denominator: the promise of
reconceptualizing social institutions and the fundamentals of
coexistence, with the aim of reformulating them in such a way as to
allow everyone\'s personal potential to develop fully in the here and
now.

According to critics of such alternatives, bureaucracy was necessary in
order to organize social life as it radically reduced the world\'s
complexity by forcing it through the bottleneck of official procedures.
However, the price paid for such efficiency involved the atrophying of
human relationships, which had to be subordinated to rigid processes
that were incapable of registering unique characteristics and
differences and were unable to react in a timely manner to changing
circumstances.

In the 1960s, many countercultural attempts to find new forms of
organization placed personal and open communication at the center of
their efforts. Each individual was understood as a singular person with
untapped potential rather than a carrier of abstract and clearly defined
functions. It was soon realized, however, that every common activity and
every common decision entailed processes that were time-intensive and
communication-intensive. As soon as a group exceeded a certain size, it
became practically impossible for it to reach any consensus. As a result
of these experiences, an entire worldview emerged that propagated
"smallness" as a central []{#Page_49 type="pagebreak" title="49"}value
("small is beautiful"). It was thought that in this way society might
escape from bureaucracy with its ostensibly disastrous consequences for
humanity and the environment.[^81^](#c1-note-0081){#c1-note-0081a} But
this belief did not last for long. For, unlike the majority of European
alternative movements, the counterculture in the United States was not
overwhelmingly critical of technology. On the contrary, many actors
there sought suitable technologies for solving the practical problems of
social organization. At the end of the 1960s, a considerable amount of
attention was devoted to the field of basic technological research. This
field brought together the interests of the military, academics,
businesses, and activists from the counterculture. The common ground for
all of them was a cybernetic vision of institutions, or, in the words of
the historian Fred Turner:

::: {.extract}
a picture of humans and machines as dynamic, collaborating elements in a
single, highly fluid, socio-technical system. Within that system,
control emerged not from the mind of a commanding officer, but from the
complex, probabilistic interactions of humans, machines and events
around them. Moreover, the mechanical elements of the system in question
-- in this case, the predictor -- enabled the human elements to achieve
what all Americans would agree was a worthwhile goal. \[...\] Over the
coming decades, this second vision of benevolent man-machine systems, of
circular flows of information, would emerge as a driving force in the
establishment of the military--industrial--academic complex and as a
model of an alternative to that
complex.[^82^](#c1-note-0082){#c1-note-0082a}
:::

This complex was possible because, as a theory, cybernetics was
formulated in extraordinarily abstract terms, so much so that a whole
variety of competing visions could be associated with
it.[^83^](#c1-note-0083){#c1-note-0083a} With cybernetics as a
meta-science, it was possible to investigate the common features of
technical, social, and biological
processes.[^84^](#c1-note-0084){#c1-note-0084a} They were analyzed as
open, interactive, and information-processing systems. It was especially
consequential that cybernetics defined control and communication as the
same thing, namely as activities oriented toward informational
feedback.[^85^](#c1-note-0085){#c1-note-0085a} The heterogeneous legacy
of cybernetics and its synonymous treatment of the terms "communication"
and "control" continue to influence information technology and the
internet today.[]{#Page_50 type="pagebreak" title="50"}

The various actors who contributed to the development of the internet
shared a common interest for forms of organ­ization based on the
comprehensive, dynamic, and open exchange of information. Both on the
micro and macro level (and this is decisive at this point),
decentralized and flexible communication technologies were meant to
become the foundation of new organizational models. Militaries feared
attacks on their command and communication centers; academics wanted to
broaden their culture of autonomy, collaboration among peers, and the
free exchange of information; businesses were looking for new areas of
activity; and countercultural activists were longing for new forms of
peaceful coexistence.[^86^](#c1-note-0086){#c1-note-0086a} They all
rejected the bureaucratic model, and the counterculture provided them
with the central catchword for their alternative vision: community.
Though rather difficult to define, it was a powerful and positive term
that somehow promised the opposite of bureaucracy: humanity,
cooperation, horizontality, mutual trust, and consensus. Now, however,
humanity was expected to be reconfigured as a community in cooperation
with and inseparable from machines. And what was yearned for had become
a liberating symbiosis of man and machine, an idea that the author
Richard Brautigan was quick to mock in his poem "All Watched Over by
Machines of Loving Grace" from 1967:

::: {.poem}
::: {.lineGroup}
I like to think (and

the sooner the better!)

of a cybernetic meadow

where mammals and computers

live together in mutually

programming harmony

like pure water

touching clear sky.[^87^](#c1-note-0087){#c1-note-0087a}
:::
:::

Here, Brautigan is ridiculing both the impatience (*the sooner the
better!*) and the naïve optimism (*harmony, clear sky*) of the
countercultural activists. Primarily, he regarded the underlying vision
as an innocent but amusing fantasy and not as a potential threat against
which something had to be done. And there were also reasons to believe
that, ultimately, the new communities would be free from the coercive
nature that []{#Page_51 type="pagebreak" title="51"}had traditionally
characterized the downside of community experiences. It was thought that
the autonomy and freedom of the individual could be regained in and by
means of the community. The conditions for this were that participation
in the community had to be voluntary and that the rules of participation
had to be self-imposed. I will return to this topic in greater detail
below.

In line with their solution-oriented engineering culture and the
results-focused military funders who by and large set the agenda, a
relatively small group of computer scientists now took it upon
themselves to establish the technological foundations for new
institutions. This was not an abstract goal for the distant future;
rather, they wanted to change everyday practices as soon as possible. It
was around this time that advanced technology became the basis of social
communication, which now adopted forms that would have been
inconceivable (not to mention impracticable) without these
preconditions. Of course, effective communication technologies already
existed at the time. Large corporations had begun long before then to
operate their own computing centers. In contrast to the latter, however,
the new infrastructure could also be used by individuals outside of
established institutions and could be implemented for all forms of
communication and exchange. This idea gave rise to a pragmatic culture
of horizontal, voluntary cooperation. The clearest summary of this early
ethos -- which originated at the unusual intersection of military,
academic, and countercultural interests -- was offered by David D.
Clark, a computer scientist who for some time coordinated the
development of technical standards for the internet: "We reject: kings,
presidents and voting. We believe in: rough consensus and running
code."[^88^](#c1-note-0088){#c1-note-0088a}

All forms of classical, formal hierarchies and their methods for
resolving conflicts -- commands (by kings and presidents) and votes --
were dismissed. Implemented in their place was a pragmatics of open
cooperation that was oriented around two guiding principles. The first
was that different views should be discussed without a single individual
being able to block any final decisions. Such was the meaning of the
expression "rough consensus." The second was that, in accordance with
the classical engineering tradition, the focus should remain on concrete
solutions that had to be measured against one []{#Page_52
type="pagebreak" title="52"}another on the basis of transparent
criteria. Such was the meaning of the expression "running code." In
large part, this method was possible because the group oriented around
these principles was, internally, relatively homogeneous: it consisted
of top-notch computer scientists -- all of them men -- at respected
American universities and research centers. For this very reason, many
potential and fundamental conflicts were avoided, at least at first.
This internal homogeneity lends rather dark undertones to their sunny
vision, but this was hardly recognized at the time. Today these
undertones are far more apparent, and I will return to them below.

Not only were technical protocols developed on the basis of these
principles, but organizational forms as well. Along with the Internet
Engineering Task Force (which he directed), Clark created the so-called
Request-for-Comments documents, with which ideas could be presented to
interested members of the community and simultaneous feedback could be
collected in order to work through the ideas in question and thus reach
a rough consensus. If such a consensus could not be reached -- if, for
instance, an idea failed to resonate with anyone or was too
controversial -- then the matter would be dropped. The feedback was
organized as a form of many-to-many communication through email lists,
newsgroups, and online chat systems. This proved to be so effective that
horizontal communication within large groups or between multiple groups
could take place without resulting in chaos. This therefore invalidated
the traditional trend that social units, once they reach a certain size,
would necessarily introduce hierarchical structures for the sake of
reducing complexity and communication. In other words, the foundations
were laid for larger numbers of (changing) people to organize flexibly
and with the aim of building an open consensus. For Manuel Castells,
this combination of organizational flexibility and scalability in size
is the decisive innovation that was enabled by the rise of the network
society.[^89^](#c1-note-0089){#c1-note-0089a} At the same time, however,
this meant that forms of organization spread that could only be possible
on the basis of technologies that have formed (and continue to form)
part of the infrastructure of the internet. Digital technology and the
social activity of individual users were linked together to an
unprecedented extent. Social and cultural agendas were now directly
related []{#Page_53 type="pagebreak" title="53"}to and entangled with
technical design. Each of the four original interest groups -- the
military, scientists, businesses, and the counterculture -- implemented
new technologies to pursue their own projects, which partly complemented
and partly contradicted one another. As we know today, the first three
groups still cooperate closely with each other. To a great extent, this
has allowed the military and corporations, which are willingly supported
by researchers in need of funding, to determine the technology and thus
aspects of the social and cultural agendas that depend on it.

The software developers\' immediate environment experienced its first
major change in the late 1970s. Software, which for many had been a mere
supplement to more expensive and highly specialized hardware, became a
marketable good with stringent licensing restrictions. A new generation
of businesses, led by Bill Gates, suddenly began to label co­operation
among programmers as theft.[^90^](#c1-note-0090){#c1-note-0090a}
Previously it had been par for the course, and above all necessary, for
programmers to share software with one another. The former culture of
horizontal cooperation between developers transformed into a
hierarchical and commercially oriented relation between developers and
users (many of whom, at least at the beginning, had developed programs
of their own). For the first time, copyright came to play an important
role in digital culture. In order to survive in this environment, the
practice of open cooperation had to be placed on a new legal foundation.
Copyright law, which served to separate programmers (producers) from
users (consumers), had to be neutralized or circumvented. The first step
in this direction was taken in 1984 by the activist and programmer
Richard Stallman. Composed by Stallman, the GNU General Public License
was and remains a brilliant hack that uses the letter of copyright law
against its own spirit. This happens in the form of a license that
defines "four freedoms":

1. The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom
0).
2. The freedom to study how the program works and change it so it does
your computing as you wish (freedom 1).
3. The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor
(freedom 2).[]{#Page_54 type="pagebreak" title="54"}
4. The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others
(freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance
to benefit from your changes.[^91^](#c1-note-0091){#c1-note-0091a}

Thanks to this license, people who were personally unacquainted and did
not share a common social environment could now cooperate (freedoms 2
and 3) and simultaneously remain autonomous and unrestricted (freedoms 0
and 1). For many, the tension between the need to develop complex
software in large teams and the desire to maintain one\'s own autonomy
represented an incentive to try out new forms of
cooperation.[^92^](#c1-note-0092){#c1-note-0092a}

Stallman\'s influence was at first limited to a small circle of
programmers. In the middle of the 1980s, the goal of developing a
completely free operating system seemed a distant one. Communication
between those interested in doing so was often slow and complicated. In
part, program codes still had to be sent by mail. It was not until the
beginning of the 1990s that students in technical departments at many
universities could access the
internet.[^93^](#c1-note-0093){#c1-note-0093a} One of the first to use
these new opportunities in an innovative way was a Finnish student named
Linus Torvalds. He built upon Stallman\'s work and programmed a kernel,
which, as the most important module of an operating system, governs the
interaction between hardware and software. He published the first free
version of this in 1991 and encouraged anyone interested to give him
feedback.[^94^](#c1-note-0094){#c1-note-0094a} And it poured in.
Torvalds reacted promptly and issued new versions of his software in
quick succession. Instead of understanding his software as a finished
product, he treated it like an open-ended process. This, in turn,
motiv­ated even more developers to participate, because they saw that
their contributions were being adopted swiftly, which led to the
formation of an open community of interested programmers who swapped
ideas over the internet and continued writing software. In order to
maintain an overview of the different versions of the program, which
appeared in parallel with one another, it soon became necessary to
employ specialized platforms. The fusion of social processes --
horizontal and voluntary cooperation among developers -- and
technological platforms, which enabled this form of cooperation
[]{#Page_55 type="pagebreak" title="55"}by providing archives, filter
functions, and search capabil­ities that made it possible to organize
large amounts of data, was thus advanced even further. The programmers
were no longer primarily working on the development of the internet
itself, which by then was functioning quite reliably, but were rather
using the internet to apply their cooperative principles to other
arenas. By the end of the 1990s, the free-software movement had
established a new, internet-based form of organization and had
demonstrated its efficiency in practice: horizontal, informal
communities of actors -- voluntary, autonomous, and focused on a common
interest -- that, on the basis of high-tech infrastructure, could
include thousands of people without having to create formal hierarchies.
:::
:::

::: {.section}
From the Margins to the Center of Society {#c1-sec-0013}
-----------------------------------------

It was around this same time that the technologies in question, which
were already no longer very new, entered mainstream society. Within a
few years, the internet became part of everyday life. Three years before
the turn of the millennium, only about 6 percent of the entire German
population used the internet, often only occasionally. Three years after
the millennium, the number of users already exceeded 53 percent. Since
then, this share has increased even further. In 2014, it was more than
97 percent for people under the age of
40.[^95^](#c1-note-0095){#c1-note-0095a} Parallel to these developments,
data transfer rates increased considerably, broadband connections ousted
the need for dial-up modems, and the internet was suddenly "here" and no
longer "there." With the spread of mobile devices, especially since the
year 2007 when the first iPhone was introduced, digital communication
became available both extensively and continuously. Since then, the
internet has been ubiquitous. The amount of time that users spend online
has increased and, with the rapid ascent of social mass media such as
Facebook, people have been online in almost every situation and
circumstance in life.[^96^](#c1-note-0096){#c1-note-0096a} The internet,
like water or electricity, has become for many people a utility that is
simply taken for granted.

In a BBC survey from 2010, 80 percent of those polled believed that
internet access -- a precondition for participating []{#Page_56
type="pagebreak" title="56"}in the now dominant digital condition --
should be regarded as a fundamental human right. This idea was most
popular in South Korea (96 percent) and Mexico (94 percent), while in
Germany at least 72 percent were of the same
opinion.[^97^](#c1-note-0097){#c1-note-0097a}

On the basis of this new infrastructure, which is now relevant in all
areas of life, the cultural developments described above have been
severed from the specific historical conditions from which they emerged
and have permeated society as a whole. Expressivity -- the ability to
communicate something "unique" -- is no longer a trait of artists and
know­ledge workers alone, but rather something that is required by an
increasingly broader stratum of society and is already being taught in
schools. Users of social mass media must produce (themselves). The
development of specific, differentiated identities and the demand that
each be treated equally are no longer promoted exclusively by groups who
have to struggle against repression, existential threats, and
marginalization, but have penetrated deeply into the former mainstream,
not least because the present forms of capitalism have learned to profit
from the spread of niches and segmentation. When even conservative
parties have abandoned the idea of a "leading culture," then cultural
differences can no longer be classified by enforcing an absolute and
indisputable hierarchy, the top of which is occupied by specific
(geographical and cultural) centers. Rather, a space has been opened up
for endless negotiations, a space in which -- at least in principle --
everything can be called into question. This is not, of course, a
peaceful and egalitarian process. In addition to the practical hurdles
that exist in polarizing societies, there are also violent backlashes
and new forms of fundamentalism that are attempting once again to remove
certain religious, social, cultural, or political dimensions of
existence from the discussion. Yet these can only be understood in light
of a sweeping cultural transformation that has already reached
mainstream society.[^98^](#c1-note-0098){#c1-note-0098a} In other words,
the digital condition has become quotidian and dominant. It forms a
cultural constellation that determines all areas of life, and its
characteristic features are clearly recognizable. These will be the
focus of the next chapter.[]{#Page_57 type="pagebreak" title="57"}
:::

::: {.section .notesSet type="rearnotes"}
[]{#notesSet}Notes {#c1-ntgp-9999}
------------------

::: {.section .notesList}
[1](#c1-note-0001a){#c1-note-0001}  Kathrin Passig and Sascha Lobo,
*Internet: Segen oder Fluch* (Berlin: Rowohlt, 2012) \[--trans.\].

[2](#c1-note-0002a){#c1-note-0002}  The expression "heteronormatively
behaving" is used here to mean that, while in the public eye, the
behavior of the people []{#Page_177 type="pagebreak" title="177"}in
question conformed to heterosexual norms regardless of their personal
sexual orientations.

[3](#c1-note-0003a){#c1-note-0003}  No order is ever entirely closed
off. In this case, too, there was also room for exceptions and for
collective moments of greater cultural multiplicity. That said, the
social openness of the end of the 1920s, for instance, was restricted to
particular milieus within large cities and was accordingly short-lived.

[4](#c1-note-0004a){#c1-note-0004}  Fritz Machlup, *The Political
Economy of Monopoly: Business, Labor and Government Policies*
(Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1952).

[5](#c1-note-0005a){#c1-note-0005}  Machlup was a student of Ludwig von
Mises, the most influential representative of this radically
individualist school. See Hans-Hermann Hoppe, "Die Österreichische
Schule und ihre Bedeutung für die moderne Wirtschaftswissenschaft," in
Karl-Dieter Grüske (ed.), *Die Gemeinwirtschaft: Kommentarband zur
Neuauflage von Ludwig von Mises' "Die Gemeinwirtschaft"* (Düsseldorf:
Verlag Wirtschaft und Finanzen, 1996), pp. 65--90.

[6](#c1-note-0006a){#c1-note-0006}  Fritz Machlup, *The Production and
Distribution of Knowledge in the United States* (New York: John Wiley &
Sons, 1962).

[7](#c1-note-0007a){#c1-note-0007}  The term "knowledge worker" had
already been introduced to the discussion a few years before; see Peter
Drucker, *Landmarks of Tomorrow: A Report on the New* (New York: Harper,
1959).

[8](#c1-note-0008a){#c1-note-0008}  Peter Ecker, "Die
Verwissenschaftlichung der Industrie: Zur Geschichte der
Industrieforschung in den europäischen und amerikanischen
Elektrokonzernen 1890--1930," *Zeitschrift für Unternehmensgeschichte*
35 (1990): 73--94.

[9](#c1-note-0009a){#c1-note-0009}  Edward Bernays was the son of
Sigmund Freud\'s sister Anna and Ely Bernays, the brother of Freud\'s
wife, Martha Bernays.

[10](#c1-note-0010a){#c1-note-0010}  Edward L. Bernays, *Propaganda*
(New York: Horace Liverlight, 1928).

[11](#c1-note-0011a){#c1-note-0011}  James Beniger, *The Control
Revolution: Technological and Economic Origins of the Information
Society* (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), p. 350.

[12](#c1-note-0012a){#c1-note-0012}  Norbert Wiener, *Cybernetics: Or
Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine* (New York: J.
Wiley, 1948).

[13](#c1-note-0013a){#c1-note-0013}  Daniel Bell, *The Coming of
Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting* (New York:
Basic Books, 1973).

[14](#c1-note-0014a){#c1-note-0014}  Simon Nora and Alain Minc, *The
Computerization of Society: A Report to the President of France*
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1980).

[15](#c1-note-0015a){#c1-note-0015}  Manuel Castells, *The Rise of the
Network Society* (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996).

[16](#c1-note-0016a){#c1-note-0016}  Hans-Dieter Kübler, *Mythos
Wissensgesellschaft: Gesellschaft­licher Wandel zwischen Information,
Medien und Wissen -- Eine Einführung* (Wiesbaden: Verlag für
Sozialwissenschaften, 2009).[]{#Page_178 type="pagebreak" title="178"}

[17](#c1-note-0017a){#c1-note-0017}  Luc Boltanski and Ève Chiapello,
*The New Spirit of Capitalism*, trans. Gregory Elliott (London: Verso,
2005).

[18](#c1-note-0018a){#c1-note-0018}  Michael Piore and Charles Sabel,
*The Second Industrial Divide: Possibilities of Prosperity* (New York:
Basic Books, 1984).

[19](#c1-note-0019a){#c1-note-0019}  Castells, *The Rise of the Network
Society*. For a critical evaluation of Castells\'s work, see Felix
Stalder, *Manuel Castells and the Theory of the Network Society*
(Cambridge: Polity, 2006).

[20](#c1-note-0020a){#c1-note-0020}  "UK Creative Industries Mapping
Documents" (1998); quoted from Terry Flew, *The Creative Industries:
Culture and Policy* (Los Angeles, CA: Sage, 2012), pp. 9--10.

[21](#c1-note-0021a){#c1-note-0021}  The rise of the creative
industries, and the hope that they inspired among politicians, did not
escape criticism. Among the first works to draw attention to the
precarious nature of working in such industries was Angela McRobbie\'s
*British Fashion Design: Rag Trade or Image Industry?* (New York:
Routledge, 1998).

[22](#c1-note-0022a){#c1-note-0022}  This definition is not without a
degree of tautology, given that economic growth is based on talent,
which itself is defined by its ability to create new jobs; that is,
economic growth. At the same time, he employs the term "talent" in an
extremely narrow sense. Apparently, if something has nothing to do with
job creation, it also has nothing to do with talent or creativity. All
forms of creativity are thus measured and compared according to a common
criterion.

[23](#c1-note-0023a){#c1-note-0023}  Richard Florida, *Cities and the
Creative Class* (New York: Routledge, 2005), p. 5.

[24](#c1-note-0024a){#c1-note-0024}  One study has reached the
conclusion that, despite mass participation, "a new form of
communicative elite has developed, namely digitally and technically
versed actors who inform themselves in this way, exchange ideas and thus
gain influence. For them, the possibilities of platforms mainly
represent an expansion of useful tools. Above all, the dissemination of
digital technology makes it easier for versed and highly networked
individuals to convey their news more simply -- and, for these groups of
people, it lowers the threshold for active participation." Michael
Bauer, "Digitale Technologien und Partizipation," in Clara Landler et
al. (eds), *Netzpolitik in Österreich: Internet, Macht, Menschenrechte*
(Krems: Donau-Universität Krems, 2013), pp. 219--24, at 224
\[--trans.\].

[25](#c1-note-0025a){#c1-note-0025}  Boltanski and Chiapello, *The New
Spirit of Capitalism*.

[26](#c1-note-0026a){#c1-note-0026}  According to Wikipedia,
"Heteronormativity is the belief that people fall into distinct and
complementary genders (man and woman) with natural roles in life. It
assumes that heterosexuality is the only sexual orientation or only
norm, and states that sexual and marital relations are most (or only)
fitting between people of opposite sexes."[]{#Page_179 type="pagebreak"
title="179"}

[27](#c1-note-0027a){#c1-note-0027}  Jannis Plastargias, *RotZSchwul:
Der Beginn einer Bewegung (1971--1975)* (Berlin: Querverlag, 2015).

[28](#c1-note-0028a){#c1-note-0028}  Helmut Ahrens et al. (eds),
*Tuntenstreit: Theoriediskussion der Homosexuellen Aktion Westberlin*
(Berlin: Rosa Winkel, 1975), p. 4.

[29](#c1-note-0029a){#c1-note-0029}  Susanne Regener and Katrin Köppert
(eds), *Privat/öffentlich: Mediale Selbstentwürfe von Homosexualität*
(Vienna: Turia + Kant, 2013).

[30](#c1-note-0030a){#c1-note-0030}  Such, for instance, was the
assessment of Manfred Bruns, the spokesperson for the Lesbian and Gay
Association in Germany, in his text "Schwulenpolitik früher" (link no
longer active). From today\'s perspective, however, the main problem
with this event was the unclear position of the Green Party with respect
to pedophilia. See Franz Walter et al. (eds), *Die Grünen und die
Pädosexualität: Eine bundesdeutsche Geschichte* (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck
& Ruprecht, 2014).

[31](#c1-note-0031a){#c1-note-0031}  "AIDS: Tödliche Seuche," *Der
Spiegel* 23 (1983) \[--trans.\].

[32](#c1-note-0032a){#c1-note-0032}  Quoted from Frank Niggemeier, "Gay
Pride: Schwules Selbst­bewußtsein aus dem Village," in Bernd Polster
(ed.), *West-Wind: Die Amerikanisierung Europas* (Cologne: Dumont,
1995), pp. 179--87, at 184 \[--trans.\].

[33](#c1-note-0033a){#c1-note-0033}  Quoted from Regener and Köppert,
*Privat/öffentlich*, p. 7 \[--trans.\].

[34](#c1-note-0034a){#c1-note-0034}  Hans-Peter Buba and László A.
Vaskovics, *Benachteiligung gleichgeschlechtlich orientierter Personen
und Paare: Studie im Auftrag des Bundesministerium der Justiz* (Cologne:
Bundes­anzeiger, 2001).

[35](#c1-note-0035a){#c1-note-0035}  This process of internal
differentiation has not yet reached its conclusion, and thus the
acronyms have become longer and longer: LGBPTTQQIIAA+ stands for
"lesbian, gay, bisexual, pansexual, transgender, transsexual, queer,
questioning, intersex, intergender, asexual, ally."

[36](#c1-note-0036a){#c1-note-0036}  Judith Butler, *Gender Trouble:
Feminism and the Subversion of Identity* (New York: Routledge, 1989).

[37](#c1-note-0037a){#c1-note-0037}  Andreas Krass, "Queer Studies: Eine
Einführung," in Krass (ed.), *Queer denken: Gegen die Ordnung der
Sexualität* (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2003), pp. 7--27.

[38](#c1-note-0038a){#c1-note-0038}  Edward W. Said, *Orientalism* (New
York: Vintage Books, 1978).

[39](#c1-note-0039a){#c1-note-0039}  Kark August Wittfogel, *Oriental
Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power* (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1957).

[40](#c1-note-0040a){#c1-note-0040}  Silke Förschler, *Bilder des Harem:
Medienwandel und kultereller Austausch* (Berlin: Reimer, 2010).

[41](#c1-note-0041a){#c1-note-0041}  The selection and effectiveness of
these images is not a coincidence. Camel was one of the first brands of
cigarettes for []{#Page_180 type="pagebreak" title="180"}which
advertising, in the sense described above, was used in a systematic
manner.

[42](#c1-note-0042a){#c1-note-0042}  This would not exclude feelings of
regret about the loss of an exotic and romantic way of life, such as
those of T. E. Lawrence, whose activities in the Near East during the
First World War were memorialized in the film *Lawrence of Arabia*
(1962).

[43](#c1-note-0043a){#c1-note-0043}  Said has often been criticized,
however, for portraying orientalism so dominantly that there seems to be
no way out of the existing dependent relations. For an overview of the
debates that Said has instigated, see María do Mar Castro Varela and
Nikita Dhawan, *Postkoloniale Theorie: Eine kritische Ein­führung*
(Bielefeld: Transcript, 2005), pp. 37--46.

[44](#c1-note-0044a){#c1-note-0044}  "Migration führt zu 'hybrider'
Gesellschaft" (an interview with Homi K. Bhabha), *ORF Science*
(November 9, 2007), online \[--trans.\].

[45](#c1-note-0045a){#c1-note-0045}  Homi K. Bhabha, *The Location of
Culture* (New York: Routledge, 1994), p. 4.

[46](#c1-note-0046a){#c1-note-0046}  Elisabeth Bronfen and Benjamin
Marius, "Hybride Kulturen: Einleitung zur anglo-amerikanischen
Multikulturismusdebatte," in Bronfen et al. (eds), *Hybride Kulturen*
(Tübingen: Stauffenburg), pp. 1--30, at 8 \[--trans.\].

[47](#c1-note-0047a){#c1-note-0047}  "What Is Postcolonial Thinking? An
Interview with Achille Mbembe," *Eurozine* (December 2006), online.

[48](#c1-note-0048a){#c1-note-0048}  Migrants have always created their
own culture, which deals in various ways with the experience of
migration itself, but non-migrant populations have long tended to ignore
this. Things have now begun to change in this regard, for instance
through Imra Ayata and Bülent Kullukcu\'s compilation of songs by the
Turkish diaspora of the 1970s and 1980s: *Songs of Gastarbeiter*
(Munich: Trikont, 2013).

[49](#c1-note-0049a){#c1-note-0049}  The conference programs can be
found at: \<\>.

[50](#c1-note-0050a){#c1-note-0050}  "Deutschland entwickelt sich zu
einem attraktiven Einwanderungsland für hochqualifizierte Zuwanderer,"
press release by the CDU/CSU Alliance in the German Parliament (June 4,
2014), online \[--trans.\].

[51](#c1-note-0051a){#c1-note-0051}  Andreas Reckwitz, *Die Erfindung
der Kreativität: Zum Prozess gesellschaftlicher Ästhetisierung* (Berlin:
Suhrkamp, 2011), p. 180 \[--trans.\]. An English translation of this
book is forthcoming: *The Invention of Creativity: Modern Society and
the Culture of the New*, trans. Steven Black (Cambridge: Polity, 2017).

[52](#c1-note-0052a){#c1-note-0052}  Gert Selle, *Geschichte des Design
in Deutschland* (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2007).

[53](#c1-note-0053a){#c1-note-0053}  "Less Is More: The Design Ethos of
Dieter Rams," *SFMOMA* (June 29, 2011), online.[]{#Page_181
type="pagebreak" title="181"}

[54](#c1-note-0054a){#c1-note-0054}  The cybernetic perspective was
introduced to the field of design primarily by Buckminster Fuller. See
Diedrich Diederichsen and Anselm Franke, *The Whole Earth: California
and the Disappearance of the Outside* (Berlin: Sternberg, 2013).

[55](#c1-note-0055a){#c1-note-0055}  Clive Dilnot, "Design as a Socially
Significant Activity: An Introduction," *Design Studies* 3/3 (1982):
139--46.

[56](#c1-note-0056a){#c1-note-0056}  Victor J. Papanek, *Design for the
Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change* (New York: Pantheon, 1972),
p. 2.

[57](#c1-note-0057a){#c1-note-0057}  Reckwitz, *Die Erfindung der
Kreativität*.

[58](#c1-note-0058a){#c1-note-0058}  B. Joseph Pine and James H.
Gilmore, *The Experience Economy: Work Is Theater and Every Business Is
a Stage* (Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1999), p. ix (the
emphasis is original).

[59](#c1-note-0059a){#c1-note-0059}  Mona El Khafif, *Inszenierter
Urbanismus: Stadtraum für Kunst, Kultur und Konsum im Zeitalter der
Erlebnisgesellschaft* (Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag Dr. Müller, 2013).

[60](#c1-note-0060a){#c1-note-0060}  Konrad Becker and Martin Wassermair
(eds), *Phantom Kulturstadt* (Vienna: Löcker, 2009).

[61](#c1-note-0061a){#c1-note-0061}  See, for example, Andres Bosshard,
*Stadt hören: Klang­spaziergänge durch Zürich* (Zurich: NZZ Libro,
2009).

[62](#c1-note-0062a){#c1-note-0062}  "An alternate realty game (ARG),"
according to Wikipedia, "is an interactive networked narrative that uses
the real world as a platform and employs transmedia storytelling to
deliver a story that may be altered by players\' ideas or actions."

[63](#c1-note-0063a){#c1-note-0063}  Eric von Hippel, *Democratizing
Innovation* (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005).

[64](#c1-note-0064a){#c1-note-0064}  It is often the case that the
involvement of users simply serves to increase the efficiency of
production processes and customer service. Many activities that were
once undertaken at the expense of businesses now have to be carried out
by the customers themselves. See Günter Voss, *Der arbeitende Kunde:
Wenn Konsumenten zu unbezahlten Mitarbeitern werden* (Frankfurt am Main:
Campus, 2005).

[65](#c1-note-0065a){#c1-note-0065}  Beniger, *The Control Revolution*,
pp. 411--16.

[66](#c1-note-0066a){#c1-note-0066}  Louis Althusser, "Ideology and
Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation)," in
Althusser, *Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays*, trans. Ben Brewster
(New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971), pp. 127--86.

[67](#c1-note-0067a){#c1-note-0067}  Florian Becker et al. (eds),
*Gramsci lesen! Einstiege in die Gefängnis­hefte* (Hamburg: Argument,
2013), pp. 20--35.

[68](#c1-note-0068a){#c1-note-0068}  Guy Debord, *The Society of the
Spectacle*, trans. Fredy Perlman and Jon Supak (Detroit: Black & Red,
1977).

[69](#c1-note-0069a){#c1-note-0069}  Derrick de Kerckhove, "McLuhan and
the Toronto School of Communication," *Canadian Journal of
Communication* 14/4 (1989): 73--9.[]{#Page_182 type="pagebreak"
title="182"}

[70](#c1-note-0070a){#c1-note-0070}  Marshall McLuhan, *Understanding
Media: The Extensions of Man* (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964).

[71](#c1-note-0071a){#c1-note-0071}  Nam Jun Paik, "Exposition of Music
-- Electronic Television" (leaflet accompanying the exhibition). Quoted
from Zhang Ga, "Sounds, Images, Perception and Electrons," *Douban*
(March 3, 2016), online.

[72](#c1-note-0072a){#c1-note-0072}  Laura R. Linder, *Public Access
Television: America\'s Electronic Soapbox* (Westport, CT: Praeger,
1999).

[73](#c1-note-0073a){#c1-note-0073}  Hans Magnus Enzensberger,
"Constituents of a Theory of the Media," in Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick
Montfort (eds), *The New Media Reader* (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003),
pp. 259--75.

[74](#c1-note-0074a){#c1-note-0074}  Paul Groot, "Rabotnik TV,"
*Mediamatic* 2/3 (1988), online.

[75](#c1-note-0075a){#c1-note-0075}  Inke Arns, "Social Technologies:
Deconstruction, Subversion and the Utopia of Democratic Communication,"
*Medien Kunst Netz* (2004), online.

[76](#c1-note-0076a){#c1-note-0076}  The term was coined at a series of
conferences titled The Next Five Minutes (N5M), which were held in
Amsterdam from 1993 to 2003. See \<\>.

[77](#c1-note-0077a){#c1-note-0077}  Mark Dery, *Culture Jamming:
Hacking, Slashing and Sniping in the Empire of Signs* (Westfield: Open
Media, 1993); Luther Blisset et al., *Handbuch der
Kommunikationsguerilla*, 5th edn (Berlin: Assoziationen A, 2012).

[78](#c1-note-0078a){#c1-note-0078}  Critical Art Ensemble, *Electronic
Civil Disobedience and Other Unpopular Ideas* (New York: Autonomedia,
1996).

[79](#c1-note-0079a){#c1-note-0079}  Today this method is known as a
"distributed denial of service attack" (DDOS).

[80](#c1-note-0080a){#c1-note-0080}  Max Weber, *Economy and Society: An
Outline of Interpretive Sociology*, trans. Guenther Roth and Claus
Wittich (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1978), pp. 26--8.

[81](#c1-note-0081a){#c1-note-0081}  Ernst Friedrich Schumacher, *Small
Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered*, 8th edn (New York:
Harper Perennial, 2014).

[82](#c1-note-0082a){#c1-note-0082}  Fred Turner, *From Counterculture
to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Movement and the Rise of
Digital Utopianism* (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2006), p.
21. In this regard, see also the documentary films *Das Netz* by Lutz
Dammbeck (2003) and *All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace* by
Adam Curtis (2011).

[83](#c1-note-0083a){#c1-note-0083}  It was possible to understand
cybernetics as a language of free markets or also as one of centralized
planned economies. See Slava Gerovitch, *From Newspeak to Cyberspeak: A
History of Soviet Cybernetics* (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002). The
great interest of Soviet scientists in cybernetics rendered the term
rather suspicious in the West, where it was disassociated from
artificial intelligence.[]{#Page_183 type="pagebreak" title="183"}

[84](#c1-note-0084a){#c1-note-0084}  Claus Pias, "The Age of
Cybernetics," in Pias (ed.), *Cybernetics: The Macy Conferences
1946--1953* (Zurich: Diaphanes, 2016), pp. 11--27.

[85](#c1-note-0085a){#c1-note-0085}  Norbert Wiener, one of the
cofounders of cybernetics, explained this as follows in 1950: "In giving
the definition of Cybernetics in the original book, I classed
communication and control together. Why did I do this? When I
communicate with another person, I impart a message to him, and when he
communicates back with me he returns a related message which contains
information primarily accessible to him and not to me. When I control
the actions of another person, I communicate a message to him, and
although this message is in the imperative mood, the technique of
communication does not differ from that of a message of fact.
Furthermore, if my control is to be effective I must take cognizance of
any messages from him which may indicate that the order is understood
and has been obeyed." Norbert Wiener, *The Human Use of Human Beings:
Cybernetics and Society*, 2nd edn (London: Free Association Books,
1989), p. 16.

[86](#c1-note-0086a){#c1-note-0086}  Though presented here as distinct,
these interests could in fact be held by one and the same person. In
*From Counterculture to Cyberculture*, for instance, Turner discusses
"countercultural entrepreneurs."

[87](#c1-note-0087a){#c1-note-0087}  Richard Brautigan, "All Watched
Over by Machines of Loving Grace," in *All Watched Over by Machines of
Loving Grace*, by Brautigan (San Francisco: The Communication Company,
1967).

[88](#c1-note-0088a){#c1-note-0088}  David D. Clark, "A Cloudy Crystal
Ball: Visions of the Future," *Internet Engineering Taskforce* (July
1992), online.

[89](#c1-note-0089a){#c1-note-0089}  Castells, *The Rise of the Network
Society*.

[90](#c1-note-0090a){#c1-note-0090}  Bill Gates, "An Open Letter to
Hobbyists," *Homebrew Computer Club Newsletter* 2/1 (1976): 2.

[91](#c1-note-0091a){#c1-note-0091}  Richard Stallman, "What Is Free
Software?", *GNU Operating System*, online.

[92](#c1-note-0092a){#c1-note-0092}  The fundamentally cooperative
nature of programming was recognized early on. See Gerald M. Weinberg,
*The Psychology of Computer Programming*, rev. edn (New York: Dorset
House, 1998 \[originally published in 1971\]).

[93](#c1-note-0093a){#c1-note-0093}  On the history of free software,
see Volker Grassmuck, *Freie Software: Zwischen Privat- und
Gemeineigentum* (Berlin: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 2002).

[94](#c1-note-0094a){#c1-note-0094}  In his first email on the topic, he
wrote: "Hello everybody out there \[...\]. I'm doing a (free) operating
system (just a hobby, won\'t be big and professional like gnu) \[...\].
This has been brewing since April, and is starting to get ready. I\'d
like any feedback on things people like/dislike." Linus Torvalds, "What
[]{#Page_184 type="pagebreak" title="184"}Would You Like to See Most in
Minix," *Usenet Group* (August 1991), online.

[95](#c1-note-0095a){#c1-note-0095}  ARD/ZDF, "Onlinestudie" (2015),
online.

[96](#c1-note-0096a){#c1-note-0096}  From 1997 to 2003, the average use
of online media in Germany climbed from 76 to 138 minutes per day, and
by 2013 it reached 169 minutes. Over the same span of time, the average
frequency of use increased from 3.3 to 4.4 days per week, and by 2013 it
was 5.8. From 2007 to 2013, the percentage of people who were members of
private social networks like Facebook grew from 15 percent to 46
percent. Of these, nearly 60 percent -- around 19 million people -- used
such services on a daily basis. The source of this information is the
article cited in the previous note.

[97](#c1-note-0097a){#c1-note-0097}  "Internet Access Is 'a Fundamental
Right'," *BBC News* (8 March 2010), online.

[98](#c1-note-0098a){#c1-note-0098}  Manuel Castells, *The Power of
Identity* (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), pp. 7--22.
:::
:::

[II]{.chapterNumber} [Forms]{.chapterTitle} {#c2}

::: {.section}
With the emergence of the internet around the turn of the millennium as
an omnipresent infrastructure for communication and coordination,
previously independent cultural developments began to spread beyond
their specific original contexts, mutually influencing and enhancing one
another, and becoming increasingly intertwined. Out of a disconnected
conglomeration of more or less marginalized practices, a new and
specific cultural environment thus took shape, usurping or marginalizing
an ever greater variety of cultural constellations. The following
discussion will focus on three *forms* of the digital condition; that
is, on those formal qualities that (notwithstanding all of its internal
conflicts and contradictions) lend a particular shape to this cultural
environment as a whole: *referentiality*, *communality*, and
*algorithmicity*. It is only because most of the cultural processes
operating under the digital condition are characterized by common formal
features such as these that it is reasonable to speak of the digital
condition in the singular.

"Referentiality" is a method with which individuals can inscribe
themselves into cultural processes and constitute themselves as
producers. Understood as shared social meaning, the arena of culture
entails that such an undertaking cannot be limited to the individual.
Rather, it takes place within a larger framework whose existence and
development depend on []{#Page_58 type="pagebreak" title="58"}communal
formations. "Algorithmicity" denotes those aspects of cultural processes
that are (pre-)arranged by the activities of machines. Algorithms
transform the vast quantities of data and information that characterize
so many facets of present-day life into dimensions and formats that can
be registered by human perception. It is impossible to read the content
of billions of websites. Therefore we turn to services such as Google\'s
search algorithm, which reduces the data flood ("big data") to a
manageable amount and translates it into a format that humans can
understand ("small data"). Without them, human beings could not
comprehend or do anything within a culture built around digital
technologies, but they influence our understanding and activity in an
ambivalent way. They create new dependencies by pre-sorting and making
the (informational) world available to us, yet simultaneously ensure our
autonomy by providing the preconditions that enable us to act.
:::

::: {.section}
Referentiality {#c2-sec-0002}
--------------

In the digital condition, one of the methods (if not *the* most
fundamental method) enabling humans to participate -- alone or in groups
-- in the collective negotiation of meaning is the system of creating
references. In a number of arenas, referential processes play an
important role in the assignment of both meaning and form. According to
the art historian André Rottmann, for instance, "one might claim that
working with references has in recent years become the dominant
production-aesthetic model in contemporary
art."[^1^](#c2-note-0001){#c2-note-0001a} This burgeoning engagement
with references, however, is hardly restricted to the world of
contemporary art. Referentiality is a feature of many processes that
encompass the operations of various genres of professional and everyday
culture. In its essence, it is the use of materials that are already
equipped with meaning -- as opposed to so-called raw material -- to
create new meanings. The referential techniques used to achieve this are
extremely diverse, a fact reflected in the numerous terms that exist to
describe them: re-mix, re-make, re-enactment, appropriation, sampling,
meme, imitation, homage, tropicália, parody, quotation, post-production,
re-performance, []{#Page_59 type="pagebreak" title="59"}camouflage,
(non-academic) research, re-creativity, mashup, transformative use, and
so on.

These processes have two important aspects in common: the
recognizability of the sources and the freedom to deal with them however
one likes. The first creates an internal system of references from which
meaning and aesthetics are derived in an essential
manner.[^2^](#c2-note-0002){#c2-note-0002a} The second is the
precondition enabling the creation of something that is both new and on
the same level as the re-used material. This represents a clear
departure from the historical--critical method, which endeavors to embed
a source in its original context in order to re-determine its meaning,
but also a departure from classical forms of rendition such as
translations, adaptations (for instance, adapting a book for a film), or
cover versions, which, though they translate a work into another
language or medium, still attempt to preserve its original meaning.
Re-mixes produced by DJs are one example of the referential treatment of
source material. In his book on the history of DJ culture, the
journalist Ulf Poschardt notes: "The remixer isn\'t concerned with
salvaging authenticity, but with creating a new
authenticity."[^3^](#c2-note-0003){#c2-note-0003a} For instead of
distancing themselves from the past, which would follow the (Western)
logic of progress or the spirit of the avant-garde, these processes
refer explicitly to precursors and to existing material. In one and the
same gesture, both one\'s own new position and the context and cultural
tradition that is being carried on in one\'s own work are constituted
performatively; that is, through one\'s own activity in the moment. I
will discuss this phenomenon in greater depth below.

To work with existing cultural material is, in itself, nothing new. In
modern montages, artists likewise drew upon available texts, images, and
treated materials. Yet there is an important difference: montages were
concerned with bringing together seemingly incongruous but stable
"finished pieces" in a more or less unmediated and fragmentary manner.
This is especially clear in the collages by the Dadaists or in
Expressionist literature such as Alfred Döblin\'s *Berlin
Alexanderplatz*. In these works, the experience of Modernity\'s many
fractures -- its fragmentation and turmoil -- was given a new aesthetic
form. In his reference to montages, Adorno thus observed that the
"negation of synthesis becomes a principle []{#Page_60 type="pagebreak"
title="60"}of form."[^4^](#c2-note-0004){#c2-note-0004a} At least for a
brief moment, he considered them an adequate expression for the
impossibility of reconciling the contradictions of capitalist culture.
Influenced by Adorno, the literary theorist Peter Bürger went so far as
to call the montage the true "paradigm of
modernity."[^5^](#c2-note-0005){#c2-note-0005a} In today\'s referential
processes, on the contrary, pieces are not brought together as much as
they are integrated into one another by being altered, adapted, and
transformed. Unlike the older arrangement, it is not the fissures
between elements that are foregrounded but rather their synthesis in the
present. Conchita Wurst, the bearded diva, is not torn between two
conflicting poles. Rather, she represents a successful synthesis --
something new and harmonious that distinguishes itself by showcasing
elements of the old order (man/woman) and simultaneously transcending
them.

This synthesis, however, is usually just temporary, for at any time it
can itself serve as material for yet another rendering. Of course, this
is far easier to pull off with digital objects than with analog objects,
though these categories have become increasingly porous and thus
increasingly problematic as opposites. More and more objects exist both
in an analog and in a digital form. Think of photographs and slides,
which have become so easy to digitalize. Even three-dimensional objects
can now be scanned and printed. In the future, programmable materials
with controllable and reversible features will cause the difference
between the two domains to vanish: analog is becoming more and more
digital.

Montages and referential processes can only become widespread methods
if, in a given society, cultural objects are available in three
different respects. The first is economic and organizational: they must
be affordable and easily accessible. Whoever is unable to afford books
or get hold of them by some other means will not be able to reconfigure
any texts. The second is cultural: working with cultural objects --
which can always create deviations from the source in unpredictable ways
-- must not be treated as taboo or illegal, but rather as an everyday
activity without any special preconditions. It is much easier to
manipulate a text from a secular newspaper than one from a religious
canon. The third is material: it must be possible to use the material
and to change it.[^6[]{#Page_61 type="pagebreak"
title="61"}^](#c2-note-0006){#c2-note-0006a}

In terms of this third form of availability, montages differ from
referential processes, for cultural objects can be integrated into one
another -- instead of simply being placed side by side -- far more
readily when they are digitally coded. Information is digitally coded
when it is stored by means of a limited system of discrete (that is,
separated by finite intervals or distances) signs that are meaningless
in themselves. This allows information to be copied from one carrier to
another without any loss and it allows the respective signs, whether
individually or in groups, to be arranged freely. Seen in this way,
digital coding is not necessarily bound to computers but can rather be
realized with all materials: a mosaic is a digital process in which
information is coded by means of variously colored tiles, just as a
digital image consists of pixels. In the case of the mosaic, of course,
the resolution is far lower. Alphabetic writing is a form of coding
linguistic information by means of discrete signs that are, in
themselves, meaningless. Consequently, Florian Cramer has argued that
"every form of literature that is recorded alphabetically and not based
on analog parameters such as ideograms or orality is already digital in
that it is stored in discrete
signs."[^7^](#c2-note-0007){#c2-note-0007a} However, the specific
features of the alphabet, as Marshall McLuhan repeatedly underscored,
did not fully develop until the advent of the printing
press.[^8^](#c2-note-0008){#c2-note-0008a} It was the printing press, in
other words, that first abstracted written signs from analog handwriting
and transformed them into standardized symbols that could be repeated
without any loss of information. In this practical sense, the printing
press made writing digital, with the result that dealing with texts soon
became radically different.

::: {.section}
### Information overload 1.0 {#c2-sec-0003}

The printing press made texts available in the three respects mentioned
above. For one thing, their number increased rapidly, while their price
significantly sank. During the first two generations after Gutenberg\'s
invention -- that is, between 1450 and 1500 -- more books were produced
than during the thousand years
before.[^9^](#c2-note-0009){#c2-note-0009a} And that was just the
beginning. Dealing with books and their content changed from the ground
up. In manuscript culture, every new copy represented a potential
degradation of the original, and therefore []{#Page_62 type="pagebreak"
title="62"}the oldest sources (those that had undergone as little
corruption as possible) were valued above all. With the advent of print
culture, the idea took hold that texts could be improved by the process
of editing, not least because the availability of old sources, through
reprints and facsimiles, had also improved dramatically. Pure
reproduction was mechanized and overcome as a cultural challenge.

According to the historian Elizabeth Eisenstein, one of the first
consequences of the greatly increased availability of the printed book
was that it overcame the "tyranny of major authorities, which was common
in small libraries."[^10^](#c2-note-0010){#c2-note-0010a} Scientists
were now able to compare texts with one another and critique them to an
unprecedented extent. Their general orientation turned around: instead
of looking back in order to preserve what they knew, they were now
looking ahead toward what they might not (yet) know.

In order to organize this information flood of rapidly amassing texts,
it was necessary to create new conventions: books were now specified by
their author, publisher, and date of publication, not to mention
furnished with page numbers. This enabled large numbers of texts to be
catalogued and every individual text -- indeed, every single passage --
to be referenced.[^11^](#c2-note-0011){#c2-note-0011a} Scientists could
legitimize the pursuit of new knowledge by drawing attention to specific
mistakes or gaps in existing texts. In the scientific culture that was
developing at the time, the close connection between old and new
ma­terial was not simply regarded as something positive; it was also
urgently prescribed as a method of argumentation. Every text had to
contain an internal system of references, and this was the basis for the
development of schools, disciplines, and specific discourses.

The digital character of printed writing also made texts available in
the third respect mentioned above. Because discrete signs could be
reproduced without any loss of information, it was possible not only to
make perfect copies but also to remove content from one carrier and
transfer it to another. Materials were no longer simply arranged
sequentially, as in medieval compilations and almanacs, but manipulated
to give rise to a new and independent fluid text. A set of conventions
was developed -- one that remains in use today -- for modifying embedded
or quoted material in order for it []{#Page_63 type="pagebreak"
title="63"}to fit into its new environment. In this manner, quotations
could be altered in such a way that they could be integrated seamlessly
into a new text while remaining recognizable as direct citations.
Several of these conventions, for instance the use of square brackets to
indicate additions ("\[ \]") or ellipses to indicate omissions ("..."),
are also used in this very book. At the same time, the conventions for
making explicit references led to the creation of an internal reference
system that made the singular position of the new text legible within a
collective field of work. "Printing," to quote Elizabeth Eisenstein once
again, "encouraged forms of combinatory activity which were social as
well as intellectual. It changed relationships between men of learning
as well as between systems of
ideas."[^12^](#c2-note-0012){#c2-note-0012a} Exchange between scholars,
in the form of letters and visits, intensified. The seventeenth century
saw the formation of the *respublica literaria* or the "Republic of
Letters," a loose network of scholars devoted to promoting the ideas of
the Enlightenment. Beginning in the eighteenth century, the rapidly
growing number of scientific fields was arranged and institutionalized
into clearly distinct disciplines. In the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, diverse media-technical innovations made images, sounds, and
moving images available, though at first only in analog formats. These
created the preconditions that enabled the montage in all of its forms
-- film cuts, collages, readymades, *musique concrète*, found-footage
films, literary cut-ups, and artistic assemblages (to name only the
best-known genres) -- to become the paradigm of Modernity.
:::

::: {.section}
### Information overload 2.0 {#c2-sec-0004}

It was not until new technical possibilities for recording, storing,
processing, and reproduction appeared over the course of the 1990s that
it also became increasingly possible to code and edit images, audio, and
video digitally. Through the networking that was taking place not far
behind, society was flooded with an unprecedented amount of digit­ally
coded information *of every sort*, and the circulation of this
information accelerated. This was not, however, simply a quantitative
change but also and above all a qualitative one. Cultural materials
became available in a comprehensive []{#Page_64 type="pagebreak"
title="64"}sense -- economically and organizationally, culturally
(despite legal problems), and materially (because digitalized). Today it
would not be bold to predict that nearly every text, image, or sound
will soon exist in a digital form. Most of the new reproducible works
are already "born digital" and digit­ally distributed, or they are
physically produced according to digital instructions. Many initiatives
are working to digitalize older, analog works. We are now anchored in
the digital.

Among the numerous digitalization projects currently under way, the most
ambitious is that of Google Books, which, since its launch in 2004, has
digitalized around 20 million books from the collections of large
libraries and prepared them for full-text searches. Right from the
start, a fierce debate arose about the legal and cultural acceptability
of this project. One concern was whether Google\'s process infringed
upon the rights of the authors and publishers of the scanned books or
whether, according to American law, it qualified as "fair use," in which
case there would be no obligation for the company to seek authorization
or offer compensation. The second main concern was whether it would be
culturally or politically appropriate for a private corporation to hold
a de facto monopoly over the digital heritage of book culture. The first
issue incited a complex legal battle that, in 2013, was decided in
Google\'s favor by a judge on the United States District Court in New
York.[^13^](#c2-note-0013){#c2-note-0013a} At the heart of the second
issue was the question of how a public library should look in the
twenty-first century.[^14^](#c2-note-0014){#c2-note-0014a} In November
of 2008, the European Commission and the cultural minister of the
European Union launched the virtual Europeana library, which occurred
after a number of European countries had already invested hundreds of
millions of euros in various digitalization
initiatives.[^15^](#c2-note-0015){#c2-note-0015a} Today, Europeana
serves as a common access point to the online archives of around 2,500
European cultural institutions. By the end of 2015, its digital holdings
had grown to include more than 40 million objects. This is still,
however, a relatively small number, for it has been estimated that
European archives and museums contain more than 220 million
natural-historical and more than 260 million cultural-historical
objects. In the United States, discussions about the future of libraries
[]{#Page_65 type="pagebreak" title="65"}led to the 2013 launch of the
Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), which, like Europeana,
provides common access to the digitalized holdings of archives, museums,
and libraries. By now, more than 14 million items can be viewed there.

In one way or another, however, both the private and the public projects
of this sort have been limited by binding copyright laws. The librarian
and book historian Robert Darnton, one of the most prominent advocates
of the Digital Public Library of America, has accordingly stated: "The
main impediment to the DPLA\'s growth is legal, not financial. Copyright
laws could exclude everything published after 1964, most works published
after 1923, and some that go back as far as
1873."[^16^](#c2-note-0016){#c2-note-0016a} The legal situation in
Europe is similar to that in the United States. It, too, massively
obstructs the work of public
institutions.[^17^](#c2-note-0017){#c2-note-0017a} In many cases, this
has had the absurd consequence that certain materials, though they have
been fully digitalized, may only be accessed in part or exclusively
inside the facilities of a particular institution. Whereas companies
such as Google can afford to wage long legal battles, and in the
meantime create precedents, public institutions must proceed with great
caution, not least to avoid the accusation of using public funds to
violate copyright laws. Thus, they tend to fade into the background and
leave users, who are unfamiliar with the complex legal situation, with
the impression that they are even more out-of-date than they often are.

Informal actors, who explicitly operate beyond the realm of copyright
law, are not faced with such restrictions. UbuWeb, for instance, which
is the largest online archive devoted to the history of
twentieth-century avant-garde art, was not created by an art museum but
rather by the initiative of an individual artist, Kenneth Goldsmith.
Since 1996, he has been collecting historically relevant materials that
were no longer in distribution and placing them online for free and
without any stipulations. He forgoes the process of obtaining the rights
to certain works of art because, as he remarks on the website, "Let\'s
face it, if we had to get permission from everyone on UbuWeb, there
would be no UbuWeb."[^18^](#c2-note-0018){#c2-note-0018a} It would
simply be too demanding to do so. Because he pursues the project without
any financial interest and has saved so much []{#Page_66
type="pagebreak" title="66"}from oblivion, his efforts have provoked
hardly any legal difficulties. On the contrary, UbuWeb has become so
important that Goldsmith has begun to receive more and more material
directly from artists and their heirs, who would like certain works not
to be forgotten. Nevertheless, or perhaps for this very reason,
Goldsmith repeatedly stresses the instability of his archive, which
could disappear at any moment if he loses interest in maintaining it or
if something else happens. Users are therefore able to download works
from UbuWeb and archive, on their own, whatever items they find most
important. Of course, this fragility contradicts the idea of an archive
as a place for long-term preservation. Yet such a task could only be
undertaken by an institution that is oriented toward the long term.
Because of the existing legal conditions, however, it is hardly likely
that such an institution will come about.

Whereas Goldsmith is highly adept at operating within a niche that not
only tolerates but also accepts the violation of formal copyright
claims, large websites responsible for the uncontrolled dissemination of
digital content do not bother with such niceties. Their purpose is
rather to ensure that all popular content is made available digitally
and for free, whether legally or not. These sites, too, have experienced
uninterrupted growth. By the end of 2015, dozens of millions of people
were simultaneously using the BitTorrent tracker The Pirate Bay -- the
largest nodal point for file-sharing networks during the last decade --
to exchange several million digital files with one
another.[^19^](#c2-note-0019){#c2-note-0019a} And this was happening
despite protracted attempts to block or close down the file-sharing site
by legal means and despite a variety of competing services. Even when
the founders of the website were sentenced in Sweden to pay large fines
(around €3 million) and to serve time in prison, the site still did not
disappear from the internet.[^20^](#c2-note-0020){#c2-note-0020a} At the
same time, new providers have entered the market of free access; their
method is not to facilitate distributed downloads but rather to offer,
on account of the drastically reduced cost of data transfers, direct
streaming. Although some of these services are relatively easy to locate
and some have been legally banned -- the best-known case in Germany
being that of the popular site kino.to -- more of them continue to
appear.[^21^](#c2-note-0021){#c2-note-0021a} Moreover, this phenomenon
[]{#Page_67 type="pagebreak" title="67"}is not limited to music and
films, but encompasses all media formats. For instance, it is
foreseeable that the number of freely available plans for 3D objects
will increase along with the popularity of 3D printing. It has almost
escaped notice, however, that so-called "shadow libraries" have been
popping up everywhere; the latter are not accessible to the public but
rather to members, for instance, of closed exchange platforms or of
university intranets. Few seminars take place any more without a corpus
of scanned texts, regardless of whether this practice is legal or
not.[^22^](#c2-note-0022){#c2-note-0022a}

The lines between these different mechanisms of access are highly
permeable. Content acquired legally can make its way to file-sharing
networks as an illegal copy; content available for free can be sold in
special editions; content from shadow libraries can make its way to
publicly accessible sites; and, conversely, content that was once freely
available can disappear into shadow libraries. As regards free access,
the details of this rapidly changing landscape are almost
inconsequential, for the general trend that has emerged from these
various dynamics -- legal and illegal, public and private -- is
unambiguous: in a comprehensive and practical sense, cultural works of
all sorts will become freely available despite whatever legal and
technical restrictions might be in place. Whether absolutely all
material will be made available in this way is not the decisive factor,
at least not for the individual, for, as the German Library Association
has stated, "it is foreseeable that non-digitalized material will
increasingly escape the awareness of users, who have understandably come
to appreciate the ubiquitous availability and more convenient
processability of the digital versions of analog
objects."[^23^](#c2-note-0023){#c2-note-0023a} In this context of excess
information, it is difficult to determine whether a particular work or a
crucial reference is missing, given that a multitude of other works and
references can be found in their place.

At the same time, prodigious amounts of new material are being produced
that, before the era of digitalization and networks, never could have
existed at all or never would have left the private sphere. An example
of this is amateur photography. This is nothing new in itself; as early
as 1899, Kodak was marketing its films and apparatus with the slogan
"You press the button, we do the rest," and ever since, []{#Page_68
type="pagebreak" title="68"}drawers and albums have been overflowing
with photographs. With the advent of digitalization, however, certain
economic and material limitations ceased to exist that, until then, had
caused most private photographers to think twice about how many shots
they wanted to take. After all, they had to pay for the film to be
developed and then store the pictures somewhere. Cameras also became
increasingly "intelligent," which improved the technical quality of
photo­graphs. Even complex procedures such as increasing the level of
detail or the contrast ratio -- the difference between an image\'s
brightest and darkest points -- no longer require any specialized
knowledge of photochemical processes in the darkroom. Today, such
features are often pre-installed in many cameras as an option (high
dynamic range). Ever since the introduction of built-in digital cameras
for smartphones, anyone with such a device can take pictures everywhere
and at any time and then store them digitally. Images can then be posted
on online platforms and shared with others. By the middle of 2015,
Flickr -- the largest but certainly not the only specialized platform of
this sort -- had more than 112 million registered users participating in
more than 2 million groups. Every user has access to free storage space
for about half a million of his or her own pictures. At that point, in
other words, the platform was equipped to manage more than 55 billion
photographs. Around 3.5 million images were being uploaded every day,
many of which could be accessed by anyone. This may seem like a lot, but
in reality it is just a small portion of the pictures that are posted
online on a daily basis. Around that same time -- again, the middle of
2015 -- approximately 350 million pictures were being posted on Facebook
*every day*. The total number of photographs saved there has been
estimated to be 250 billion. In addition, there are also large platforms
for professional "stock photos" (supplies of pre-produced images that
are supposed to depict generic situations) and the databanks of
professional agencies such Getty Images or Corbis. All of these images
can be found easily and acquired quickly (though not always for free).
Yet photography is not unique in this regard. In all fields, the number
of cultural artifacts available to the public on specialized platforms
has been increasing rapidly in recent years.[]{#Page_69 type="pagebreak"
title="69"}
:::

::: {.section}
### The great disorder {#c2-sec-0005}

The old orders that had been responsible for filtering, organ­izing, and
publishing cultural material -- culture industries, mass media,
libraries, museums, archives, etc. -- are incapable of managing almost
any aspect of this deluge. They can barely function as gatekeepers any
more between those realms that, with their help, were once defined as
"private" and "public." Their decisions about what is or is not
important matter less and less. Moreover, having already been subjected
to a decades-long critique, their rules, which had been relatively
binding and formative over long periods of time, are rapidly losing
practical significance.

Even Europeana, a relatively small project based on trad­itional museums
and archives and with a mandate to make the European cultural heritage
available online, has contributed to the disintegration of established
orders: it indiscriminately brings together 2,500 previously separated
institutions. The specific semantic contexts that formerly shaped the
history and orientation of institutions have been dissolved or reduced
to dry meta-data, and millions upon millions of cultural artifacts are
now equidistant from one another. Instead of certain artifacts being
firmly anchored in a location, for instance in an ethnographic
collection devoted to the colonial history of France, it is now possible
for everything to exist side by side. Europeana is not an archive in the
traditional sense, or even a museum with a fixed and meaningful order;
rather, it is just a standard database. Everything in it is just one
search request away, and every search generates a unique order in the
form of a sequence of visible artifacts. As a result, individual objects
are freed from those meta-narratives, created by the museums and
archives that preserve them, which situate them within broader contexts
and assign more or less clear meanings to them. They consequently become
more open to interpretation. A search result does not articulate an
interpretive field of reference but merely a connection, created by
constantly changing search algorithms, between a request and the corpus
of material, which is likewise constantly changing.

Precisely because it offers so many different approaches to more or less
freely combinable elements of information, []{#Page_70 type="pagebreak"
title="70"}the order of the database no longer really provides a
framework for interpreting search results in a meaningful way.
Al­together, the meaning of many objects and signs is becoming even more
uncertain. On the one hand, this is because the connection to their
original context is becoming fragile; on the other hand, it is because
they can appear in every possible combination and in the greatest
variety of reception contexts. In less official archives and in less
specialized search engines, the dissolution of context is far more
pronounced than it is in the case of the Europeana project. For the sake
of orienting its users, for instance, YouTube provides the date when a
video has been posted, but there is no indication of when a video was
actually produced. Further information provided about a video, for
example in the comments section, is essentially unreliable. It might be
true -- or it might not. The internet researcher David Weinberger has
called this the "new digital disorder," which, at least for many users,
is an entirely apt description.[^24^](#c2-note-0024){#c2-note-0024a} For
individuals, this disorder has created both the freedom to establish
their own orders and the obligation of doing so, regardless of whether
or not they are ready for the task.

This tension between freedom and obligation is at its strongest online,
where the excess of culture and its more or less free availability are
immediate and omnipresent. In fact, everything that can be retrieved
online is culture in the sense that everything -- from the deepest layer
of hardware to the most superficial tweet -- has been made by someone
with a particular intention, and everything has been made to fit a
particular order. And it is precisely this excess of often contradictory
meanings and limited, regional, and incompatible orders that leads to
disorder and meaninglessness. This is not limited to the online world,
however, because the latter is not self-contained. In an essential way,
digital media also serve to organize the material world. On the basis of
extremely complex and opaque yet highly efficient logistical and
production processes, people are also confronted with constantly
changing material things about whose origins and meanings they have
little idea. Even something as simple to produce as yoghurt usually has
a thousand kilometers behind it before it ends up on a shelf in the
supermarket. The logistics that enable this are oriented toward
flexibility; []{#Page_71 type="pagebreak" title="71"}they bring elements
together as efficiently as possible. It is nearly impossible for final
customers to find out anything about the ingredients. Customers are
merely supposed to be oriented by signs and notices such as "new" or "as
before," "natural," and "healthy," which are written by specialists and
meant to manipulate shoppers as much as the law allows. Even here, in
corporeal everyday life, every individual has to deal with a surge of
excess and disorder that threatens to erode the original meaning
conferred on every object -- even where such meaning was once entirely
unproblematic, as in the case of
yoghurt.[^25^](#c2-note-0025){#c2-note-0025a}
:::

::: {.section}
### Selecting and organizing {#c2-sec-0006}

In this situation, the creation of one\'s own system of references has
become a ubiquitous and generally accessible method for organizing all
of the ambivalent things that one encounters on a given day. Such things
are thus arranged within a specific context of meaning that also
(co)determines one\'s own relation to the world and subjective position
in it. Referentiality takes place through three types of activity, the
first being simply to attract attention to certain things, which affirms
(at least implicitly) that they are important. With every single picture
posted on Flickr, every tweet, every blog post, every forum post, and
every status update, the user is doing exactly that; he or she is
communicating to others: "Look over here! I think this is important!" Of
course, there is nothing new to filtering and allocating meaning. What
is new, however, is that these processes are no longer being carried out
primarily by specialists at editorial offices, museums, or archives, but
have become daily requirements for a large portion of the population,
regardless of whether they possess the material and cultural resources
that are necessary for the task.
:::

::: {.section}
### The loop through the body {#c2-sec-0007}

Given the flood of information that perpetually surrounds everyone, the
act of focusing attention and reducing vast numbers of possibilities
into something concrete has become a productive achievement, however
banal each of these micro-activities might seem on its own, and even if,
at first, []{#Page_72 type="pagebreak" title="72"}the only concern might
be to focus the attention of the person doing it. The value of this
(often very brief) activity is that it singles out elements from the
uniform sludge of unmanageable complexity. Something plucked out in this
way gains value because it has required the use of a resource that
cannot be reproduced, that exists outside of the world of information
and that is invariably limited for every individual: our own lifetime.
Every status update that is not machine-generated means that someone has
invested time, be it only a second, in order to point to this and not to
something else. Thus, a process of validating what exists in the excess
takes place in connection with the ultimate scarcity -- our own
lifetimes, our own bodies. Even if the value generated by this act is
minimal or diffuse, it is still -- to borrow from Gregory Bateson\'s
famous definition of information -- a difference that makes a difference
in this stream of equivalencies and
meaninglessness.[^26^](#c2-note-0026){#c2-note-0026a} This singling out
-- this use of one\'s own body to generate meaning -- does not, however,
take place by means of mere micro-activities throughout the day; it is
also a defining aspect of complex cultural strategies. In recent years,
re-enactment (that is, the re-staging of historical situ­ations and
events) has established itself as a common practice in contemporary art.
Unlike traditional re-enactments, such as those of historically
significant battles, which attempt to represent the past as faithfully
as possible, "artistic re-enactments," according to the curator Inke
Arns, "are not an affirmative confirmation of the past; rather, they are
*questionings* of the present through reaching back to historical
events," especially as they are represented in images and other forms of
documentation. Thanks to search engines and databases, such
representations are more or less always present, though in the form of
indeterminate images, ambivalent documents, and contentious
interpretations. Artists in this situation, as Arns explains,

::: {.extract}
do not ask the naïve question about what really happened outside of the
history represented in the media -- the "authenticity" beyond the images
-- instead, they ask what the images we see might mean concretely to us,
if we were to experience these situations personally. In this way the
artistic reenactment confronts the general feeling of insecurity about
the meaning []{#Page_73 type="pagebreak" title="73"}of images by using a
paradoxical approach: through erasing distance to the images and at the
same time distancing itself from the
images.[^27^](#c2-note-0027){#c2-note-0027a}
:::

This paradox manifests itself in that the images are appropriated and
sublated through the use of one\'s own body in the re-enactments. They
simultaneously refer to the past and create a new reality in the
present. In perhaps the best-known re-enactment of this type, the artist
Jeremy Deller revived, in 2001, the Battle of Orgreave, one of the
central episodes of the British miners\' strike of 1984 and 1985. This
historical event is regarded as a turning point in the protracted
conflict between Margaret Thatcher\'s government and the labor unions --
a key moment in the implementation of Great Britain\'s neoliberal
regime, which is still in effect today. In Deller\'s re-enactment, the
heart of the matter is not historical accuracy, which is always
controversial in such epoch-changing events. Rather, he focuses on the
former participants -- the miners and police officers alike, who, along
with non-professional actors, lived through the situation again -- in
order to explore both the distance from the events and their
representation in the media, as well as their ongoing biographical and
societal presence.[^28^](#c2-note-0028){#c2-note-0028a}

Elaborate practices of embodying medial images through processes of
appropriation and distancing have also found their way into popular
culture, for instance in so-called "cosplay." The term, which is a
contraction of the words "costume" and "play," was coined by a Japanese
man named Nobuyuki Takahashi. In 1984, while attending the World Science
Fiction Convention in Los Angeles, he used the word to describe the
practice of certain attendees to dress up as their favorite characters.
Participants in cosplay embody fictitious figures -- mostly from the
worlds of science fiction, comics/manga, or computer games -- by donning
home-made costumes and striking characteristic
poses.[^29^](#c2-note-0029){#c2-note-0029a} The often considerable
effort that goes into this is mostly reflected in the costumes, not in
the choreography or dramaturgy of the performance. What is significant
is that these costumes are usually not exact replicas but are rather
freely adapted by each player to represent the character as he or she
interprets it to be. Accordingly, "Cosplay is a form of appropriation
[]{#Page_74 type="pagebreak" title="74"}that transforms, actualizes and
performs an existing story in close connection to the fan\'s own
identity."[^30^](#c2-note-0030){#c2-note-0030a} This practice,
admittedly, goes back quite far in the history of fan culture, but it
has experienced a striking surge through the opportunity for fans to
network with one another around the world, to produce costumes and
images of professional quality, and to place themselves on the same
level as their (fictitious) idols. By now it has become a global
subculture whose members are active not only online but also at hundreds
of conventions throughout the world. In Germany, an annual cosplay
competition has been held since 2007 (it is organized by the Frankfurt
Book Fair and Animexx, the country\'s largest manga and anime
community). The scene, which has grown and branched out considerably
over the past few years, has slowly begun to professionalize, with
shops, books, and players who make paid appearances. Even in fan
culture, stars are born. As soon as the subculture has exceeded a
certain size, this gradual onset of commercialization will undoubtedly
lead to tensions within the community. For now, however, two of its
noteworthy features remain: the power of the desire to appropriate, in a
bodily manner, characters from vast cultural universes, and the
widespread combination of free interpretation and meticulous attention
to detail.
:::

::: {.section}
### Lineages and transformations {#c2-sec-0008}

Because of the great effort tha they require, re-enactment and cosplay
are somewhat extreme examples of singling out, appropriating, and
referencing. As everyday activities that almost take place incidentally,
however, these three practices usually do not make any significant or
lasting differences. Yet they do not happen just once, but over and over
again. They accumulate and thus constitute referentiality\'s second type
of activity: the creation of connections between the many things that
have attracted attention. In such a way, paths are forged through the
vast complexity. These paths, which can be formed, for instance, by
referring to different things one after another, likewise serve to
produce and filter meaning. Things that can potentially belong in
multiple contexts are brought into a single, specific context. For the
individual []{#Page_75 type="pagebreak" title="75"}producer, this is how
fields of attention, reference systems, and contexts of meaning are
first established. In the third step, the things that have been selected
and brought together are changed. Perhaps something is removed to modify
the meaning, or perhaps something is added that was previously absent or
unavailable. Either way, referential culture is always producing
something new.

These processes are applied both within individual works (referentiality
in a strict sense) and within currents of communication that consist of
numerous molecular acts (referentiality in a broader sense). This latter
sort of compilation is far more widespread than the creation of new
re-mix works. Consider, for example, the billionfold sequences of status
updates, which sometimes involve a link to an interesting video,
sometimes a post of a photograph, then a short list of favorite songs, a
top 10 chart from one\'s own feed, or anything else. Such methods of
inscribing oneself into the world by means of references, combinations,
or alterations are used to create meaning through one\'s own activity in
the world and to constitute oneself in it, both for one\'s self and for
others. In a culture that manifests itself to a great extent through
mediatized communication, people have to constitute themselves through
such acts, if only by posting
"selfies."[^31^](#c2-note-0031){#c2-note-0031a} Not to do so would be to
risk invisibility and being forgotten.

On this basis, a genuine digital folk culture of re-mixing and mashups
has formed in recent years on online platforms, in game worlds, but also
through cultural-economic productions of individual pieces or short
series. It is generated and maintained by innumerable people with
varying degrees of intensity and ambition. Its common feature with
trad­itional folk culture, in choirs or elsewhere, is that production
and reception (but also reproduction and creation) largely coincide.
Active participation admittedly requires a certain degree of
proficiency, interest, and engagement, but usually not any extraordinary
talent. Many classical institutions such as museums and archives have
been attempting to take part in this folk culture by setting up their
own re-mix services. They know that the "public" is no longer able or
willing to limit its engagement with works of art and cultural history
to one of quiet contemplation. At the end of 2013, even []{#Page_76
type="pagebreak" title="76"}the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin
initiated a re-mix competition. A year earlier, the Rijksmuseum in
Amsterdam launched so-called "Rijksstudios." Since then, the museum has
made available on its website more than 200,000 high-resolution images
from its collection. Users are free to use these to create their own
re-mixes online and share them with others. Interestingly, the
Rijksmuseum does not distinguish between the work involved in
transforming existing pieces and that involved in curating its own
online gallery.

Referential processes have no beginning and no end. Any material that is
used to make something new has a pre-history of its own, even if its
traces are lost in clouds of uncertainty. Upon closer inspection, this
cloud might clear a little bit, but it is extremely uncommon for a
genuine beginning -- a *creatio ex nihilo* -- to be revealed. This
raises the question of whether there can really be something like
originality in the emphatic sense.[^32^](#c2-note-0032){#c2-note-0032a}
Regardless of the answer to this question, the fact that by now many
people select, combine, and alter objects on a daily basis has led to a
slow shift in our perception and sensibilities. In light of the
experiences that so many people are creating, the formerly exotic
theories of deconstruction suddenly seem anything but outlandish. Nearly
half a century ago, Roland Barthes defined the text as a fabric of
quotations, and this incited vehement
opposition.[^33^](#c2-note-0033){#c2-note-0033a} "But of course," one
would be inclined to say today, "that can be statistically proven
through software analysis!" Amazon identifies books by means of their
"statistically improbable phrases"; that is, by means of textual
elements that are highly unlikely to occur elsewhere. This implies, of
course, that books contain many textual elements that are highly likely
to be found in other texts, without suggesting that such elements would
have to be regarded as plagiarism.

In the Gutenberg Galaxy, with its fixation on writing, the earliest
textual document is usually understood to represent a beginning. If no
references to anything before can be identified, the text is then
interpreted as a closed entity, as a new text. Thus, fairy tales and
sagas, which are typical elements of oral culture, are still more
strongly associated with the names of those who recorded them than with
the names of those who narrated them. This does not seem very convincing
today. In recent years, literary historians have made strong []{#Page_77
type="pagebreak" title="77"}efforts to shift the focus of attention to
the people (mostly women) who actually told certain fairy tales. In
doing so, they have been able to work out to what extent the respective
narrators gave shape to specific stories, which were written down as
common versions, and to what extent these stories reflect their
narrators\' personal histories.[^34^](#c2-note-0034){#c2-note-0034a}

Today, after more than 40 years of deconstructionist theory and a change
in our everyday practices, it is no longer controversial to read works
-- even by canonical figures like Wagner or Mozart -- in such a way as
to highlight the other works, either by the artists in question or by
other artists, that are contained within
them.[^35^](#c2-note-0035){#c2-note-0035a} This is not an expression of
decreased appreciation but rather an indication that, as Zygmunt Bauman
has stressed, "The way human beings understand the world tends to be at
all times *praxeomorphic*: it is always shaped by the know-how of the
day, by what people can do and how they usually go about doing
it."[^36^](#c2-note-0036){#c2-note-0036a} And the everyday practice of
today is one of singling out, bringing together, altering, and adding.
Accordingly, not only has our view of current cultural production
shifted; our view of cultural history has shifted as well. As always,
the past is made to suit the sensibilities of the present.

As a rule, however, things that have no beginning also have no end. This
is not only because they can in turn serve as elements for other new
contexts of meaning, but also because the attention paid to the context
in which they take on specific meaning is sensitive to the work that has
to be done to maintain the context itself. Even timelessness is an
elaborate everyday business. The attempt to rescue works of art from the
ravages of time -- to preserve them forever -- means that they regularly
need to be restored. Every restoration inevit­ably stirs a debate about
whether the planned interventions are appropriate and about how to deal
with the traces of previous interventions, which, from the current
perspective, often seem to be highly problematic. Whereas, just a
generation ago, preservationists ensured that such interventions
remained visible (as articulations of the historical fissures that are
typical of Modernity), today greater emphasis is placed on reducing
their visibility and re-creating the illusion of an "original condition"
(without, however, impeding any new functionality that a piece might
have in the present). []{#Page_78 type="pagebreak" title="78"}The
historically faithful restoration of the Berlin City Palace, and yet its
repurposed function as a museum and meeting place, are typical of this
new attitude in dealing with our historical heritage.

In everyday activity, too, the never-ending necessity of this work can
be felt at all times. Here the issue is not timelessness, but rather
that the established contexts of meaning quickly become obsolete and
therefore have to be continuously affirmed, expanded, and changed in
order to maintain the relevance of the field that they define. This
lends referentiality a performative character that combines productive
and reproductive dimensions. That which is not constantly used and
renewed simply disappears. Often, however, this only means that it will
sink into an endless archive and become unrealized potential until
someone reactivates it, breathes new life into it, rouses it from its
slumber, and incorporates it into a newly relevant context of meaning.
"To be relevant," according to the artist Eran Schaerf, "things must be
recyclable."[^37^](#c2-note-0037){#c2-note-0037a}

Alone, everyone is overwhelmed by the task of having to generate meaning
against this backdrop of all-encompassing meaninglessness. First, the
challenge is too great for any individual to overcome; second, meaning
itself is only created intersubjectively. While it can admittedly be
asserted by a single person, others have to confirm it before it can
become a part of culture. For this reason, the actual subject of
cultural production under the digital condition is not the individual
but rather the next-largest unit.
:::
:::

::: {.section}
Communality {#c2-sec-0009}
-----------

As an individual, it is impossible to orient oneself within a complex
environment. Meaning -- as well as the ability to act -- can only be
created, reinforced, and altered in exchange with others. This is
nothing noteworthy; biologically and culturally, people are social
beings. What has changed historically is how people are integrated into
larger contexts, how processes of exchange are organized, and what every
individual is expected to do in order to become a fully fledged
participant in these processes. For nearly 50 years, traditional
[]{#Page_79 type="pagebreak" title="79"}institutions -- that is,
hierarchically and bureaucratically organ­ized civic institutions such
as established churches, labor unions, and political parties -- have
continuously been losing members.[^38^](#c2-note-0038){#c2-note-0038a}
In tandem with this, the overall commitment to the identities, family
values, and lifestyles promoted by these institutions has likewise been
in decline. The great mech­anisms of socialization from the late stages
of the Gutenberg Galaxy have been losing more and more of their
influence, though at different speeds and to different extents. All
told, however, explicitly and collectively normative impulses are
decreasing, while others (implicitly economic, above all) are on the
rise. According to mainstream sociology, a cause or consequence of this
is the individualization and atomization of society. As early as the
middle of the 1980s, Ulrich Beck claimed: "In the individualized society
the individual must therefore learn, on pain of permanent disadvantage,
to conceive of himself or herself as the center of action, as the
planning office with respect to his/her own biography, abil­ities,
orientations, relationships and so
on."[^39^](#c2-note-0039){#c2-note-0039a} Over the past three decades,
the dominant neoliberal political orientation, with its strong stress on
the freedom of the individual -- to realize oneself as an individual
actor in the allegedly open market and in opposition to allegedly
domineering collective mechanisms -- has radicalized these tendencies
even further. The ability to act, however, is not only a question of
one\'s personal attitude but also of material resources. And it is this
same neoliberal politics that deprives so many people of the resources
needed to take advantage of these new freedoms in their own lives. As a
result they suffer, in Ulrich Beck\'s terms, "permanent disadvantage."

Under the digital condition, this process has permeated the finest
structures of social life. Individualization, commercialization, and the
production of differences (through design, for instance) are ubiquitous.
Established civic institutions are not alone in being hollowed out;
relatively new collectives are also becoming more differentiated, a
development that I outlined above with reference to the transformation
of the gay movement into the LGBT community. Yet nevertheless, or
perhaps for this very reason, new forms of communality are being formed
in these offshoots -- in the small activities of everyday life. And
these new communal formations -- rather []{#Page_80 type="pagebreak"
title="80"}than individual people -- are the actual subjects who create
the shared meaning that we call culture.

::: {.section}
### The problem of the "community" {#c2-sec-0010}

I have chosen the rather cumbersome expression "communal formation" in
order to avoid the term "community" (*Gemeinschaft*), although the
latter is used increasingly often in discussions of digital cultures and
has played an import­ant role, from the beginning, in conceptions of
networking. Viewed analytically, however, "community" is a problematic
term because it is almost hopelessly overloaded. Particularly in the
German-speaking tradition, Ferdinand Tönnies\'s polar distinction
between "community" (*Gemeinschaft*) and "society" (*Gesellschaft*),
which he introduced in 1887, remains
influential.[^40^](#c2-note-0040){#c2-note-0040a} Tönnies contrasted two
fundamentally different and exclusive types of social relations. Whereas
community is characterized by the overlapping multidimensional nature of
social relationships, society is defined by the functional separation of
its sectors and spheres. Community embeds every individual into complex
social relationships, all of which tend to be simultaneously present. In
the traditional village community ("communities of place," in Tönnies\'s
terms), neighbors are involved with one another, for better or for
worse, both on a familiar basis and economically or religiously. Every
activity takes place on several different levels at the same time.
Communities are comprehensive social institutions that penetrate all
areas of life, endowing them with meaning. Through mutual dependency,
they create stability and security, but they also obstruct change and
hinder social mobility. Because everyone is connected with each other,
no can leave his or her place without calling into question the
arrangement as a whole. Communities are thus structurally conservative.
Because every human activity is embedded in multifaceted social
relationships, every change requires adjustments across the entire
interrelational web -- a task that is not easy to accomplish.
Accordingly, the trad­itional communities of the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries fiercely opposed the establishment of capitalist
society. In order to impose the latter, the old community structures
were broken apart with considerable violence. This is what Marx
[]{#Page_81 type="pagebreak" title="81"}and Engels were referring to in
that famous passage from *The Communist Manifesto*: "All the settled,
age-old relations with their train of time-honoured preconceptions and
viewpoints are dissolved. \[...\] Everything feudal and fixed goes up in
smoke, everything sacred is
profaned."[^41^](#c2-note-0041){#c2-note-0041a}

The defining feature of society, on the contrary, is that it frees the
individual from such multifarious relationships. Society, according to
Tönnies, separates its members from one another. Although they
coordinate their activity with others, they do so in order to pursue
partial, short-term, and personal goals. Not only are people separated,
but so too are different areas of life. In a market-oriented society,
for instance, the economy is conceptualized as an independent sphere. It
can therefore break away from social connections to be organized simply
by limited formal or legal obligations between actors who, beyond these
obligations, have nothing else to do with one another. Costs or benefits
that inadvertently affect people who are uninvolved in a given market
transaction are referred to by economists as "externalities," and market
participants do not need to care about these because they are strictly
pursuing their own private interests. One of the consequences of this
form of social relationship is a heightened social dynamic, for now it
is possible to introduce changes into one area of life without
considering its effects on other areas. In the end, the dissolution of
mutual obligations, increased uncertainty, and the reduction of many
social connections go hand in hand with what Marx and Engels referred to
in *The Communist Manifesto* as "unfeeling hard cash."

From this perspective, the historical development looks like an
ambivalent process of modernization in which society (dynamic, but cold)
is erected over the ruins of community (static, but warm). This is an
unusual combination of romanticism and progress-oriented thinking, and
the problems with this influential perspective are numerous. There is,
first, the matter of its dichotomy; that is, its assumption that there
can only be these two types of arrangement, community and society. Or
there is the notion that the one form can be completely ousted by the
other, even though aspects of community and aspects of society exist at
the same time in specific historical situations, be it in harmony or in
conflict.[^42^](#c2-note-0042){#c2-note-0042a} []{#Page_82
type="pagebreak" title="82"}These impressions, however, which are so
firmly associated with the German concept of *Gemeinschaft*, make it
rather difficult to comprehend the new forms of communality that have
developed in the offshoots of networked life. This is because, at least
for now, these latter forms do not represent a genuine alternative to
societal types of social
connectedness.[^43^](#c2-note-0043){#c2-note-0043a} The English word
"community" is somewhat more open. The opposition between community and
society resonates with it as well, although the dichotomy is not as
clear-cut. American communitarianism, for instance, considers the
difference between community and society to be gradual and not
categorical. Its primary aim is to strengthen civic institutions and
mechanisms, and it regards community as an intermediary level between
the individual and society.[^44^](#c2-note-0044){#c2-note-0044a} But
there is a related English term, which seems even more productive for my
purposes, namely "community of practice," a concept that is more firmly
grounded in the empirical observation of concrete social relationships.
The term was introduced at the beginning of the 1990s by the social
researchers Jean Lave and Étienne Wenger. They observed that, in most
cases, professional learning (for instance, in their case study of
midwives) does not take place as a one-sided transfer of knowledge or
proficiency, but rather as an open exchange, often outside of the formal
learning environment, between people with different levels of knowledge
and experience. In this sense, learning is an activity that, though
distinguishable, cannot easily be separated from other "normal"
activities of everyday life. As Lave and Wenger stress, however, the
community of practice is not only a social space of exchange; it is
rather, and much more fundamentally, "an intrinsic condition for the
existence of knowledge, not least because it provides the interpretive
support necessary for making sense of its
heritage."[^45^](#c2-note-0045){#c2-note-0045a} Communities of practice
are thus always epistemic communities that form around certain ways of
looking at the world and one\'s own activity in it. What constitutes a
community of practice is thus the joint acquisition, development, and
preservation of a specific field of practice that contains abstract
knowledge, concrete proficiencies, the necessary material and social
resources, guidelines, expectations, and room to interpret one\'s own
activity. All members are active participants in the constitution of
this field, and this reinforces the stress on []{#Page_83
type="pagebreak" title="83"}practice. Each of them, however, brings
along different presuppositions and experiences, for their situations
are embedded within numerous and specific situations of life or work.
The processes within the community are mostly informal, and yet they are
thoroughly structured, for authority is distributed unequally and is
based on the extent to which the members value each other\'s (and their
own) levels of knowledge and experience. At first glance, then, the term
"community of practice" seems apt to describe the meaning-generating
communal formations that are at issue here. It is also somewhat
problematic, however, because, having since been subordinated to
management strategies, its use is now narrowly applied to professional
learning and managing knowledge.[^46^](#c2-note-0046){#c2-note-0046a}

From these various notions of community, it is possible to develop the
following way of looking at new types of communality: they are formed in
a field of practice, characterized by informal yet structured exchange,
focused on the generation of new ways of knowing and acting, and
maintained through the reflexive interpretation of their own activity.
This last point in particular -- the communal creation, preservation,
and alteration of the interpretive framework in which actions,
processes, and objects acquire a firm meaning and connection -- can be
seen as the central role of communal formations.

Communication is especially significant to them. Indi­viduals must
continuously communicate in order to constitute themselves within the
fields and practices, or else they will remain invisible. The mass of
tweets, updates, emails, blogs, shared pictures, texts, posts on
collaborative platforms, and databases (etc.) that are necessary for
this can only be produced and processed by means of digital
technologies. In this act of incessant communication, which is a
constitutive element of social existence, the personal desire for
self-constitution and orientation becomes enmeshed with the outward
pressure of having to be present and available to form a new and binding
set of requirements. This relation between inward motivation and outward
pressure can vary highly, depending on the character of the communal
formation and the position of the individual within it (although it is
not the individual who determines what successful communication is, what
represents a contribution to the communal formation, or in which form
one has to be present). []{#Page_84 type="pagebreak" title="84"}Such
decisions are made by other members of the formation in the form of
positive or negative feedback (or none at all), and they are made with
recourse to the interpretive framework that has been developed in
common. These communal and continuous acts of learning, practicing, and
orientation -- the exchange, that is, between "novices" and "experts" on
the same field, be it concerned with internet politics, illegal street
racing, extreme right-wing music, body modification, or a free
encyclopedia -- serve to maintain the framework of shared meaning,
expand the constituted field, recruit new members, and adapt the
framework of interpretation and activity to changing conditions. Such
communal formations constitute themselves; they preserve and modify
themselves by constantly working out the foundations of their
constitution. This may sound circular, for the process of reflexive
self-constitution -- "autopoiesis" in the language of systems theory --
is circular in the sense that control is maintained through continuous,
self-generating feedback. Self-referentiality is a structural feature of
these formations.
:::

::: {.section}
### Singularity and communality {#c2-sec-0011}

The new communal formations are informal forms of organ­ization that are
based on voluntary action. No one is born into them, and no one
possesses the authority to force anyone else to join or remain against
his or her will, or to assign anyone with tasks that he or she might be
unwilling to do. Such a formation is not an enclosed disciplinary
institution in Foucault\'s sense,[^47^](#c2-note-0047){#c2-note-0047a}
and, within it, power is not exercised through commands, as in the
classical sense formulated by Max
Weber.[^48^](#c2-note-0048){#c2-note-0048a} The condition of not being
locked up and not being subordinated can, at least at first, represent
for the individual a gain in freedom. Under a given set of conditions,
everyone can (and must) choose which formations to participate in, and
he or she, in doing so, will have a better or worse chance to influence
the communal field of reference.

On the everyday level of communicative self-constitution and creating a
personal cognitive horizon -- in innumerable streams, updates, and
timelines on social mass media -- the most important resource is the
attention of others; that is, their feedback and the mutual recognition
that results from it. []{#Page_85 type="pagebreak" title="85"}And this
recognition may simply be in the form of a quickly clicked "like," which
is the smallest unit that can assure the sender that, somewhere out
there, there is a receiver. Without the latter, communication has no
meaning. The situation is somewhat menacing if no one clicks the "like"
button beneath a post or a photo. It is a sign that communication has
broken, and the result is the dissolution of one\'s own communicatively
constituted social existence. In this context, the boundaries are
blurred between the categories of information, communication, and
activity. Making information available always involves the active --
that is, communicating -- person, and not only in the case of ubiquitous
selfies, for in an overwhelming and chaotic environment, as discussed
above, selection itself is of such central importance that the
differences between the selected and the selecting become fluid,
particularly when the goal of the latter is to experience confirmation
from others. In this back-and-forth between one\'s own presence and the
validation of others, one\'s own motives and those of the community are
not in opposition but rather mutually depend on one another. Condensed
to simple norms and to a basic set of guidelines within the context of
an image-oriented social mass media service, the rule (or better:
friendly tip) that one need not but probably ought to follow is this:

::: {.extract}
Be an active member of the Instagram community to receive likes and
comments. Take time to comment on a friend\'s photo, or to like photos.
If you do this, others will reciprocate. If you never acknowledge your
followers\' photos, then they won\'t acknowledge
you.[^49^](#c2-note-0049){#c2-note-0049a}
:::

The context of this widespread and highly conventional piece of advice
is not, for instance, a professional marketing campaign; it is simply
about personally positioning oneself within a social network. The goal
is to establish one\'s own, singular, identity. The process required to
do so is not primarily inward-oriented; it is not based on questions
such as: "Who am I really, apart from external influences?" It is rather
outward-oriented. It takes place through making connections with others
and is concerned with questions such as: "Who is in my network, and what
is my position within it?" It is []{#Page_86 type="pagebreak"
title="86"}revealing that none of the tips in the collection cited above
offers advice about achieving success within a community of
photographers; there are not suggestions, for instance, about how to
take high-quality photographs. With smart cameras and built-in filters
for post-production, this is not especially challenging any more,
especially because individual pictures, to be examined closely and on
their own terms, have become less important gauges of value than streams
of images that are meant to be quickly scrolled through. Moreover, the
function of the critic, who once monopolized the right to interpret and
evaluate an image for everyone, is no longer of much significance.
Instead, the quality of a picture is primarily judged according to
whether "others like it"; that is, according to its performance in the
ongoing popularity contest within a specific niche. But users do not
rely on communal formations and the feedback they provide just for the
sharing and evaluation of pictures. Rather, this dynamic has come to
determine more and more facets of life. Users experience the
constitution of singularity and communality, in which a person can be
perceived as such, as simultaneous and reciprocal processes. A million
times over and nearly subconsciously (because it is so commonplace),
they engage in a relationship between the individual and others that no
longer really corresponds to the liberal opposition between
individuality and society, between personal and group identity. Instead
of viewing themselves as exclusive entities (either in terms of the
emphatic affirmation of individuality or its dissolution within a
homogeneous group), the new formations require that the production of
difference and commonality takes place
simultaneously.[^50^](#c2-note-0050){#c2-note-0050a}
:::

::: {.section}
### Authenticity and subjectivity {#c2-sec-0012}

Because members have decided to participate voluntarily in the
community, their expressions and actions are regarded as authentic, for
it is implicitly assumed that, in making these gestures, they are not
following anyone else\'s instructions but rather their own motivations.
The individual does not act as a representative or functionary of an
organization but rather as a private and singular (that is, unique)
person. While at a gathering of the Occupy movement, a sure way to be
kicked out to is to stick stubbornly to a party line, even if this way
[]{#Page_87 type="pagebreak" title="87"}of thinking happens to agree
with that of the movement. Not only at Occupy gatherings, however, but
in all new communal formations it is expected that everyone there is
representing his or her own interests. As most people are aware, this
assumption is theoretically naïve and often proves to be false in
practice. Even spontaneity can be calculated, and in many cases it is.
Nevertheless, the expectation of authenticity is relevant because it
creates a minimum of trust. As the basis of social trust, such
contra-factual expectations exist elsewhere as well. Critical readers of
newspapers, for instance, must assume that what they are reading has
been well researched and is presented as objectively as possible, even
though they know that objectivity is theoretically a highly problematic
concept -- to this extent, postmodern theory has become common knowledge
-- and that newspapers often pursue (hidden) interests or lead
campaigns. Yet without such contra-factual assumptions, the respective
orders of knowledge and communication would not function, for they
provide the normative framework within which deviations can be
perceived, criticized, and sanctioned.

In a seemingly traditional manner, the "authentic self" is formulated
with reference to one\'s inner world, for instance to personal
knowledge, interests, or desires. As the core of personality, however,
this inner world no longer represents an immutable and essential
characteristic but rather a temporary position. Today, even someone\'s
radical reinvention can be regarded as authentic. This is the central
difference from the classical, bourgeois conception of the subject. The
self is no longer understood in essentialist terms but rather
performatively. Accordingly, the main demand on the individual who
voluntarily opts to participate in a communal formation is no longer to
be self-aware but rather to be
self-motivated.[^51^](#c2-note-0051){#c2-note-0051a} Nor is it necessary
any more for one\'s core self to be coherent. It is not a contradiction
to appear in various communal formations, each different from the next,
as a different "I myself," for every formation is comprehensive, in that
it appeals to the whole person, and simultaneously partial, in that it
is oriented toward a particular goal and not toward all areas of life.
As in the case of re-mixes and other referential processes, the concern
here is not to preserve authenticity but rather to create it in the
moment. The success or failure []{#Page_88 type="pagebreak"
title="88"}of these efforts is determined by the continuous feedback of
others -- one like after another.

These practices have led to a modified form of subject constitution for
which some sociologists, engaged in empir­ical research, have introduced
the term "networked individualism."[^52^](#c2-note-0052){#c2-note-0052a}
The idea is based on the observation that people in Western societies
(the case studies were mostly in North America) are defining their
identity less and less by their family, profession, or other stable
collective, but rather increasingly in terms of their personal social
networks; that is, according to the communal formations in which they
are active as individuals and in which they are perceived as singular
people. In this regard, individualization and atomization no longer
necessarily go hand in hand. On the contrary, the intertwined nature of
personal identity and communality can be experienced on an everyday
level, given that both are continuously created, adapted, and affirmed
by means of personal communication. This makes the networks in question
simultaneously fragile and stable. Fragile because they require the
ongoing presence of every individual and because communication can break
down quickly. Stable because the networks of relationships that can
support a single person -- as regards the number of those included,
their geograph­ical distribution, and the duration of their cohesion --
have expanded enormously by means of digital communication technologies.

Here the issue is not that of close friendships, whose number remains
relatively constant for most people and over long periods of
time,[^53^](#c2-note-0053){#c2-note-0053a} but rather so-called "weak
ties"; that is, more or less loose acquaintances that can be tapped for
new information and resources that do not exist within one\'s close
circle of friends.[^54^](#c2-note-0054){#c2-note-0054a} The more they
are expanded, the more sustainable and valuable these networks become,
for they bring together a large number of people and thus multiply the
material and organizational resources that are (potentially) accessible
to the individual. It is impossible to make a sweeping statement as to
whether these formations actually represent communities in a
comprehensive sense and how stable they really are, especially in times
of crisis, for this is something that can only be found out on a
case-by-case basis. It is relevant that the development of personal
networks []{#Page_89 type="pagebreak" title="89"}has not taken place in
a vacuum. The disintegration of institutions that were formerly
influential in the formation of identity and meaning began long before
the large-scale spread of networks. For most people, there is no other
choice but to attempt to orient and organize oneself, regardless of how
provisional or uncertain this may be. Or, as Manuel Castells somewhat
melodramatically put it, "At the turn of the millennium, the king and
the queen, the state and civil society, are both naked, and their
children-citizens are wandering around a variety of foster
homes."[^55^](#c2-note-0055){#c2-note-0055a}
:::

::: {.section}
### Space and time as a communal practice {#c2-sec-0013}

Although participation in a communal formation is voluntary, it is not
unselfish. Quite the contrary: an important motivation is to gain access
to a formation\'s constitutive field of practice and to the resources
associated with it. A communal formation ultimately does more than
simply steer the attention of its members toward one another. Through
the common production of culture, it also structures how the members
perceive the world and how they are able to design themselves and their
potential actions in it. It is thus a co­operative mechanism of
filtering, interpretation, and constitution. Through the everyday
referential work of its members, the community selects a manageable
amount of information from the excess of potentially available
information and brings it into a meaningful context, whereby it
validates the selection itself and orients the activity of each of its
members.

The new communal formations consist of self-referential worlds whose
constructive common practice affects the foundations of social activity
itself -- the constitution of space and time. How? The spatio-temporal
horizon of digital communication is a global (that is, placeless) and
ongoing present. The technical vision of digital communication is always
the here and now. With the instant transmission of information,
everything that is not "here" is inaccessible and everything that is not
"now" has disappeared. Powerful infrastructure has been built to achieve
these effects: data centers, intercontinental networks of cables,
satellites, high-performance nodes, and much more. Through globalized
high-frequency trading, actors in the financial markets have realized
this []{#Page_90 type="pagebreak" title="90"}technical vision to its
broadest extent by creating a never-ending global present whose expanse
is confined to milliseconds. This process is far from coming to an end,
for massive amounts of investment are allocated to accomplish even the
smallest steps toward this goal. On November 3, 2015, a 4,600-kilometer,
300-million-dollar transatlantic telecommunications cable (Hibernia
Express) was put into operation between London and New York -- the first
in more than 10 years -- with the single goal of accelerating automated
trading between the two places by 5.2 milliseconds.

For social and biological processes, this technical horizon of space and
time is neither achievable nor desirable. Such processes, on the
contrary, are existentially dependent on other spatial and temporal
orders. Yet because of the existence of this non-geographical and
atemporal horizon, the need -- as well as the possibility -- has arisen
to redefine the parameters of space and time themselves in order to
counteract the mire of technically defined spacelessness and
timelessness. If space and time are not simply to vanish in this
spaceless, ongoing present, how then should they be defined? Communal
formations create spaces for action not least by determining their own
geographies and temporal rhythms. They negotiate what is near and far
and also which places are disregarded (that is, not even perceived). If
every place is communicatively (and physically) reachable, every person
must decide which place he or she would like to reach in practice. This,
however, is not an individual decision but rather a task that can only
be approached collectively. Those places which are important and thus
near are determined by communal formations. This takes place in the form
of a rough consensus through the blogs that "one" has to read, the
exhibits that "one" has to see, the events and conferences that "one"
has to attend, the places that "one" has to visit before they are
overrun by tourists, the crises in which "the West" has to intervene,
the targets that "lend themselves" to a terrorist attack, and so on. On
its own, however, selection is not enough. Communal formations are
especially powerful when they generate the material and organizational
resources that are necessary for their members to implement their shared
worldview through actions -- to visit, for instance, the places that
have been chosen as important. This can happen if they enable access
[]{#Page_91 type="pagebreak" title="91"}to stipends, donations, price
reductions, ride shares, places to stay, tips, links, insider knowledge,
public funds, airlifts, explosives, and so on. It is in this way that
each formation creates its respective spatial constructs, which define
distances in a great variety of ways. At the same time that war-torn
Syria is unreachably distant even for seasoned reporters and their
staff, veritable travel agencies are being set up in order to bring
Western jihadists there in large numbers.

Things are similar for the temporal dimensions of social and biological
processes. Permanent presence is a temporality that is inimical to life
but, under its influence, temporal rhythms have to be redefined as well.
What counts as fast? What counts as slow? In what order should things
proceed? On the everyday level, for instance, the matter can be as
simple as how quickly to respond to an email. Because the transmission
of information hardly takes any time, every delay is a purely social
creation. But how much is acceptable? There can be no uniform answer to
this. The members of each communal formation have to negotiate their own
rules with one another, even in areas of life that are otherwise highly
formalized. In an interview with the magazine *Zeit*, for instance, a
lawyer with expertise in labor law was asked whether a boss may require
employees to be reachable at all times. Instead of answering by
referring to any binding legal standards, the lawyer casually advised
that this was a matter of flexible negotiation: "Express your misgivings
openly and honestly about having to be reachable after hours and,
together with your boss, come up with an agreeable rule to
follow."[^56^](#c2-note-0056){#c2-note-0056a} If only it were that easy.

Temporalities that, in many areas, were once simply taken for granted by
everyone on account of the factuality of things now have to be
culturally determined -- that is, explicitly negotiated -- in a greater
number of contexts. Under the conditions of capitalism, which is always
creating new competitions and incentives, one consequence is the
often-lamented "acceleration of time." We are asked to produce, consume,
or accomplish more and more in less and less
time.[^57^](#c2-note-0057){#c2-note-0057a} This change in the
structuring of time is not limited to linear acceleration. It reaches
deep into the foundations of life and has even reconfigured biological
processes themselves. Today there is an entire industry that specializes
in freezing the stem []{#Page_92 type="pagebreak" title="92"}cells of
newborns in liquid nitrogen -- that is, in suspending cellular
biological time -- in case they might be needed later on in life for a
transplant or for the creation of artificial organs. Children can be
born even if their physical mothers are already dead. Or they can be
"produced" from ova that have been stored for many years at minus 196
degrees.[^58^](#c2-note-0058){#c2-note-0058a} At the same time,
questions now have to be addressed every day whose grand temporal
dimensions were once the matter of myth. In the case of atomic energy,
for instance, there is the issue of permanent disposal. Where can we
deposit nuclear waste for the next hundred thousand years without it
causing catastrophic damage? How can the radioactive material even be
transported there, wherever that is, within the framework of everday
traffic laws?[^59^](#c2-note-0059){#c2-note-0059a}

The construction of temporal dimensions and sequences has thus become an
everyday cultural question. Whereas throughout Europe, for example,
committees of experts and ethicists still meet to discuss reproductive
medicine and offer their various recommendations, many couples are
concerned with the specific question of whether or how they can fulfill
their wish to have children. Without a coherent set of rules, questions
such as these have to be answered by each individual with recourse to
his or her personally relevant communal formation. If there is no
cultural framework that at least claims to be binding for everyone, then
the individual must negotiate independently within each communal
formation with the goal of acquiring the resources necessary to act
according to communal values and objectives.
:::

::: {.section}
### Self-generating orders {#c2-sec-0014}

These three functions -- selection, interpretation, and the constitutive
ability to act -- make communal formations the true subject of the
digital condition. In principle, these functions are nothing new;
rather, they are typical of fields that are organized without reference
to external or irrefutable authorities. The state of scholarship, for
instance, is determined by what is circulated in refereed publications.
In this case, "refereed" means that scientists at the same professional
rank mutually evaluate each other\'s work. The scientific community (or
better: the sub-community of a specialized discourse) []{#Page_93
type="pagebreak" title="93"}evaluates the contributions of individual
scholars. They decide what should be considered valuable, and this
consensus can theoretically be revised at any time. It is based on a
particular catalog of criteria, on an interpretive framework that
provides lines of inquiry, methods, appraisals, and conventions of
presentation. With every article, this framework is confirmed and
reconstituted. If the framework changes, this can lead in the most
extreme case to a paradigm shift, which overturns fundamental
orientations, assumptions, and
certainties.[^60^](#c2-note-0060){#c2-note-0060a} The result of this is
not only a change in how scientific contributions are evaluated but also
a change in how the external world is perceived and what activities are
possible in it. Precisely because the sciences claim to define
themselves, they have the ability to revise their own foundations.

The sciences were the first large sphere of society to achieve
comprehensive cultural autonomy; that is, the ability to determine its
own binding meaning. Art was the second that began to organize itself on
the basis of internal feedback. It was during the era of Romanticism
that artists first laid claim to autonomy. They demanded "to absolve art
from all conditions, to represent it as a realm -- indeed as the only
realm -- in which truth and beauty are expressed in their pure form, a
realm in which everything truly human is
transcended."[^61^](#c2-note-0061){#c2-note-0061a} With the spread of
photography in the second half of the nineteenth century, art also
liberated itself from its final task, which was hoisted upon it from the
outside, namely the need to represent external reality. Instead of
having to represent the external world, artists could now focus on their
own subjectivity. This gave rise to a radical individualism, which found
its clearest summation in Marcel Duchamp\'s assertion that only the
artist could determine what is art. This he claimed in 1917 by way of
explaining how an industrially produced urinal, exhibited as a signed
piece with the title "Fountain," could be considered a work of art.

With the rise of the knowledge economy and the expansion of cultural
fields, including the field of art and the artists active within it,
this individualism quickly swelled to unmanageable levels. As a
consequence, the task of defining what should be regarded as art shifted
from the individual artist to the curator. It now fell upon the latter
to select a few works from the surplus of competing scenes and thus
bring temporary []{#Page_94 type="pagebreak" title="94"}order to the
constantly diversifying and changing world of contemporary art. This
order was then given expression in the form of exhibits, which were
intended to be more than the sum of their parts. The beginning of this
practice can be traced to the 1969 exhibition When Attitudes Become
Form, which was curated by Harald Szeemann for the Kunsthalle Bern (it
was also sponsored by Philip Morris). The works were not neatly
separated from one another and presented without reference to their
environment, but were connected with each other both spatially and in
terms of their content. The effect of the exhibition could be felt at
least as much through the collection of works as a whole as it could
through the individual pieces, many of which had been specially
commissioned for the exhibition itself. It not only cemented Szeemann\'s
reputation as one of the most significant curators of the twentieth
century; it also completely redefined the function of the curator as a
central figure within the art system.

This was more than 40 years ago and in a system that functioned
differently from that of today. The distance from this exhibition, but
also its ongoing relevance, was negotiated, significantly, in a
re-enactment at the 2013 Biennale in Venice. For this, the old rooms at
the Kunsthalle Bern were reconstructed in the space of the Fondazione
Prada in such a way that both could be seen simultaneously. As is
typical with such re-enactments, the curators of the project described
its goals in terms of appropriation and distancing: "This was the
challenge: how could we find and communicate a limit to a non-limit,
creating a place that would reflect exactly the architectural structures
of the Kunsthalle, but also an asymmetrical space with respect to our
time and imbued with an energy and tension equivalent to that felt at
Bern?"[^62^](#c2-note-0062){#c2-note-0062a}

Curation -- that is, selecting works and associating them with one
another -- has become an omnipresent practice in the art system. No
exhibition takes place any more without a curator. Nevertheless,
curators have lost their extraordinary
position,[^63^](#c2-note-0063){#c2-note-0063a} with artists taking on
more of this work themselves, not only because the boundaries between
artistic and curatorial activities have become fluid but also because
many artists explicitly co-produce the context of their work by
incorporating a multitude of references into their pieces. It is with
precisely this in mind that André Rottmann, in the []{#Page_95
type="pagebreak" title="95"}quotation cited at the beginning of this
chapter, can assert that referentiality has become the dominant
production-aesthetic model in contemporary art. This practice enables
artists to objectify themselves by explicitly placing themselves into a
historical and social context. At the same time, it also enables them to
subjectify the historical and social context by taking the liberty to
select and arrange the references
themselves.[^64^](#c2-note-0064){#c2-note-0064a}

Such strategies are no longer specific to art. Self-generated spaces of
reference and agency are now deeply embedded in everyday life. The
reason for this is that a growing number of questions can no longer be
answered in a generally binding way (such as those about what
constitutes fine art), while the enormous expansion of the cultural
requires explicit decisions to be made in more aspects of life. The
reaction to this dilemma has been radical subjectivation. This has not,
however, been taking place at the level of the individual but rather at
that of communal formations. There is now a patchwork of answers to
large questions and a multitude of reactions to large challenges, all of
which are limited in terms of their reliability and scope.
:::

::: {.section}
### Ambivalent voluntariness {#c2-sec-0015}

Even though participation in new formations is voluntary and serves the
interests of their members, it is not without preconditions. The most
important of these is acceptance, the willing adoption of the
interpretive framework that is generated by the communal formation. The
latter is formed from the social, cultural, legal, and technical
protocols that lend to each of these formations its concrete
constitution and specific character. Protocols are common sets of rules;
they establish, according to the network theorist Alexander Galloway,
"the essential points necessary to enact an agreed-upon standard of
action." They provide, he goes on, "etiquette for autonomous
agents."[^65^](#c2-note-0065){#c2-note-0065a} Protocols are
simul­taneously voluntary and binding; they allow actors to meet
eye-to-eye instead of entering into hierarchical relations with one
another. If everyone voluntarily complies with the protocols, then it is
not necessary for one actor to give instructions to another. Whoever
accepts the relevant protocols can interact with others who do the same;
whoever opts not to []{#Page_96 type="pagebreak" title="96"}accept them
will remain on the outside. Protocols establish, for example, common
languages, technical standards, or social conventions. The fundamental
protocol for the internet is the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet
Protocol (TCP/IP). This suite of protocols defines the common language
for exchanging data. Every device that exchanges information over the
internet -- be it a smartphone, a supercomputer in a data center, or a
networked thermostat -- has to use these protocols. In growing areas of
social contexts, the common language is English. Whoever wishes to
belong has to speak it increasingly often. In the natural sciences,
communication now takes place almost exclusively in English. Non-native
speakers who accept this norm may pay a high price: they have to learn a
new language and continually improve their command of it or else resign
themselves to being unable to articulate things as they would like --
not to mention losing the possibility of expressing something for which
another language would perhaps be more suitable, or forfeiting
trad­itions that cannot be expressed in English. But those who refuse to
go along with these norms pay an even higher price, risking
self-marginalization. Those who "voluntarily" accept conventions gain
access to a field of practice, even though within this field they may be
structurally disadvantaged. But unwillingness to accept such
conventions, with subsequent denial of access to this field, might have
even greater disadvantages.[^66^](#c2-note-0066){#c2-note-0066a}

In everyday life, the factors involved with this trade-off are often
presented in the form of subtle cultural codes. For instance, in order
to participate in a project devoted to the development of free software,
it is not enough for someone to possess the necessary technical
knowledge; he or she must also be able to fit into a wide-ranging
informal culture with a characteristic style of expression, humor, and
preferences. Ultimately, software developers do not form a professional
corps in the traditional sense -- in which functionaries meet one
another in the narrow and regulated domain of their profession -- but
rather a communal formation in which the engagement of the whole person,
both one\'s professional and social self, is scrutinized. The
abolishment of the separ­ation between different spheres of life,
requiring interaction of a more holistic nature, is in fact a key
attraction of []{#Page_97 type="pagebreak" title="97"}these communal
formations and is experienced by some as a genuine gain in freedom. In
this situation, one is no longer subjected to rules imposed from above
but rather one is allowed to -- and indeed ought to -- be authentically
pursuing his or her own interests.

But for others the experience can be quite the opposite because the
informality of the communal formation also allows forms of exclusion and
discrimination that are no longer acceptable in formally organized
realms of society. Discrimination is more difficult to identify when it
takes place within the framework of voluntary togetherness, for no one
is forced to participate. If you feel uncomfortable or unwelcome, you
are free to leave at any time. But this is a specious argument. The
areas of free software or Wikipedia are difficult places for women. In
these clubby atmospheres of informality, they are often faced with
blatant sexism, and this is one of the reasons why many women choose to
stay away from such projects.[^67^](#c2-note-0067){#c2-note-0067a} In
2007, according to estimates by the American National Center for Women &
Information Technology, whereas approximately 27 percent of all jobs
related to computer science were held by women, their representation at
the same time was far lower in the field of free software -- on average
less than 2 percent. And for years, the proportion of women who edit
texts on Wikipedia has hovered at around 10
percent.[^68^](#c2-note-0068){#c2-note-0068a}

The consequences of such widespread, informal, and elusive
discrimination are not limited to the fact that certain values and
prejudices of the shared culture are included in these products, while
different viewpoints and areas of knowledge are
excluded.[^69^](#c2-note-0069){#c2-note-0069a} What is more, those who
are excluded or do not wish to expose themselves to discrimination (and
thus do not even bother to participate in any communal formations) do
not receive access to the resources that circulate there (attention and
support, valuable and timely knowledge, or job offers). Many people are
thus faced with the choice of either enduring the discrimination within
a community or remaining on the outside and thus invisible. That this
decision is made on a voluntary basis and on one\'s own responsibility
hardly mitigates the coercive nature of the situation. There may be a
choice, but it would be misleading to call it a free one.[]{#Page_98
type="pagebreak" title="98"}
:::

::: {.section}
### The power of sociability {#c2-sec-0016}

In order to explain the peculiar coercive nature of the (nom­inally)
voluntary acceptance of protocols, rules, and norms, the political
scientist David Singh Grewal, drawing on the work of Max Weber and
Michel Foucault, has distinguished between the "power of sovereignty"
and the "power of sociabil­ity."[^70^](#c2-note-0070){#c2-note-0070a}
The former develops on the basis of dominance and subordination, as
imposed by authorities, police officers, judges, or other figures within
formal hierarchies. Their power is anchored in disciplinary
institutions, and the dictum of this sort of power is: "You must!" The
power of sociability, on the contrary, functions by prescribing the
conditions or protocols under which people are able to enter into an
exchange with one another. The dictum of this sort of power is: "You
can!" The more people accept certain protocols and standards, the more
powerful these become. Accordingly, the sociability that they structure
also becomes more comprehensive, and those not yet involved have to ask
themselves all the more urgently whether they can afford not to accept
these protocols and standards. Whereas the first type of power is
ultimately based on the monopoly of violence and on repression, the
second is founded on voluntary submission. When the entire internet
speaks TCP/IP, then an individual\'s decision to use it may be voluntary
in nominal terms, but at the same time it is an indispensable
precondition for existing within the network at all. Protocols exert
power without there having to be anyone present to possess the power in
question. Whereas the sovereign can be located, the effects of
sociability\'s power are diffuse and omnipresent. They are not
repressive but rather constitutive. No one forces a scientist to publish
in English or a woman editor to tolerate disparaging remarks on
Wikipedia. People accept these often implicit behavioral norms (sexist
comments are permitted, for instance) out of their own interests in
order to acquire access to the resources circulating within the networks
and to constitute themselves within it. In this regard, Singh
distinguishes between the "intrinsic" and "extrinsic" reasons for
abiding by certain protocols.[^71^](#c2-note-0071){#c2-note-0071a} In
the first case, the motivation is based on a new protocol being better
suited than existing protocols for carrying out []{#Page_99
type="pagebreak" title="99"}a specific objective. People thus submit
themselves to certain rules because they are especially efficient,
transparent, or easy to use. In the second case, a protocol is accepted
not because but in spite of its features. It is simply a precondition
for gaining access to a space of agency in which resources and
opportunities are available that cannot be found anywhere else. In the
first case, it is possible to speak subjectively of voluntariness,
whereas the second involves some experience of impersonal compunction.
One is forced to do something that might potentially entail grave
disadvantages in order to have access, at least, to another level of
opportunities or to create other advantages for oneself.
:::

::: {.section}
### Homogeneity, difference and authority {#c2-sec-0017}

Protocols are present on more than a technical level; as interpretive
frameworks, they structure viewpoints, rules, and patterns of behavior
on all levels. Thus, they provide a degree of cultural homogeneity, a
set of commonalities that lend these new formations their communal
nature. Viewed from the outside, these formations therefore seem
inclined toward consensus and uniformity, for their members have already
accepted and internalized certain aspects in common -- the protocols
that enable exchange itself -- whereas everyone on the outside has not
done so. When everyone is speaking in English, the conversation sounds
quite monotonous to someone who does not speak the language.

Viewed from the inside, the experience is something different: in order
to constitute oneself within a communal formation, not only does one
have to accept its rules voluntarily and in a self-motivated manner; one
also has to make contributions to the reproduction and development of
the field. Everyone is urged to contribute something; that is, to
produce, on the basis of commonalities, differences that simultaneously
affirm, modify, and enhance these commonalities. This leads to a
pronounced and occasionally highly competitive internal differentiation
that can only be understood, however, by someone who has accepted the
commonalities. To an outsider, this differentiation will seem
irrelevant. Whoever is not well versed in the universe of *Star Wars*
will not understand why the various character interpretations at
[]{#Page_100 type="pagebreak" title="100"}cosplay conventions, which I
discussed above, might be brilliant or even controversial. To such a
person, they will all seem equally boring and superficial.

These formations structure themselves internally through the production
of differences; that is, by constantly changing their common ground.
Those who are able to add many novel aspects to the common resources
gain a degree of authority. They assume central positions and they
influence, through their behavior, the development of the field more
than others do. However, their authority, influence, and de facto power
are not based on any means of coercion. As Niklas Luhmann noted, "In the
end, one participant\'s achievements in making selections \[...\] are
accepted by another participant \[...\] as a limitation of the latter\'s
potential experiences and activities without him having to make the
selection on his own."[^72^](#c2-note-0072){#c2-note-0072a} Even this is
a voluntary and self-interested act: the members of the formation
recognize that this person has contributed more to the common field and
to the resources within it. This, in turn, is to everyone\'s advantage,
for each member would ultimately like to make use of the field\'s
resources to achieve his or her own goals. This arrangement, which can
certainly take on hierarchical qualities, is experienced as something
meritocratically legitimized and voluntarily
accepted.[^73^](#c2-note-0073){#c2-note-0073a} In the context of free
software, there has therefore been some discussion of "benevolent
dictators."[^74^](#c2-note-0074){#c2-note-0074a} The matter of
"dictators" is raised because projects are often led by charismatic
figures without a formal mandate. They are "benevolent" because their
pos­ition of authority is based on the fact that a critical mass of
participating producers has voluntarily subordinated itself for its own
self-interest. If the consensus breaks over whose contributions have
been carrying the most weight, then the formation will be at risk of
losing its internal structure and splitting apart ("forking," in the
jargon of free software).
:::
:::

::: {.section}
Algorithmicity {#c2-sec-0018}
--------------

Through personal communication, referential processes in communal
formations create cultural zones of various sizes and scopes. They
expand into the empty spaces that have been created by the erosion of
established institutions and []{#Page_101 type="pagebreak"
title="101"}processes, and once these new processes have been
established the process of erosion intensifies. Multiple processes of
exchange take place alongside one another, creating a patchwork of
interconnected, competing, or entirely unrelated spheres of meaning,
each with specific goals and resources and its own preconditions and
potentials. The structures of knowledge, order, and activity that are
generated by this are holistic as well as partial and limited. The
participants in such structures are simultaneously addressed on many
levels that were once functionally separated; previously independent
spheres, such as work and leisure, are now mixed together, but usually
only with respect to the subdivisions of one\'s own life. And, at first,
the structures established in this way are binding only for active
participants.

::: {.section}
### Exiting the "Library of Babel" {#c2-sec-0019}

For one person alone, however, these new processes would not be able to
generate more than a local island of meaning from the enormous clamor of
chaotic spheres of information. In his 1941 story "The Library of
Babel," Jorge Luis Borges fashioned a fitting image for such a
situation. He depicts the world as a library of unfathomable and
possibly infinite magnitude. The characters in the story do not know
whether there is a world outside of the library. There are reasons to
believe that there is, and reasons that suggest otherwise. The library
houses the complete collection of all possible books that can be written
on exactly 410 pages. Contained in these volumes is the promise that
there is "no personal or universal problem whose eloquent solution
\[does\] not exist," for every possible combination of letters, and thus
also every possible pronouncement, is recorded in one book or another.
No catalog has yet been found for the library (though it must exist
somewhere), and it is impossible to identify any order in its
arrangement of books. The "men of the library," according to Borges,
wander round in search of the one book that explains everything, but
their actual discoveries are far more modest. Only once in a while are
books found that contain more than haphazard combinations of signs. Even
small regularities within excerpts of texts are heralded as sensational
discoveries, and it is around these discoveries that competing
[]{#Page_102 type="pagebreak" title="102"}schools of interpretation
develop. Despite much labor and effort, however, the knowledge gained is
minimal and fragmentary, so the prevailing attitude in the library is
bleak. By the time of the narrator\'s generation, "nobody expects to
discover anything."[^75^](#c2-note-0075){#c2-note-0075a}

Although this vision has now been achieved from a quantitative
perspective -- no one can survey the "library" of digital information,
which in practical terms is infinitely large, and all of the growth
curves continue to climb steeply -- today\'s cultural reality is
nevertheless entirely different from that described by Borges. Our
ability to deal with massive amounts of data has radically improved, and
thus our faith in the utility of information is not only unbroken but
rather gaining strength. What is new is precisely such large quantities
of data ("big data"), which, as we are promised or forewarned, will lead
to new knowledge, to a comprehensive understanding of the world, indeed
even to "omniscience."[^76^](#c2-note-0076){#c2-note-0076a} This faith
in data is based above all on the fact that the two processes described
above -- referentiality and communality -- are not the only new
mechanisms for filtering, sorting, aggregating, and evaluating things.
Beneath or ahead of the social mechanisms of decentralized and networked
cultural production, there are algorithmic processes that pre-sort the
immeasurably large volumes of data and convert them into a format that
can be apprehended by individuals, evaluated by communities, and
invested with meaning.

Strictly speaking, it is impossible to maintain a categorical
distinction between social processes that take place in and by means of
technological infrastructures and technical pro­cesses that are socially
constructed. In both cases, social actors attempt to realize their own
interests with the resources at their disposal. The methods of
(attempted) realization, the available resources, and the formulation of
interests mutually influence one another. The technological resources
are inscribed in the formulation of goals. These open up fields of
imagination and desire, which in turn inspire technical
development.[^77^](#c2-note-0077){#c2-note-0077a} Although it is
impossible to draw clear theoretical lines, the attempt to make such a
distinction can nevertheless be productive in practice, for in this way
it is possible to gain different perspectives about the same object of
investigation.[]{#Page_103 type="pagebreak" title="103"}
:::

::: {.section}
### The rise of algorithms {#c2-sec-0020}

An algorithm is a set of instructions for converting a given input into
a desired output by means of a finite number of steps: algorithms are
used to solve predefined problems. For a set of instructions to become
an algorithm, it has to be determined in three different respects.
First, the necessary steps -- individually and as a whole -- have to be
described unambiguously and completely. To do this, it is usually
neces­sary to use a formal language, such as mathematics, or a
programming language, in order to avoid the characteristic imprecision
and ambiguity of natural language and to ensure instructions can be
followed without interpretation. Second, it must be possible in practice
to execute the individual steps together. For this reason, every
algorithm is tied to the context of its realization. If the context
changes, so do the operating processes that can be formalized as
algorithms and thus also the ways in which algorithms can partake in the
constitution of the world. Third, it must be possible to execute an
operating instruction mechanically so that, under fixed conditions, it
always produces the same result.

Defined in such general terms, it would also be possible to understand
the instruction manual for a typical piece of Ikea furniture as an
algorithm. It is a set of instructions for creating, with a finite
number of steps, a specific and predefined piece of furniture (output)
from a box full of individual components (input). The instructions are
composed in a formal language, pictograms, which define each step as
unambiguously as possible, and they can be executed by a single person
with simple tools. The process can be repeated, for the final result is
always the same: a Billy box will always yield a Billy shelf. In this
case, a person takes over the role of a machine, which (unambiguous
pictograms aside) can lead to problems, be it that scratches and other
traces on the finished piece of furniture testify to the unique nature
of the (unsuccessful) execution, or that, inspired by the micro-trend of
"Ikea hacking," the official instructions are intentionally ignored.

Because such imprecision is supposed to be avoided, the most important
domain of algorithms in practice is mathematics and its implementation
on the computer. The term []{#Page_104 type="pagebreak"
title="104"}"algorithm" derives from the Persian mathematician,
astronomer, and geographer Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī. His book *On
the Calculation with Hindu Numerals*, which was written in Baghdad in
825, was known widely in the Western Middle Ages through a Latin
translation and made the essential contribution of introducing
Indo-Arabic nu­merals and the number zero to Europe. The work begins
with the formula *dixit algorizmi* ... ("Algorismi said ..."). During
the Middle Ages, *algorizmi* or *algorithmi* soon became a general term
for advanced methods of
calculation.[^78^](#c2-note-0078){#c2-note-0078a}

The modern effort to build machines that could mechanic­ally carry out
instructions achieved its first breakthrough with Gottfried Wilhelm
Leibniz. He has often been credited with making the following remark:
"It is unworthy of excellent men to lose hours like slaves in the labour
of calculation which could be done by any peasant with the aid of a
machine."[^79^](#c2-note-0079){#c2-note-0079a} This vision already
contains a distinction between higher cognitive and interpretive
activities, which are regarded as being truly human, and lower processes
that involve pure execution and can therefore be mechanized. To this
end, Leibniz himself developed the first calculating machine, which
could carry out all four of the basic types of arithmetic. He was not
motivated to do this by the practical necessities of production and
business (although conceptually groundbreaking, Leibniz\'s calculating
machine remained, on account of its mechanical complexity, a unique item
and was never used).[^80^](#c2-note-0080){#c2-note-0080a} In the
estimation of the philosopher Sybille Krämer, calculating machines "were
rather speculative masterpieces of a century that, like none before it,
was infatuated by the idea of mechanizing 'intellectual'
processes."[^81^](#c2-note-0081){#c2-note-0081a} Long before machines
were implemented on a large scale to increase the efficiency of material
production, Leibniz had already speculated about using them to enhance
intellectual labor. And this vision has never since disappeared. Around
a century and a half later, the English polymath Charles Babbage
formulated it anew, now in direct connection with industrial
mechanization and its imperative of time-saving
efficiency.[^82^](#c2-note-0082){#c2-note-0082a} Yet he, too, failed to
overcome the problem of practically realizing such a machine.

The decisive step that turned the vision of calculating machines into
reality was made by Alan Turing in 1937. With []{#Page_105
type="pagebreak" title="105"}a theoretical model, he demonstrated that
every algorithm could be executed by a machine as long as it could read
an incremental set of signs, manipulate them according to established
rules, and then write them out again. The validity of his model did not
depend on whether the machine would be analog or digital, mechanical or
electronic, for the rules of manipulation were not at first conceived as
being a fixed component of the machine itself (that is, as being
implemented in its hardware). The electronic and digital approach came
to be preferred because it was hoped that even the instructions could be
read by the machine itself, so that the machine would be able to execute
not only one but (theoretically) every written algorithm. The
Hungarian-born mathematician John von Neumann made it his goal to
implement this idea. In 1945, he published a model in which the program
(the algorithm) and the data (the input and output) were housed in a
common storage device. Thus, both could be manipulated simultaneously
without having to change the hardware. In this way, he converted the
"Turing machine" into the "universal Turing machine"; that is, the
modern computer.[^83^](#c2-note-0083){#c2-note-0083a}

Gordon Moore, the co-founder of the chip manufacturer Intel,
prognosticated 20 years later that the complexity of integrated circuits
and thus the processing power of computer chips would double every 18 to
24 months. Since the 1970s, his prediction has been known as Moore\'s
Law and has essentially been correct. This technical development has
indeed taken place exponentially, not least because the semi-conductor
industry has been oriented around
it.[^84^](#c2-note-0084){#c2-note-0084a} An IBM 360/40 mainframe
computer, which was one of the first of its kind to be produced on a
large scale, could make approximately 40,000 calculations per second and
its cost, when it was introduced to the market in 1965, was \$1.5
million per unit. Just 40 years later, a standard server (with a
quad-core Intel processor) could make more than 40 billion calculations
per second, and this at a price of little more than \$1,500. This
amounts to an increase in performance by a factor of a million and a
corresponding price reduction by a factor of a thousand; that is, an
improvement in the price-to-performance ratio by a factor of a billion.
With inflation taken into consideration, this factor would be even
higher. No less dramatic were the increases in performance -- or rather
[]{#Page_106 type="pagebreak" title="106"}the price reductions -- in the
area of data storage. In 1980, it cost more than \$400,000 to store a
gigabyte of data, whereas 30 years later it would cost just 10 cents to
do the same -- a price reduction by a factor of 4 million. And in both
areas, this development has continued without pause.

These increases in performance have formed the material basis for the
rapidly growing number of activities carried out by means of algorithms.
We have now reached a point where Leibniz\'s distinction between
creative mental functions and "simple calculations" is becoming
increasingly fuzzy. Recent discussions about the allegedly threatening
"domination of the computer" have been kindled less by the increased use
of algorithms as such than by the gradual blurring of this distinction
with new possibilities to formalize and mechanize increasing areas of
creative thinking.[^85^](#c2-note-0085){#c2-note-0085a} Activities that
not long ago were reserved for human intelligence, such as composing
texts or analyzing the content of images, are now frequently done by
machines. As early as 2010, a program called Stats Monkey was introduced
to produce short reports about baseball games. All that the program
needs for this is comprehensive data about the games, which can be
accumulated mechanically and which have since become more detailed due
to improved image recognition and sensors. From these data, the program
extracts the decisive moments and players of a game, recognizes
characteristic patterns throughout the course of play (such as
"extending an early lead," "a dramatic comeback," etc.), and on this
basis generates its own report. Regarding the reports themselves, a
number of variables can be determined in advance, for instance whether
the story should be written from the perspective of a neutral observer
or from the standpoint of one of the two teams. If writing about little
league games, the program can be instructed to ignore the errors made by
children -- because no parent wants to read about those -- and simply
focus on their heroics. The algorithm was soon patented, and a start-up
business was created from the original interdisciplinary research
project: Narrative Science. In addition to sport reports it now offers
texts of all sorts, but above all financial reports -- another field for
which there is a great deal of available data. These texts have been
published by reputable media outlets such as the business magazine
*Forbes*, in which their authorship []{#Page_107 type="pagebreak"
title="107"}is credited to "Narrative Science." Although these
contributions are still limited to relatively simple topics, this will
not remain the case for long. When asked about the percentage of news
that would be written by computers 15 years from now, Narrative
Science\'s chief technology officer and co-founder Kristian Hammond
confidently predicted "\[m\]ore than 90 percent." He added that, within
the next five years, an algorithm could even win a Pulitzer
Prize.[^86^](#c2-note-0086){#c2-note-0086a} This may be blatant hype and
self-promotion but, as a general estimation, Hammond\'s assertion is not
entirely beyond belief. It remains to be seen whether algorithms will
replace or simply supplement traditional journalism. Yet because media
companies are now under strong financial pressure, it is certainly
reasonable to predict that many journalistic texts will be automated in
the future. Entirely different applications, however, have also been
conceived. Alexander Pschera, for instance, foresees a new age in the
relationship between humans and nature, for, as soon as animals are
equipped with transmitters and sensors and are thus able to tell their
own stories through the appropriate software, they will be regarded as
individuals and not merely as generic members of a
species.[^87^](#c2-note-0087){#c2-note-0087a}

We have not yet reached this point. However, given that the CIA has also
expressed interest in Narrative Science and has invested in it through
its venture-capital firm In-Q-Tel, there are indications that
applications are being developed beyond the field of journalism. For the
purpose of spreading propaganda, for instance, algorithms can easily be
used to create a flood of entries on online forums and social mass
media.[^88^](#c2-note-0088){#c2-note-0088a} Narrative Science is only
one of many companies offering automated text analysis and production.
As implemented by IBM and other firms, so-called E-discovery software
promises to reduce dramatically the amount of time and effort required
to analyze the constantly growing numbers of files that are relevant to
complex legal cases. Without such software, it would be impossible in
practice for lawyers to deal with so many documents. Numerous bots
(automated editing programs) are active in the production of Wikipedia
as well. Whereas, in the German edition, bots are forbidden from writing
their own articles, this is not the case in the Swedish version.
Measured by the number of entries, the latter is now the second-largest
edition of the online encyclopedia in the []{#Page_108 type="pagebreak"
title="108"}world, for, in the summer of 2013, a single bot contributed
more than 200,000 articles to it.[^89^](#c2-note-0089){#c2-note-0089a}
Since 2013, moreover, the company Epagogix has offered software that
uses histor­ical data to evaluate the market potential of film scripts.
At least one major Hollywood studio uses this software behind the backs
of scriptwriters and directors, for, according to the company\'s CEO,
the latter would be "nervous" to learn that their creative work was
being analyzed in such a way.[^90^](#c2-note-0090){#c2-note-0090a}
Think, too, of the typical statement that is made at the beginning of a
call to a telephone hotline -- "This call may be recorded for training
purposes." Increasingly, this training is not intended for the employees
of the call center but rather for algorithms. The latter are expected to
learn how to recognize the personality type of the caller and, on that
basis, to produce an appropriate script to be read by its poorly
educated and part-time human
co-workers.[^91^](#c2-note-0091){#c2-note-0091a} Another example is the
use of algorithms to grade student
essays,[^92^](#c2-note-0092){#c2-note-0092a} or ... But there is no need
to expand this list any further. Even without additional references to
comparable developments in the fields of image, sound, language, and
film analysis, it is clear by now that, on many fronts, the borders
between the creative and the mechanical have
shifted.[^93^](#c2-note-0093){#c2-note-0093a}
:::

::: {.section}
### Dynamic algorithms {#c2-sec-0021}

The algorithms used for such tasks, however, are no longer simple
sequences of static instructions. They are no longer repeated unchanged,
over and over again, but are dynamic and adaptive to a high degree. The
computing power available today is used to write programs that modify
and improve themselves semi-automatically and in response to feedback.

What this means can be illustrated by the example of evolutionary and
self-learning algorithms. An evolutionary algorithm is developed in an
iterative process that continues to run until the desired result has
been achieved. In most cases, the values of the variables of the first
generation of algorithms are chosen at random in order to diminish the
influence of the programmer\'s presuppositions on the results. These
cannot be avoided entirely, however, because the type of variables
(independent of their value) has to be determined in the first place. I
will return to this problem later on. This is []{#Page_109
type="pagebreak" title="109"}followed by a phase of evaluation: the
output of every tested algorithm is evaluated according to how close it
is to the desired solution. The best are then chosen and combined with
one another. In addition, mutations (that is, random changes) are
introduced. These steps are then repeated as often as necessary until,
according to the specifications in question, the algorithm is
"sufficient" or cannot be improved any further. By means of intensive
computational processes, algorithms are thus "cultivated"; that is,
large numbers of these are tested instead of a single one being designed
analytically and then implemented. At the heart of this pursuit is a
functional solution that proves itself experimentally and in practice,
but about which it might no longer be possible to know why it functions
or whether it actually is the best possible solution. The fundamental
methods behind this process largely derive from the 1970s (the first
stage of artificial intelligence), the difference being that today they
can be carried out far more effectively. One of the best-known examples
of an evolutionary algorithm is that of Google Flu Trends. In order to
predict which regions will be especially struck by the flu in a given
year, it evaluates the geographic distribution of internet searches for
particular terms ("cold remedies," for instance). To develop the
program, Google tested 450 million different models until one emerged
that could reliably identify local flu epidemics one to two weeks ahead
of the national health authorities.[^94^](#c2-note-0094){#c2-note-0094a}

In pursuits of this magnitude, the necessary processes can only be
administered by computer programs. The series of tests are no longer
conducted by programmers but rather by algorithms. In short, algorithms
are implemented in order to write new algorithms or determine their
variables. If this reflexive process, in turn, is built into an
algorithm, then the latter becomes "self-learning": the programmers do
not set the rules for its execution but rather the rules according to
which the algorithm is supposed to know how to accomplish a particular
goal. In many cases, the solution strategies are so complex that they
are incomprehensible in retrospect. They can no longer be tested
logically, only experimentally. Such algorithms are essentially black
boxes -- objects that can only be understood by their outer behavior but
whose internal structure cannot be known.[]{#Page_110 type="pagebreak"
title="110"}

Automatic facial recognition, as used in surveillance technologies and
for authorizing access to certain things, is based on the fact that
computers can evaluate large numbers of facial images, first to produce
a general model for a face, then to identify the variables that make a
face unique and therefore recognizable. With so-called "unsupervised" or
"deep-learning" algorithms, some developers and companies have even
taken this a step further: computers are expected to extract faces from
unstructured images -- that is, from volumes of images that contain
images both with faces and without them -- and to do so without
possessing in advance any model of the face in question. So far, the
extraction and evaluation of unknown patterns from unstructured material
has only been achieved in the case of very simple patterns -- with edges
or surfaces in images, for instance -- for it is extremely complex and
computationally intensive to program such learning processes. In recent
years, however, there have been enormous leaps in available computing
power, and both the data inputs and the complexity of the learning
models have increased exponentially. Today, on the basis of simple
patterns, algorithms are developing improved recognition of the complex
content of images. They are refining themselves on their own. The term
"deep learning" is meant to denote this very complexity. In 2012, Google
was able to demonstrate the performance capacity of its new programs in
an impressive manner: from a collection of randomly chosen YouTube
videos, analyzed in a cluster by 1,000 computers with 16,000 processors,
it was possible to create a model in just three days that increased
facial recognition in unstructured images by 70
percent.[^95^](#c2-note-0095){#c2-note-0095a} Of course, the algorithm
does not "know" what a face is, but it reliably recognizes a class of
forms that humans refer to as a face. One advantage of a model that is
not created on the basis of prescribed parameters is that it can also
identify faces in non-standard situ­ations (for instance if a person is
in the background, if a face is half-concealed, or if it has been
recorded at a sharp angle). Thanks to this technique, it is possible to
search the content of images directly and not, as before, primarily by
searching their descriptions. Such algorithms are also being used to
identify people in images and to connect them in social networks with
the profiles of the people in question, and this []{#Page_111
type="pagebreak" title="111"}without any cooperation from the users
themselves. Such algorithms are also expected to assist in directly
controlling activity in "unstructured" reality, for instance in
self-driving cars or other autonomous mobile applications that are of
great interest to the military in particular.

Algorithms of this sort can react and adjust themselves directly to
changes in the environment. This feedback, however, also shortens the
timeframe within which they are able to generate repetitive and
therefore predictable results. Thus, algorithms and their predictive
powers can themselves become unpredictable. Stock markets have
frequently experi­enced so-called "sub-second extreme events"; that is,
price fluctuations that happen in less than a
second.[^96^](#c2-note-0096){#c2-note-0096a} Dramatic "flash crashes,"
however, such as that which occurred on May 6, 2010, when the Dow Jones
Index dropped almost a thousand points in a few minutes (and was thus
perceptible to humans), have not been terribly
uncommon.[^97^](#c2-note-0097){#c2-note-0097a} With the introduction of
voice commands on mobile phones (Apple\'s Siri, for example, which came
out in 2011), programs based on self-learning algorithms have now
reached the public at large and have infiltrated increased areas of
everyday life.
:::

::: {.section}
### Sorting, ordering, extracting {#c2-sec-0022}

Orders generated by algorithms are a constitutive element of the digital
condition. On the one hand, the mechanical pre-sorting of the
(informational) world is a precondition for managing immense and
unstructured amounts of data. On the other hand, these large amounts of
data and the computing centers in which they are stored and processed
provide the material precondition for developing increasingly complex
algorithms. Necessities and possibilities are mutually motivating one
another.[^98^](#c2-note-0098){#c2-note-0098a}

Perhaps the best-known algorithms that sort the digital infosphere and
make it usable in its present form are those of search engines, above
all Google\'s PageRank. Thanks to these, we can find our way around in a
world of unstructured information and transfer increasingly larger parts
of the (informational) world into the order of unstructuredness without
giving rise to the "Library of Babel." Here, "unstructured" means that
there is no prescribed order such as (to stick []{#Page_112
type="pagebreak" title="112"}with the image of the library) a cataloging
system that assigns to each book a specific place on a shelf. Rather,
the books are spread all over the place and are dynamically arranged,
each according to a search, so that the appropriate books for each
visitor are always standing ready at the entrance. Yet the metaphor of
books being strewn all about is problematic, for "unstructuredness" does
not simply mean the absence of any structure but rather the presence of
another type of order -- a meta-structure, a potential for order -- out
of which innumerable specific arrangements can be generated on an ad hoc
basis. This meta-structure is created by algorithms. They subsequently
derive from it an actual order, which the user encounters, for instance,
when he or she scrolls through a list of hits produced by a search
engine. What the user does not see are the complex preconditions for
assembling the search results. By the middle of 2014, according to the
company\'s own information, the Google index alone included more than a
hundred million gigabytes of data.

Originally (that is, in the second half of the 1990s), Page­Rank
functioned in such a way that the algorithm analyzed the structure of
links on the World Wide Web, first by noting the number of links that
referred to a given document, and second by evaluating the "relevance"
of the site that linked to the document in question. The relevance of a
site, in turn, was determined by the number of links that led to it.
From these two variables, every document registered by the search engine
was assigned a value, the PageRank. The latter served to present the
documents found with a given search term as a hierarchical list (search
results), whereby the document with the highest value was listed
first.[^99^](#c2-note-0099){#c2-note-0099a} This algorithm was extremely
successful because it reduced the unfathomable chaos of the World Wide
Web to a task that could be managed without difficulty by an individual
user: inputting a search term and selecting from one of the presented
"hits." The simplicity of the user\'s final choice, together with the
quality of the algorithmic pre-selection, quickly pushed Google past its
competition.

Underlying this process is the assumption that every link is an
indication of relevance, and that links from frequently linked (that is,
popular) sources are more important than those from less frequently
linked (that is, unpopular) sources. []{#Page_113 type="pagebreak"
title="113"}The advantage of this assumption is that it can be
understood in terms of purely quantitative variables and it is not
necessary to have any direct understanding of a document\'s content or
of the context in which it exists.

In the middle of the 1990s, when the first version of the PageRank
algorithm was developed, the problem of judging the relevance of
documents whose content could only partially be evaluated was not a new
one. Science administrators at universities and funding agencies had
been facing this difficulty since the 1950s. During the rise of the
knowledge economy, the number of scientific publications increased
rapidly. Scientific fields, perspectives, and methods also multiplied
and diversified during this time, so that even experts could not survey
all of the work being done in their own areas of
research.[^100^](#c2-note-0100){#c2-note-0100a} Thus, instead of reading
and evaluating the content of countless new publications, they shifted
their analysis to a higher level of abstraction. They began to count how
often an article or book was cited and applied this information to
assess the value of a given author or
publication.[^101^](#c2-note-0101){#c2-note-0101a} The underlying
assumption was (and remains) that only important things are referenced,
and therefore every citation and every reference can be regarded as an
indirect vote for something\'s relevance.

In both cases -- classifying a chaotic sphere of information and
administering an expanding industry of knowledge -- the challenge is to
develop dynamic orders for rapidly changing fields, enabling the
evaluation of the importance of individual documents without knowledge
of their content. Because the analysis of citations or links operates on
a purely quantitative basis, large amounts of data can be quickly
structured with them, and especially relevant positions can be
determined. The second advantage of this approach is that it does not
require any assumptions about the contours of different fields or their
relationships to one another. This enables the organ­ization of
disordered or dynamic content. In both cases, references made by the
actors themselves are used: citations in a scientific text, links on
websites. Their value for establishing the order of a field as a whole,
however, is only visible in the aggregate, for instance in the frequency
with which a given article is
cited.[^102^](#c2-note-0102){#c2-note-0102a} In both cases, the shift
from analyzing "data" (the content of documents in the traditional
sense) to []{#Page_114 type="pagebreak" title="114"}analyzing
"meta-data" (describing documents in light of their relationships to one
another) is a precondition for being able to make any use at all of
growing amounts of information.[^103^](#c2-note-0103){#c2-note-0103a}
This shift introduced a new level of abstraction. Information is no
longer understood as a representation of external reality; its
significance is not evaluated with regard to the relation between
"information" and "the world," for instance with a qualitative criterion
such as "true"/"false." Rather, the sphere of information is treated as
a self-referential, closed world, and documents are accordingly only
evaluated in terms of their position within this world, though with
quantitative criteria such as "central"/"peripheral."

Even though the PageRank algorithm was highly effective and assisted
Google\'s rapid ascent to a market-leading position, at the beginning it
was still relatively simple and its mode of operation was at least
partially transparent. It followed the classical statistical model of an
algorithm. A document or site referred to by many links was considered
more important than one to which fewer links
referred.[^104^](#c2-note-0104){#c2-note-0104a} The algorithm analyzed
the given structural order of information and determined the position of
every document therein, and this was largely done independently of the
context of the search and without making any assumptions about it. This
approach functioned relatively well as long as the volume of information
did not exceed a certain size, and as long as the users and their
searches were somewhat similar to one another. In both respects, this is
no longer the case. The amount of information to be pre-sorted is
increasing, and users are searching in all possible situations and
places for everything under the sun. At the time Google was founded, no
one would have thought to check the internet, quickly and while on
one\'s way, for today\'s menu at the restaurant round the corner. Now,
thanks to smartphones, this is an obvious thing to do.
:::

::: {.section}
### Algorithm clouds {#c2-sec-0023}

In order to react to such changes in user behavior -- and simultaneously
to advance it further -- Google\'s search algorithm is constantly being
modified. It has become increasingly complex and has assimilated a
greater amount of contextual []{#Page_115 type="pagebreak"
title="115"}information, which influences the value of a site within
Page­Rank and thus the order of search results. The algorithm is no
longer a fixed object or unchanging recipe but is transforming into a
dynamic process, an opaque cloud composed of multiple interacting
algorithms that are continuously refined (between 500 and 600 times a
year, according to some estimates). These ongoing developments are so
extensive that, since 2003, several new versions of the algorithm cloud
have appeared each year with their own names. In 2014 alone, Google
carried out 13 large updates, more than ever
before.[^105^](#c2-note-0105){#c2-note-0105a}

These changes continue to bring about new levels of abstraction, so that
the algorithm takes into account add­itional variables such as the time
and place of a search, alongside a person\'s previously recorded
behavior -- but also his or her involvement in social environments, and
much more. Personalization and contextualization were made part of
Google\'s search algorithm in 2005. At first it was possible to choose
whether or not to use these. Since 2009, however, they have been a fixed
and binding component for everyone who conducts a search through
Google.[^106^](#c2-note-0106){#c2-note-0106a} By the middle of 2013, the
search algorithm had grown to include at least 200
variables.[^107^](#c2-note-0107){#c2-note-0107a} What is relevant is
that the algorithm no longer determines the position of a document
within a dynamic informational world that exists for everyone
externally. Instead, it now assigns a rank to their content within a
dynamic and singular universe of information that is tailored to every
individual user. For every person, an entirely different order is
created instead of just an excerpt from a previously existing order. The
world is no longer being represented; it is generated uniquely for every
user and then presented. Google is not the only company that has gone
down this path. Orders produced by algorithms have become increasingly
oriented toward creating, for each user, his or her own singular world.
Facebook, dating services, and other social mass media have been
pursuing this approach even more radically than Google.
:::

::: {.section}
### From the data shadow to the synthetic profile {#c2-sec-0024}

This form of generating the world requires not only detailed information
about the external world (that is, the reality []{#Page_116
type="pagebreak" title="116"}shared by everyone) but also information
about every individual\'s own relation to the
latter.[^108^](#c2-note-0108){#c2-note-0108a} To this end, profiles are
established for every user, and the more extensive they are, the better
they are for the algorithms. A profile created by Google, for instance,
identifies the user on three levels: as a "knowledgeable person" who is
informed about the world (this is established, for example, by recording
a person\'s searches, browsing behavior, etc.), as a "physical person"
who is located and mobile in the world (a component established, for
example, by tracking someone\'s location through a smartphone, sensors
in a smart home, or body signals), and as a "social person" who
interacts with other people (a facet that can be determined, for
instance, by following someone\'s activity on social mass
media).[^109^](#c2-note-0109){#c2-note-0109a}

Unlike the situation in the 1990s, however, these profiles are no longer
simply representations of singular people -- they are not "digital
personas" or "data shadows." They no longer represent what is
conventionally referred to as "individuality," in the sense of a
spatially and temporally uniform identity. On the one hand, profiles
rather consist of sub-individual elements -- of fragments of recorded
behavior that can be evaluated on the basis of a particular search
without promising to represent a person as a whole -- and they consist,
on the other hand, of clusters of multiple people, so that the person
being modeled can simultaneously occupy different positions in time.
This temporal differentiation enables predictions of the following sort
to be made: a person who has already done *x* will, with a probability
of *y*, go on to engage in activity *z*. It is in this way that Amazon
assembles its book recommendations, for the company knows that, within
the cluster of people that constitutes part of every person\'s profile,
a certain percentage of them have already gone through this sequence of
activity. Or, as the data-mining company Science Rockstars (!) once
pointedly expressed on its website, "Your next activity is a function of
the behavior of others and your own past."

Google and other providers of algorithmically generated orders have been
devoting increased resources to the prognostic capabilities of their
programs in order to make the confusing and potentially time-consuming
step of the search obsolete. The goal is to minimize a rift that comes
to light []{#Page_117 type="pagebreak" title="117"}in the act of
searching, namely that between the world as everyone experiences it --
plagued by uncertainty, for searching implies "not knowing something" --
and the world of algorithmically generated order, in which certainty
prevails, for everything has been well arranged in advance. Ideally,
questions should be answered before they are asked. The first attempt by
Google to eliminate this rift is called Google Now, and its slogan is
"The right information at just the right time." The program, which was
originally developed as an app but has since been made available on
Chrome, Google\'s own web browser, attempts to anticipate, on the basis
of existing data, a user\'s next step, and to provide the necessary
information before it is searched for in order that such steps take
place efficiently. Thus, for instance, it draws upon information from a
user\'s calendar in order to figure out where he or she will have to go
next. On the basis of real-time traffic data, it will then suggest the
optimal way to get there. For those driving cars, the amount of traffic
on the road will be part of the equation. This is ascertained by
analyzing the motion profiles of other drivers, which will allow the
program to determine whether the traffic is flowing or stuck in a jam.
If enough historical data is taken into account, the hope is that it
will be possible to redirect cars in such a way that traffic jams should
no longer occur.[^110^](#c2-note-0110){#c2-note-0110a} For those who use
public transport, Google Now evaluates real-time data about the
locations of various transport services. With this information, it will
suggest the optimal route and, depending on the calculated travel time,
it will send a reminder (sometimes earlier, sometimes later) when it is
time to go. That which Google is just experimenting with and testing in
a limited and unambiguous context is already part of Facebook\'s
everyday operations. With its EdgeRank algorithm, Facebook already
organizes everyone\'s newsfeed, entirely in the background and without
any explicit user interaction. On the basis of three variables -- user
affinity (previous interactions between two users), content weight (the
rate of interaction between all users and a specific piece of content),
and currency (the age of a post) -- the algorithm selects content from
the status updates made by one\'s friends to be displayed on one\'s own
page.[^111^](#c2-note-0111){#c2-note-0111a} In this way, Facebook
ensures that the stream of updates remains easy to scroll through, while
also -- it is safe []{#Page_118 type="pagebreak" title="118"}to assume
-- leaving enough room for advertising. This potential for manipulation,
which algorithms possess as they work away in the background, will be
the topic of my next section.
:::

::: {.section}
### Variables and correlations {#c2-sec-0025}

Every complex algorithm contains a multitude of variables and usually an
even greater number of ways to make connections between them. Every
variable and every relation, even if they are expressed in technical or
mathematical terms, codifies assumptions that express a specific
position in the world. There can be no purely descriptive variables,
just as there can be no such thing as "raw
data."[^112^](#c2-note-0112){#c2-note-0112a} Both -- data and variables
-- are always already "cooked"; that is, they are engendered through
cultural operations and formed within cultural
categories.[^113^](#c2-note-0113){#c2-note-0113a} With every use of
produced data and with every execution of an algorithm, the assumptions
embedded in them are activated, and the positions contained within them
have effects on the world that the algorithm generates and presents.

As already mentioned, the early version of the PageRank algorithm was
essentially based on the rather simple assumption that frequently linked
content is more relevant than content that is only seldom linked to, and
that links to sites that are themselves frequently linked to should be
given more weight than those found on sites with fewer links to them.
Replacing the qualitative criterion of "relevance" with the quantitative
criterion of "popularity" not only proved to be tremendously practical
but also extremely consequential, for search engines not only describe
the world; they create it as well. That which search engines put at the
top of this list is not just already popular but will remain so. A third
of all users click on the first search result, and around 95 percent do
not look past the first 10.[^114^](#c2-note-0114){#c2-note-0114a} Even
the earliest version of the PageRank algorithm did not represent
existing reality but rather (co-)constituted it.

Popularity, however, is not the only element with which algorithms
actively give shape to the user\'s world. A search engine can only sort,
weigh, and make available that portion of information which has already
been incorporated into its index. Everything else remains invisible. The
relation between []{#Page_119 type="pagebreak" title="119"}the recorded
part of the internet (the "surface web") and the unrecorded part (the
"deep web") is difficult to determine. Estimates have varied between
ratios of 1:5 and 1:500.[^115^](#c2-note-0115){#c2-note-0115a} There are
many reasons why content might be inaccessible to search engines.
Perhaps the information has been saved in formats that search engines
cannot read or can only poorly read, or perhaps it has been hidden
behind proprietary barriers such as paywalls. In order to expand the
realm of things that can be exploited by their algorithms, the operators
of search engines offer extensive guidance about how providers should
design their sites so that search tools can find them in an optimal
manner. It is not necessary to follow this guidance, but given the
central role of search engines in sorting and filtering information, it
is clear that they exercise a great deal of power by setting the
standards.[^116^](#c2-note-0116){#c2-note-0116a}

That the individual must "voluntarily" submit to this authority is
typical of the power of networks, which do not give instructions but
rather constitute preconditions. Yet it is in the interest of (almost)
every producer of information to optimize its position in a search
engine\'s index, and thus there is a strong incentive to accept the
preconditions in question. Considering, moreover, the nearly
monopolistic character of many providers of algorithmically generated
orders and the high price that one would have to pay if one\'s own site
were barely (or not at all) visible to others, the term "voluntary"
begins to take on a rather foul taste. This is a more or less subtle way
of pre-formatting the world so that it can be optimally recorded by
algorithms.[^117^](#c2-note-0117){#c2-note-0117a}

The providers of search engines usually justify such methods in the name
of offering "more efficient" services and "more relevant" results.
Ostensibly technical and neutral terms such as "efficiency" and
"relevance" do little, however, to conceal the political nature of
defining variables. Efficient with respect to what? Relevant for whom?
These are issues that are decided without much discussion by the
developers and institutions that regard the algorithms as their own
property. Every now and again such questions incite public debates,
mostly when the interests of one provider happen to collide with those
of its competition. Thus, for instance, the initiative known as
FairSearch has argued that Google abuses its market power as a search
engine to privilege its []{#Page_120 type="pagebreak" title="120"}own
content and thus to showcase it prominently in search
results.[^118^](#c2-note-0118){#c2-note-0118a} FairSearch\'s
representatives alleged, for example, that Google favors its own map
service in the case of address searches and its own price comparison
service in the case of product searches. The argument had an effect. In
November of 2010, the European Commission initiated an antitrust
investigation against Google. In 2014, a settlement was proposed that
would have required the American internet giant to pay certain
concessions, but the members of the Commission, the EU Parliament, and
consumer protection agencies were not satisfied with the agreement. In
April 2015, the anti-trust proceedings were recommenced by a newly
appointed Commission, its reasoning being that "Google does not apply to
its own comparison shopping service the system of penalties which it
applies to other comparison shopping services on the basis of defined
parameters, and which can lead to the lowering of the rank in which they
appear in Google\'s general search results
pages."[^119^](#c2-note-0119){#c2-note-0119a} In other words, the
Commission accused the company of manipulating search results to its own
advantage and the disadvantage of users.

This is not the only instance in which the political side of search
algorithms has come under public scrutiny. In the summer of 2012, Google
announced that sites with higher numbers of copyright removal notices
would henceforth appear lower in its
rankings.[^120^](#c2-note-0120){#c2-note-0120a} The company thus
introduced explicitly political and economic criteria in order to
influence what, according to the standards of certain powerful players
(such as film studios), users were able to
view.[^121^](#c2-note-0121){#c2-note-0121a} In this case, too, it would
be possible to speak of the personalization of searching, except that
the heart of the situation was not the natural person of the user but
rather the juridical person of the copyright holder. It was according to
the latter\'s interests and preferences that searching was being
reoriented. Amazon has employed similar tactics. In 2014, the online
merchant changed its celebrated recommendation algorithm with the goal
of reducing the presence of books released by irritating publishers that
dared to enter into price negotiations with the
company.[^122^](#c2-note-0122){#c2-note-0122a}

Controversies over the methods of Amazon or Google, however, are the
exception rather than the rule. Necessary (but never neutral) decisions
about recording and evaluating data []{#Page_121 type="pagebreak"
title="121"}with algorithms are being made almost all the time without
any discussion whatsoever. The logic of the original Page­Rank algorithm
was criticized as early as the year 2000 for essentially representing
the commercial logic of mass media, systematically disadvantaging
less-popular though perhaps otherwise relevant information, and thus
undermining the "substantive vision of the web as an inclusive
democratic space."[^123^](#c2-note-0123){#c2-note-0123a} The changes to
the search algorithm that have been adopted since then may have modified
this tendency, but they have certainly not weakened it. In addition to
concentrating on what is popular, the new variables privilege recently
uploaded and constantly updated content. The selection of search results
is now contingent upon the location of the user, and it takes into
account his or her social networking. It is oriented toward the average
of a dynamically modeled group. In other words, Google\'s new algorithm
favors that which is gaining popularity within a user\'s social network.
The global village is thus becoming more and more
provincial.[^124^](#c2-note-0124){#c2-note-0124a}
:::

::: {.section}
### Data behaviorism {#c2-sec-0026}

Algorithms such as Google\'s thus reiterate and reinforce a tendency
that has already been apparent on both the level of individual users and
that of communal formations: in order to deal with the vast amounts and
complexity of information, they direct their gaze inward, which is not
to say toward the inner being of individual people. As a level of
reference, the individual person -- with an interior world and with
ideas, dreams, and wishes -- is irrelevant. For algorithms, people are
black boxes that can only be understood in terms of their reactions to
stimuli. Consciousness, perception, and intention do not play any role
for them. In this regard, the legal philosopher Antoinette Rouvroy has
written about "data behaviorism."[^125^](#c2-note-0125){#c2-note-0125a}
With this, she is referring to the gradual return of a long-discredited
approach to behavioral psychology that postulated that human behavior
could be explained, predicted, and controlled purely by our outwardly
observable and measurable actions.[^126^](#c2-note-0126){#c2-note-0126a}
Psychological dimensions were ignored (and are ignored in this new
version of behaviorism) because it is difficult to observe them
empiric­ally. Accordingly, this approach also did away with the need
[]{#Page_122 type="pagebreak" title="122"}to question people directly or
take into account their subjective experiences, thoughts, and feelings.
People were regarded (and are so again today) as unreliable, as poor
judges of themselves, and as only partly honest when disclosing
information. Any strictly empirical science, or so the thinking went,
required its practitioners to disregard everything that did not result
in physical and observable action. From this perspective, it was
possible to break down even complex behavior into units of stimulus and
reaction. This led to the conviction that someone observing another\'s
activity always knows more than the latter does about himself or herself
for, unlike the person being observed, whose impressions can be
inaccurate, the observer is in command of objective and complete
information. Even early on, this approach faced a wave of critique. It
was held to be mechanistic, reductionist, and authoritarian because it
privileged the observing scientist over the subject. In practice, it
quickly ran into its own limitations: it was simply too expensive and
complicated to gather data about human behavior.

Yet that has changed radically in recent years. It is now possible to
measure ever more activities, conditions, and contexts empirically.
Algorithms like Google\'s or Amazon\'s form the technical backdrop for
the revival of a mechanistic, reductionist, and authoritarian approach
that has resurrected the long-lost dream of an objective view -- the
view from nowhere.[^127^](#c2-note-0127){#c2-note-0127a} Every critique
of this positivistic perspective -- that every measurement result, for
instance, reflects not only the measured but also the measurer -- is
brushed aside with reference to the sheer amounts of data that are now
at our disposal.[^128^](#c2-note-0128){#c2-note-0128a} This attitude
substantiates the claim of those in possession of these new and
comprehensive powers of observation (which, in addition to Google and
Facebook, also includes the intelligence services of Western nations),
namely that they know more about individuals than individuals know about
themselves, and are thus able to answer our questions before we ask
them. As mentioned above, this is a goal that Google expressly hopes to
achieve.

At issue with this "inward turn" is thus the space of communal
formations, which is constituted by the sum of all of the activities of
their interacting participants. In this case, however, a communal
formation is not consciously created []{#Page_123 type="pagebreak"
title="123"}and maintained in a horizontal process, but rather
synthetic­ally constructed as a computational function. Depending on the
context and the need, individuals can either be assigned to this
function or removed from it. All of this happens behind the user\'s back
and in accordance with the goals and pos­itions that are relevant to the
developers of a given algorithm, be it to optimize profit or
surveillance, create social norms, improve services, or whatever else.
The results generated in this way are sold to users as a personalized
and efficient service that provides a quasi-magical product. Out of the
enormous haystack of searchable information, results are generated that
are made to seem like the very needle that we have been looking for. At
best, it is only partially transparent how these results came about and
which positions in the world are strengthened or weakened by them. Yet,
as long as the needle is somewhat functional, most users are content,
and the algorithm registers this contentedness to validate itself. In
this dynamic world of unmanageable complexity, users are guided by a
sort of radical, short-term pragmatism. They are happy to have the world
pre-sorted for them in order to improve their activity in it. Regarding
the matter of whether the information being provided represents the
world accurately or not, they are unable to formulate an adequate
assessment for themselves, for it is ultimately impossible to answer
this question without certain resources. Outside of rapidly shrinking
domains of specialized or everyday know­ledge, it is becoming
increasingly difficult to gain an overview of the world without
mechanisms that pre-sort it. Users are only able to evaluate search
results pragmatically; that is, in light of whether or not they are
helpful in solving a concrete problem. In this regard, it is not
paramount that they find the best solution or the correct answer but
rather one that is available and sufficient. This reality lends an
enormous amount of influence to the institutions and processes that
provide the solutions and answers.[]{#Page_124 type="pagebreak"
title="124"}
:::
:::

::: {.section .notesSet type="rearnotes"}
[]{#notesSet}Notes {#c2-ntgp-9999}
------------------

::: {.section .notesList}
[1](#c2-note-0001a){#c2-note-0001}  André Rottmann, "Reflexive Systems
of Reference: Approximations to 'Referentialism' in Contemporary Art,"
trans. Gerrit Jackson, in Dirk Snauwaert et al. (eds), *Rehabilitation:
The Legacy of the Modern Movement* (Ghent: MER, 2010), pp. 97--106, at
99.

[2](#c2-note-0002a){#c2-note-0002}  The recognizability of the sources
distinguishes these processes from plagiarism. The latter operates with
the complete opposite aim, namely that of borrowing sources without
acknow­ledging them.

[3](#c2-note-0003a){#c2-note-0003}  Ulf Poschardt, *DJ Culture* (London:
Quartet Books, 1998), p. 34.

[4](#c2-note-0004a){#c2-note-0004}  Theodor W. Adorno, *Aesthetic
Theory*, trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor (Minneapolis, MN: University of
Minnesota Press, 1997), p. 151.

[5](#c2-note-0005a){#c2-note-0005}  Peter Bürger, *Theory of the
Avant-Garde*, trans. Michael Shaw (Minneapolis, MN: University of
Minnesota Press, 1984).

[6](#c2-note-0006a){#c2-note-0006}  Felix Stalder, "Neun Thesen zur
Remix-Kultur," *i-rights.info* (May 25, 2009), online.

[7](#c2-note-0007a){#c2-note-0007}  Florian Cramer, *Exe.cut(up)able
Statements: Poetische Kalküle und Phantasmen des selbstausführenden
Texts* (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2011), pp. 9--10 \[--trans.\]

[8](#c2-note-0008a){#c2-note-0008}  McLuhan stressed that, despite using
the alphabet, every manuscript is unique because it not only depended on
the sequence of letters but also on the individual ability of a given
scribe to []{#Page_185 type="pagebreak" title="185"}lend these letters a
particular shape. With the rise of the printing press, the alphabet shed
these last elements of calligraphy and became typography.

[9](#c2-note-0009a){#c2-note-0009}  Elisabeth L. Eisenstein, *The
Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe* (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1983), p. 15.

[10](#c2-note-0010a){#c2-note-0010}  Eisenstein, *The Printing
Revolution in Early Modern Europe*, p. 204.

[11](#c2-note-0011a){#c2-note-0011}  The fundamental aspects of these
conventions were formulated as early as the beginning of the sixteenth
century; see Michael Giesecke, *Der Buchdruck in der frühen Neuzeit:
Eine historische Fallstudie über die Durchsetzung neuer Informations-
und Kommunikationstechnologien* (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1991), pp.
420--40.

[12](#c2-note-0012a){#c2-note-0012}  Eisenstein, *The Printing
Revolution in Early Modern Europe*, p. 49.

[13](#c2-note-0013a){#c2-note-0013}  In April 2014, the Authors Guild --
the association of American writers that had sued Google -- filed an
appeal to overturn the decision and made a public statement demanding
that a new organization be established to license the digital rights of
out-of-print books. See "Authors Guild: Amazon was Google's Target,"
*The Authors Guild: Industry & Advocacy News* (April 11, 2014), online.
In October 2015, however, the next-highest authority -- the United
States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit -- likewise decided in
Google\'s favor. The Authors Guild promptly announced its intention to
take the case to the Supreme Court.

[14](#c2-note-0014a){#c2-note-0014}  Jean-Noël Jeanneney, *Google and
the Myth of Universal Knowledge: A View from Europe*, trans. Teresa
Lavender Fagan (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2007).

[15](#c2-note-0015a){#c2-note-0015}  Within the framework of the Images
for the Future project (2007--14), the Netherlands alone invested more
than €170 million to digitize the collections of the most important
audiovisual archives. Over 10 years, the cost of digitizing the entire
cultural heritage of Europe has been estimated to be around €100
billion. See Nick Poole, *The Cost of Digitising Europe\'s Cultural
Heritage: A Report for the Comité des Sages of the European Commission*
(November 2010), online.

[16](#c2-note-0016a){#c2-note-0016}  Richard Darnton, "The National
Digital Public Library Is Launched!", *New York Review of Books* (April
25, 2013), online.

[17](#c2-note-0017a){#c2-note-0017}  According to estimates by the
British Library, so-called "orphan works" alone -- that is, works still
legally protected but whose right holders are unknown -- make up around
40 percent of the books in its collection that still fall under
copyright law. In an effort to alleviate this problem, the European
Parliament and the European Commission issued a directive []{#Page_186
type="pagebreak" title="186"}in 2012 concerned with "certain permitted
uses of orphan works." This has allowed libraries and archives to make
works available online without permission if, "after carrying out
diligent searches," the copyright holders cannot be found. What
qualifies as a "diligent search," however, is so strictly formulated
that the German Library Association has called the directive
"impracticable." Deutscher Bibliotheksverband, "Rechtlinie über
bestimmte zulässige Formen der Nutzung verwaister Werke" (February 27,
2012), online.

[18](#c2-note-0018a){#c2-note-0018}  UbuWeb, "Frequently Asked
Questions," online.

[19](#c2-note-0019a){#c2-note-0019}  The numbers in this area of
activity are notoriously unreliable, and therefore only rough estimates
are possible. It seems credible, however, that the Pirate Bay was
attracting around a billion page views per month by the end of 2013.
That would make it the seventy-fourth most popular internet destination.
See Ernesto, "Top 10 Most Popular Torrent Sites of 2014" (January 4,
2014), online.

[20](#c2-note-0020a){#c2-note-0020}  See the documentary film *TPB AFK:
The Pirate Bay Away from Keyboard* (2013), directed by Simon Klose.

[21](#c2-note-0021a){#c2-note-0021}  In technical terms, there is hardly
any difference between a "stream" and a "download." In both cases, a
complete file is transferred to the user\'s computer and played.

[22](#c2-note-0022a){#c2-note-0022}  The practice is legal in Germany
but illegal in Austria, though digitized texts are routinely made
available there in seminars. See Seyavash Amini Khanimani and Nikolaus
Forgó, "Rechtsgutachten über die Erforderlichkeit einer freien
Werknutzung im österreichischen Urheberrecht zur Privilegierung
elektronisch unterstützter Lehre," *Forum Neue Medien Austria* (January
2011), online.

[23](#c2-note-0023a){#c2-note-0023}  Deutscher Bibliotheksverband,
"Digitalisierung" (2015), online \[--trans\].

[24](#c2-note-0024a){#c2-note-0024}  David Weinberger, *Everything Is
Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder* (New York: Times
Books, 2007).

[25](#c2-note-0025a){#c2-note-0025}  This is not a question of material
wealth. Those who are economically or socially marginalized are
confronted with the same phenomenon. Their primary experience of this
excess is with cheap goods and junk.

[26](#c2-note-0026a){#c2-note-0026}  See Gregory Bateson, "Form,
Substance and Difference," in Bateson, *Steps to an Ecology of Mind:
Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution and
Epistemology* (London: Jason Aronson, 1972), pp. 455--71, at 460:
"\[I\]n fact, what we mean by information -- the elementary unit of
information -- is *a difference which makes a difference*" (the emphasis
is original).

[27](#c2-note-0027a){#c2-note-0027}  Inke Arns and Gabriele Horn,
*History Will Repeat Itself* (Frankfurt am Main: Revolver, 2007), p.
42.[]{#Page_187 type="pagebreak" title="187"}

[28](#c2-note-0028a){#c2-note-0028}  See the film *The Battle of
Orgreave* (2001), directed by Mike Figgis.

[29](#c2-note-0029a){#c2-note-0029}  Theresa Winge, "Costuming the
Imagination: Origins of Anime and Manga Cosplay," *Mechademia* 1 (2006),
pp. 65--76.

[30](#c2-note-0030a){#c2-note-0030}  Nicolle Lamerichs, "Stranger than
Fiction: Fan Identity in Cosplay," *Transformative Works and Cultures* 7
(2011), online.

[31](#c2-note-0

Stalder
The Digital Condition
2018


---
lang: en
title: The Digital Condition
---

::: {.figure}
[]{#coverstart}

:::

Table of Contents

1. [Preface to the English Edition](#fpref)
2. [Acknowledgments](#ack)
3. [Introduction: After the End of the Gutenberg Galaxy](#cintro)
1. [Notes](#f6-ntgp-9999)
4. [I: Evolution](#c1)
1. [The Expansion of the Social Basis of Culture](#c1-sec-0002)
2. [The Culturalization of the World](#c1-sec-0006)
3. [The Technologization of Culture](#c1-sec-0009)
4. [From the Margins to the Center of Society](#c1-sec-0013)
5. [Notes](#c1-ntgp-9999)
5. [II: Forms](#c2)
1. [Referentiality](#c2-sec-0002)
2. [Communality](#c2-sec-0009)
3. [Algorithmicity](#c2-sec-0018)
4. [Notes](#c2-ntgp-9999)
6. [III: Politics](#c3)
1. [Post-democracy](#c3-sec-0002)
2. [Commons](#c3-sec-0011)
3. [Against a Lack of Alternatives](#c3-sec-0017)
4. [Notes](#c3-ntgp-9999)

[Preface to the English Edition]{.chapterTitle} {#fpref}

::: {.section}
This book posits that we in the societies of the (transatlantic) West
find ourselves in a new condition. I call it "the digital condition"
because it gained its dominance as computer networks became established
as the key infrastructure for virtually all aspects of life. However,
the emergence of this condition pre-dates computer networks. In fact, it
has deep historical roots, some of which go back to the late nineteenth
century, but it really came into being after the late 1960s. As many of
the cultural and political institutions shaped by the previous condition
-- which McLuhan called the Gutenberg Galaxy -- fell into crisis, new
forms of personal and collective orientation and organization emerged
which have been shaped by the affordances of this new condition. Both
the historical processes which unfolded over a very long time and the
structural transformation which took place in a myriad of contexts have
been beyond any deliberate influence. Although obviously caused by
social actors, the magnitude of such changes was simply too great, too
distributed, and too complex to be attributed to, or molded by, any
particular (set of) actor(s).

Yet -- and this is the core of what motivated me to write this book --
this does not mean that we have somehow moved beyond the political,
beyond the realm in which identifiable actors and their projects do
indeed shape our collective []{#Page_vii type="pagebreak"
title="vii"}existence, or that there are no alternatives to future
development already expressed within contemporary dynamics. On the
contrary, we can see very clearly that as the center -- the established
institutions shaped by the affordances of the previous condition -- is
crumbling, more economic and political projects are rushing in to fill
that void with new institutions that advance their competing agendas.
These new institutions are well adapted to the digital condition, with
its chaotic production of vast amounts of information and innovative
ways of dealing with that.

From this, two competing trajectories have emerged which are
simultaneously transforming the space of the political. First, I used
the term "post-democracy" because it expands possibilities, and even
requirements, of (personal) participation, while ever larger aspects of
(collective) decision-making are moved to arenas that are structurally
disconnected from those of participation. In effect, these arenas are
forming an authoritarian reality in which a small elite is vastly
empowered at the expense of everyone else. The purest incarnation of
this tendency can be seen in the commercial social mass media, such as
Facebook, Google, and the others, as they were newly formed in this
condition and have not (yet) had to deal with the complications of
transforming their own legacy.

For the other trajectory, I applied the term "commons" because it
expands both the possibilities of personal participation and agency, and
those of collective decision-making. This tendency points to a
redefinition of democracy beyond the hollowed-out forms of political
representation characterizing the legacy institutions of liberal
democracy. The purest incarnation of this tendency can be found in the
institutions that produce the digital commons, such as Wikipedia and the
various Free Software communities whose work has been and still is
absolutely crucial for the infrastructural dimensions of the digital
networks. They are the most advanced because, again, they have not had
to deal with institutional legacies. But both tendencies are no longer
confined to digital networks and are spreading across all aspects of
social life, creating a reality that is, on the structural level,
surprisingly coherent and, on the social and political level, full of
contradictions and thus opportunities.[]{#Page_viii type="pagebreak"
title="viii"}

I traced some aspects of these developments right up to early 2016, when
the German version of this book went into production. Since then a lot
has happened, but I resisted the temptation to update the book for the
English translation because ideas are always an expression of their
historical moment and, as such, updating either turns into a completely
new version or a retrospective adjustment of the historical record.

What has become increasingly obvious during 2016 and into 2017 is that
central institutions of liberal democracy are crumbling more quickly and
dramatically than was expected. The race to replace them has kicked into
high gear. The main events driving forward an authoritarian renewal of
politics took place on a national level, in particular the vote by the
UK to leave the EU (Brexit) and the election of Donald Trump to the
office of president of the United States of America. The main events
driving the renewal of democracy took place on a metropolitan level,
namely the emergence of a network of "rebel cities," led by Barcelona
and Madrid. There, community-based social movements established their
candidates in the highest offices. These cities are now putting in place
practical examples that other cities could emulate and adapt. For the
concerns of this book, the most important concept put forward is that of
"technological sovereignty": to bring the technological infrastructure,
and its developmental potential, back under the control of those who are
using it and are affected by it; that is, the citizens of the
metropolis.

Over the last 18 months, the imbalances between the two trajectories
have become even more extreme because authoritarian tendencies and
surveillance capitalism have been strengthened more quickly than the
commons-oriented practices could establish themselves. But it does not
change the fact that there are fundamental alternatives embedded in the
digital condition. Despite structural transformations that affect how we
do things, there is no inevitability about what we want to do
individually and, even more importantly, collectively.

::: {.poem}
::: {.lineGroup}
Zurich/Vienna, July 2017[]{#Page_ix type="pagebreak" title="ix"}
:::
:::
:::

[Acknowledgments]{.chapterTitle} {#ack}

::: {.section}
While it may be conventional to cite one person as the author of a book,
writing is a process with many collective elements. This book in
particular draws upon many sources, most of which I am no longer able to
acknowledge with any certainty. Far too often, important references came
to me in parenthetical remarks, in fleeting encounters, during trips, at
the fringes of conferences, or through discussions of things that,
though entirely new to me, were so obvious to others as not to warrant
any explication. Often, too, my thinking was influenced by long
conversations, and it is impossible for me now to identify the precise
moments of inspiration. As far as the themes of this book are concerned,
four settings were especially important. The international discourse
network "nettime," which has a mailing list of 4,500 members and which I
have been moderating since the late 1990s, represents an inexhaustible
source of internet criticism and, as a collaborative filter, has enabled
me to follow a wide range of developments from a particular point of
view. I am also indebted to the Zurich University of the Arts, where I
have taught for more than 10 years and where the students have been
willing to explain to me, again and again, what is already self-evident
to them. Throughout my time there, I have been able to observe a
dramatic shift. For today\'s students, the "new" is no longer new but
simply obvious, whereas they []{#Page_x type="pagebreak" title="x"}have
experienced many things previously regarded as normal -- such as
checking out a book from a library (instead of downloading it) -- as
needlessly complicated. In Vienna, the hub of my life, the World
Information Institute has for many years provided a platform for
conferences, publications, and interventions that have repeatedly raised
the stakes of the discussion and have brought together the most
interesting range of positions without regard to any disciplinary
boundaries. Housed in Vienna, too, is the Technopolitics Project, a
non-institutionalized circle of researchers and artists whose
discussions of techno-economic paradigms have informed this book in
fundamental ways and which has offered multiple opportunities for me to
workshop inchoate ideas.

Not everything, however, takes place in diffuse conversations and
networks. I was also able to rely on the generous support of several
individuals who, at one stage or another, read through, commented upon,
and made crucial improvements to the manuscript: Leonhard Dobusch,
Günther Hack, Katja Meier, Florian Cramer, Cornelia Sollfrank, Beat
Brogle, Volker Grassmuck, Ursula Stalder, Klaus Schönberger, Konrad
Becker, Armin Medosch, Axel Stockburger, and Gerald Nestler. Special
thanks are owed to Rebina Erben-Hartig, who edited the original German
manuscript and greatly improved its readability. I am likewise grateful
to Heinrich Greiselberger and Christian Heilbronn of the Suhrkamp
Verlag, whose faith in the book never wavered despite several delays.
Regarding the English version at hand, it has been a privilege to work
with a translator as skillful as Valentine Pakis. Over the past few
years, writing this book might have been the most import­ant project in
my life had it not been for Andrea Mayr. In this regard, I have been
especially fortunate.[]{#Page_xi type="pagebreak"
title="xi"}[]{#Page_xii type="pagebreak" title="xii"}
:::

Introduction [After the End of the Gutenberg Galaxy]{.chapterTitle} []{.chapterSubTitle} {#cintro}

::: {.section}
The show had already been going on for more than three hours, but nobody
was bothered by this. Quite the contrary. The tension in the venue was
approaching its peak, and the ratings were through the roof. Throughout
all of Europe, 195 million people were watching the spectacle on
television, and the social mass media were gaining steam. On Twitter,
more than 47,000 messages were being sent every minute with the hashtag
\#Eurovision.[^1^](#f6-note-0001){#f6-note-0001a} The outcome was
decided shortly after midnight: Conchita Wurst, the bearded diva, was
announced the winner of the 2014 Eurovision Song Contest. Cheers erupted
as the public celebrated the victor -- but also itself. At long last,
there was more to the event than just another round of tacky television
programming ("This is Ljubljana calling!"). Rather, a statement was made
-- a statement in favor of tolerance and against homophobia, for
diversity and for the right to define oneself however one pleases. And
Europe sent this message in the midst of a crisis and despite ongoing
hostilities, not to mention all of the toxic rumblings that could be
heard about decadence, cultural decay, and Gayropa. Visibly moved, the
Austrian singer let out an exclamation -- "We are unity, and we are
unstoppable!" -- as she returned to the stage with wobbly knees to
accept the trophy.

With her aesthetically convincing performance, Conchita succeeded in
unleashing a strong desire for personal []{#Page_1 type="pagebreak"
title="1"}self-discovery, for community, and for overcoming stale
conventions. And she did this through a character that mainstream
society would have considered paradoxical and deviant not long ago but
has since come to understand: attractive beyond the dichotomy of man and
woman, explicitly artificial and yet entirely authentic. This peculiar
conflation of artificiality and naturalness is equally present in
Berndnaut Smilde\'s photographic work of a real indoor cloud (*Nimbus*,
2010) on the cover of this book. Conchita\'s performance was also on a
formal level seemingly paradoxical: extremely focused and completely
open. Unlike most of the other acts, she took the stage alone, and
though she hardly moved at all, she nevertheless incited the audience to
participate in numerous ways and genuinely to act out the motto of the
contest ("Join us!"). Throughout the early rounds of the competition,
the beard, which was at first so provocative, transformed into a
free-floating symbol that the public began to appropriate in various
ways. Men and women painted Conchita-like beards on their faces,
newspapers printed beards to be cut out, and fans crocheted beards. Not
only did someone Photoshop a beard on to a painting of Empress Sissi of
Austria, but King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands even tweeted a
deceptively realistic portrait of his wife, Queen Máxima, wearing a
beard. From one of the biggest stages of all, the evening of Wurst\'s
victory conveyed an impression of how much the culture of Europe had
changed in recent years, both in terms of its content and its forms.
That which had long been restricted to subcultural niches -- the
fluidity of gender iden­tities, appropriation as a cultural technique,
or the conflation of reception and production, for instance -- was now
part of the mainstream. Even while sitting in front of the television,
this mainstream was no longer just a private audience but rather a
multitude of singular producers whose networked activity -- on location
or on social mass media -- lent particular significance to the occasion
as a moment of collective self-perception.

It is more than half a century since Marshall McLuhan announced the end
of the Modern era, a cultural epoch that he called the Gutenberg Galaxy
in honor of the print medium by which it was so influenced. What was
once just an abstract speculation of media theory, however, now
describes []{#Page_2 type="pagebreak" title="2"}the concrete reality of
our everyday life. What\'s more, we have moved well past McLuhan\'s
diagnosis: the erosion of old cultural forms, institutions, and
certainties is not just something we affirm, but new ones have already
formed whose contours are easy to identify not only in niche sectors but
in the mainstream. Shortly before Conchita\'s triumph, Facebook thus
expanded the gender-identity options for its billion-plus users from 2
to 60. In addition to "male" and "female," users of the English version
of the site can now choose from among the following categories:

::: {.extract}
Agender, Androgyne, Androgynes, Androgynous, Asexual, Bigender, Cis, Cis
Female, Cis Male, Cis Man, Cis Woman, Cisgender, Cisgender Female,
Cisgender Male, Cisgender Man, Cisgender Woman, Female to Male (FTM),
Female to Male Trans Man, Female to Male Transgender Man, Female to Male
Transsexual Man, Gender Fluid, Gender Neutral, Gender Nonconforming,
Gender Questioning, Gender Variant, Genderqueer, Hermaphrodite,
Intersex, Intersex Man, Intersex Person, Intersex Woman, Male to Female
(MTF), Male to Female Trans Woman, Male to Female Transgender Woman,
Male to Female Transsexual Woman, Neither, Neutrois, Non-Binary, Other,
Pangender, Polygender, T\*Man, Trans, Trans Female, Trans Male, Trans
Man, Trans Person, Trans\*Female, Trans\*Male, Trans\*Man,
Trans\*Person, Trans\*Woman, Transexual, Transexual Female, Transexual
Male, Transexual Man, Transexual Person, Transexual Woman, Transgender
Female, Transgender Person, Transmasculine, T\*Woman, Two\*Person,
Two-Spirit, Two-Spirit Person.
:::

This enormous proliferation of cultural possibilities is an expression
of what I will refer to below as the digital condition. Far from being
universally welcomed, its growing presence has also instigated waves of
nostalgia, diffuse resentments, and intellectual panic. Conservative and
reactionary movements, which oppose such developments and desire to
preserve or even re-create previous conditions, have been on the rise.
Likewise in 2014, for instance, a cultural dispute broke out in normally
subdued Baden-Würtemberg over which forms of sexual partnership should
be mentioned positively in the sexual education curriculum. Its impetus
was a working paper released at the end of 2013 by the state\'s
[]{#Page_3 type="pagebreak" title="3"}Ministry of Culture. Among other
things, it proposed that adolescents "should confront their own sexual
identity and orientation \[...\] from a position of acceptance with
respect to sexual diversity."[^2^](#f6-note-0002){#f6-note-0002a} In a
short period of time, a campaign organized mainly through social mass
media collected more than 200,000 signatures in opposition to the
proposal and submitted them to the petitions committee at the state
parliament. At that point, the government responded by putting the
initiative on ice. However, according to the analysis presented in this
book, leaving it on ice creates a precarious situation.

The rise and spread of the digital condition is the result of a
wide-ranging and irreversible cultural transformation, the beginnings of
which can in part be traced back to the nineteenth century. Since the
1960s, however, this shift has accelerated enormously and has
encompassed increasingly broader spheres of social life. More and more
people have been participating in cultural processes; larger and larger
dimensions of existence have become battlegrounds for cultural disputes;
and social activity has been intertwined with increasingly complex
technologies, without which it would hardly be possible to conceive of
these processes, let alone achieve them. The number of competing
cultural projects, works, reference points, and reference systems has
been growing rapidly. This, in turn, has caused an escalating crisis for
the established forms and institutions of culture, which are poorly
equipped to deal with such an inundation of new claims to meaning. Since
roughly the year 2000, many previously independent developments have
been consolidating, gaining strength and modifying themselves to form a
new cultural constellation that encompasses broad segments of society --
a new galaxy, as McLuhan might have
said.[^3^](#f6-note-0003){#f6-note-0003a} These days it is relatively
easy to recognize the specific forms that characterize it as a whole and
how these forms have contributed to new, contradictory and
conflict-laden political dynamics.

My argument, which is restricted to cultural developments in the
(transatlantic) West, is divided into three chapters. In the first, I
will outline the *historical* developments that have given rise to this
quantitative and qualitative change and have led to the crisis faced by
the institutions of the late phase of the Gutenberg Galaxy, which
defined the last third []{#Page_4 type="pagebreak" title="4"}of the
twentieth century.[^4^](#f6-note-0004){#f6-note-0004a} The expansion of
the social basis of cultural processes will be traced back to changes in
the labor market, to the self-empowerment of marginalized groups, and to
the dissolution of centralized cultural geography. The broadening of
cultural fields will be discussed in terms of the rise of design as a
general creative discipline, and the growing significance of complex
technologies -- as fundamental components of everyday life -- will be
tracked from the beginnings of independent media up to the development
of the internet as a mass medium. These processes, which at first
unfolded on their own and may have been reversible on an individual
basis, are integrated today and represent a socially domin­ant component
of the coherent digital condition. From the perspective of cultural
studies and media theory, the second chapter will delineate the already
recognizable features of this new culture. Concerned above all with the
analysis of forms, its focus is thus on the question of "how" cultural
practices operate. It is only because specific forms of culture,
exchange, and expression are prevalent across diverse var­ieties of
content, social spheres, and locations that it is even possible to speak
of the digital condition in the singular. Three examples of such forms
stand out in particular. *Referentiality* -- that is, the use of
existing cultural materials for one\'s own production -- is an essential
feature of many methods for inscribing oneself into cultural processes.
In the context of unmanageable masses of shifting and semantically open
reference points, the act of selecting things and combining them has
become fundamental to the production of meaning and the constitution of
the self. The second feature that characterizes these processes is
*communality*. It is only through a collectively shared frame of
reference that meanings can be stabilized, possible courses of action
can be determined, and resources can be made available. This has given
rise to communal formations that generate self-referential worlds, which
in turn modulate various dimensions of existence -- from aesthetic
preferences to the methods of biological reproduction and the rhythms of
space and time. In these worlds, the dynamics of network power have
reconfigured notions of voluntary and involuntary behavior, autonomy,
and coercion. The third feature of the new cultural landscape is its
*algorithmicity*. It is characterized, in other []{#Page_5
type="pagebreak" title="5"}words, by automated decision-making processes
that reduce and give shape to the glut of information, by extracting
information from the volume of data produced by machines. This extracted
information is then accessible to human perception and can serve as the
basis of singular and communal activity. Faced with the enormous amount
of data generated by people and machines, we would be blind were it not
for algorithms.

The third chapter will focus on *political dimensions*. These are the
factors that enable the formal dimensions described in the preceding
chapter to manifest themselves in the form of social, political, and
economic projects. Whereas the first chapter is concerned with long-term
and irreversible histor­ical processes, and the second outlines the
general cultural forms that emerged from these changes with a certain
degree of inevitability, my concentration here will be on open-ended
dynamics that can still be influenced. A contrast will be made between
two political tendencies of the digital condition that are already quite
advanced: *post-democracy* and *commons*. Both take full advantage of
the possibilities that have arisen on account of structural changes and
have advanced them even further, though in entirely different
directions. "Post-democracy" refers to strategies that counteract the
enormously expanded capacity for social communication by disconnecting
the possibility to participate in things from the ability to make
decisions about them. Everyone is allowed to voice his or her opinion,
but decisions are ultimately made by a select few. Even though growing
numbers of people can and must take responsibility for their own
activity, they are unable to influence the social conditions -- the
social texture -- under which this activity has to take place. Social
mass media such as Facebook and Google will receive particular attention
as the most conspicuous manifestations of this tendency. Here, under new
structural provisions, a new combination of behavior and thought has
been implemented that promotes the normalization of post-democracy and
contributes to its otherwise inexplicable acceptance in many areas of
society. "Commons," on the contrary, denotes approaches for developing
new and comprehensive institutions that not only directly combine
participation and decision-making but also integrate economic, social,
and ethical spheres -- spheres that Modernity has tended to keep
apart.[]{#Page_6 type="pagebreak" title="6"}

Post-democracy and commons can be understood as two lines of development
that point beyond the current crisis of liberal democracy and represent
new political projects. One can be characterized as an essentially
authoritarian system, the other as a radical expansion and renewal of
democracy, from the notion of representation to that of participation.

Even though I have brought together a number of broad perspectives, I
have refrained from discussing certain topics that a book entitled *The
Digital Condition* might be expected to address, notably the matter of
copyright, for one example. This is easy to explain. As regards the new
forms at the heart of this book, none of these developments requires or
justifies copyright law in its present form. In any case, my thoughts on
the matter were published not long ago in another book, so there is no
need to repeat them here.[^5^](#f6-note-0005){#f6-note-0005a} The theme
of privacy will also receive little attention. This is not because I
share the view, held by proponents of "post-privacy," that it would be
better for all personal information to be made available to everyone. On
the contrary, this position strikes me as superficial and naïve. That
said, the political function of privacy -- to safeguard a degree of
personal autonomy from powerful institutions -- is based on fundamental
concepts that, in light of the developments to be described below,
urgently need to be updated. This is a task, however, that would take me
far beyond the scope of the present
book.[^6^](#f6-note-0006){#f6-note-0006a}

Before moving on to the first chapter, I should first briefly explain my
somewhat unorthodox understanding of the central concepts in the title
of the book -- "condition" and "digital." In what follows, the term
"condition" will be used to designate a cultural condition whereby the
processes of social meaning -- that is, the normative dimension of
existence -- are explicitly or implicitly negotiated and realized by
means of singular and collective activity. Meaning, however, does not
manifest itself in signs and symbols alone; rather, the practices that
engender it and are inspired by it are consolidated into artifacts,
institutions, and lifeworlds. In other words, far from being a symbolic
accessory or mere overlay, culture in fact directs our actions and gives
shape to society. By means of materialization and repetition, meaning --
both as claim and as reality -- is made visible, productive, and
negotiable. People are free to accept it, reject it, or ignore
[]{#Page_7 type="pagebreak" title="7"}it altogether. Social meaning --
that is, meaning shared by multiple people -- can only come about
through processes of exchange within larger or smaller formations.
Production and reception (to the extent that it makes any sense to
distinguish between the two) do not proceed linearly here, but rather
loop back and reciprocally influence one another. In such processes, the
participants themselves determine, in a more or less binding manner, how
they stand in relation to themselves, to each other, and to the world,
and they determine the frame of reference in which their activity is
oriented. Accordingly, culture is not something static or something that
is possessed by a person or a group, but rather a field of dispute that
is subject to the activities of multiple ongoing changes, each happening
at its own pace. It is characterized by processes of dissolution and
constitution that may be collaborative, oppositional, or simply
operating side by side. The field of culture is pervaded by competing
claims to power and mechanisms for exerting it. This leads to conflicts
about which frames of reference should be adopted for different fields
and within different social groups. In such conflicts,
self-determination and external determination interact until a point is
reached at which both sides are mutually constituted. This, in turn,
changes the conditions that give rise to shared meaning and personal
identity.

In what follows, this broadly post-structuralist perspective will inform
my discussion of the causes and formational conditions of cultural
orders and their practices. Culture will be conceived throughout as
something heterogeneous and hybrid. It draws from many sources; it is
motivated by the widest possible variety of desires, intentions, and
compulsions; and it mobilizes whatever resources might be necessary for
the constitution of meaning. This emphasis on the materiality of culture
is also reflected in the concept of the digital. Media are relational
technologies, which means that they facilitate certain types of
connection between humans and
objects.[^7^](#f6-note-0007){#f6-note-0007a} "Digital" thus denotes the
set of relations that, on the infrastructural basis of digital networks,
is realized today in the production, use, and transform­ation of
material and immaterial goods, and in the constitution and coordination
of personal and collective activity. In this regard, the focus is less
on the dominance of a certain class []{#Page_8 type="pagebreak"
title="8"}of technological artifacts -- the computer, for instance --
and even less on distinguishing between "digital" and "analog,"
"material" and "immaterial." Even in the digital condition, the analog
has not gone away. Rather, it has been re-evaluated and even partially
upgraded. The immaterial, moreover, is never entirely without
materiality. On the contrary, the fleeting impulses of digital
communication depend on global and unmistakably material infrastructures
that extend from mines beneath the surface of the earth, from which rare
earth metals are extracted, all the way into outer space, where
satellites are circling around above us. Such things may be ignored
because they are outside the experience of everyday life, but that does
not mean that they have disappeared or that they are of any less
significance. "Digital" thus refers to historically new possibilities
for constituting and connecting various human and non-human actors,
which is not limited to digital media but rather appears everywhere as a
relational paradigm that alters the realm of possibility for numerous
materials and actors. My understanding of the digital thus approximates
the concept of the "post-digital," which has been gaining currency over
the past few years within critical media cultures. Here, too, the
distinction between "new" and "old" media and all of the ideological
baggage associated with it -- for instance, that the new represents the
future while the old represents the past -- have been rejected. The
aesthetic projects that continue to define the image of the "digital" --
immateriality, perfection, and virtuality -- have likewise been
discarded.[^8^](#f6-note-0008){#f6-note-0008a} Above all, the
"post-digital" is a critical response to this techno-utopian aesthetic
and its attendant economic and political perspectives. According to the
cultural theorist Florian Cramer, the concept accommodates the fact that
"new ethical and cultural conventions which became mainstream with
internet communities and open-source culture are being retroactively
applied to the making of non-digital and post-digital media
products."[^9^](#f6-note-0009){#f6-note-0009a} He thus cites the trend
that process-based practices oriented toward open interaction, which
first developed within digital media, have since begun to appear in more
and more contexts and in an increasing number of
materials.[^10[]{#Page_9 type="pagebreak"
title="9"}^](#f6-note-0010){#f6-note-0010a}

For the historical, cultural-theoretical, and political perspectives
developed in this book, however, the concept of the post-digital is
somewhat problematic, for it requires the narrow context of media art
and its fixation on technology in order to become a viable
counter-position. Without this context, certain misunderstandings are
impossible to avoid. The prefix "post-," for instance, is often
interpreted in the sense that something is over or that we have at least
grasped the matters at hand and can thus turn to something new. The
opposite is true. The most enduringly relevant developments are only now
beginning to adopt a specific form, long after digital infrastructures
and the practices made popular by them have become part of our everyday
lives. Or, as the communication theorist and consultant Clay Shirky puts
it, "Communication tools don\'t get socially interesting until they get
technologically boring."[^11^](#f6-note-0011){#f6-note-0011a} For it is
only today, now that our fascination for this technology has waned and
its promises sound hollow, that culture and society are being defined by
the digital condition in a comprehensive sense. Before, this was the
case in just a few limited spheres. It is this hybridization and
solidification of the digital -- the presence of the digital beyond
digital media -- that lends the digital condition its dominance. As to
the concrete realities in which these things will materialize, this is
currently being decided in an open and ongoing process. The aim of this
book is to contribute to our understanding of this process.[]{#Page_10
type="pagebreak" title="10"}
:::

::: {.section .notesSet type="rearnotes"}
[]{#notesSet}Notes {#f6-ntgp-9999}
------------------

::: {.section .notesList}
[1](#f6-note-0001a){#f6-note-0001}  Dan Biddle, "Five Million Tweets for
\#Eurovision 2014," *Twitter UK* (May 11, 2014), online.

[2](#f6-note-0002a){#f6-note-0002}  Ministerium für Kultus, Jugend und
Sport -- Baden-Württemberg, "Bildungsplanreform 2015/2016 -- Verankerung
von Leitprinzipien," online \[--trans.\].

[3](#f6-note-0003a){#f6-note-0003}  As early as 1995, Wolfgang Coy
suggested that McLuhan\'s metaphor should be supplanted by the concept
of the "Turing Galaxy," but this never caught on. See his introduction
to the German edition of *The Gutenberg Galaxy*: "Von der Gutenbergschen
zur Turingschen Galaxis: Jenseits von Buchdruck und Fernsehen," in
Marshall McLuhan, *Die Gutenberg Galaxis: Das Ende des Buchzeitalters*,
(Cologne: Addison-Wesley, 1995), pp. vii--xviii.[]{#Page_176
type="pagebreak" title="176"}

[4](#f6-note-0004a){#f6-note-0004}  According to the analysis of the
Spanish sociologist Manuel Castells, this crisis began almost
simultaneously in highly developed capitalist and socialist societies,
and it did so for the same reason: the paradigm of "industrialism" had
reached the limits of its productivity. Unlike the capitalist societies,
which were flexible enough to tame the crisis and reorient their
economies, the socialism of the 1970s and 1980s experienced stagnation
until it ultimately, in a belated effort to reform, collapsed. See
Manuel Castells, *End of Millennium*, 2nd edn (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell,
2010), pp. 5--68.

[5](#f6-note-0005a){#f6-note-0005}  Felix Stalder, *Der Autor am Ende
der Gutenberg Galaxis* (Zurich: Buch & Netz, 2014).

[6](#f6-note-0006a){#f6-note-0006}  For my preliminary thoughts on this
topic, see Felix Stalder, "Autonomy and Control in the Era of
Post-Privacy," *Open: Cahier on Art and the Public Domain* 19 (2010):
78--86; and idem, "Privacy Is Not the Antidote to Surveillance,"
*Surveillance & Society* 1 (2002): 120--4. For a discussion of these
approaches, see the working paper by Maja van der Velden, "Personal
Autonomy in a Post-Privacy World: A Feminist Technoscience Perspective"
(2011), online.

[7](#f6-note-0007a){#f6-note-0007}  Accordingly, the "new social" media
are mass media in the sense that they influence broadly disseminated
patterns of social relations and thus shape society as much as the
traditional mass media had done before them.

[8](#f6-note-0008a){#f6-note-0008}  Kim Cascone, "The Aesthetics of
Failure: 'Post-Digital' Tendencies in Contemporary Computer Music,"
*Computer Music Journal* 24/2 (2000): 12--18.

[9](#f6-note-0009a){#f6-note-0009}  Florian Cramer, "What Is
'Post-Digital'?" *Post-Digital Research* 3 (2014), online.

[10](#f6-note-0010a){#f6-note-0010}  In the field of visual arts,
similar considerations have been made regarding "post-internet art." See
Artie Vierkant, "The Image Object Post-Internet,"
[jstchillin.org](http://jstchillin.org) (December 2010), online; and Ian
Wallace, "What Is Post-Internet Art? Understanding the Revolutionary New
Art Movement," *Artspace* (March 18, 2014), online.

[11](#f6-note-0011a){#f6-note-0011}  Clay Shirky, *Here Comes Everybody:
The Power of Organizing without Organizations* (New York: Penguin,
2008), p. 105.
:::
:::

[I]{.chapterNumber} [Evolution]{.chapterTitle} {#c1}

=

::: {.section}
Many authors have interpreted the new cultural realities that
characterize our daily lives as a direct consequence of technological
developments: the internet is to blame! This assumption is not only
empirically untenable; it also leads to a problematic assessment of the
current situation. Apparatuses are represented as "central actors," and
this suggests that new technologies have suddenly revolutionized a
situation that had previously been stable. Depending on one\'s point of
view, this is then regarded as "a blessing or a
curse."[^1^](#c1-note-0001){#c1-note-0001a} A closer examination,
however, reveals an entirely different picture. Established cultural
practices and social institutions had already been witnessing the
erosion of their self-evident justification and legitimacy, long before
they were faced with new technologies and the corresponding demands
these make on individuals. Moreover, the allegedly new types of
coordination and cooperation are also not so new after all. Many of them
have existed for a long time. At first most of them were totally
separate from the technologies for which, later on, they would become
relevant. It is only in retrospect that these developments can be
identified as beginnings, and it can be seen that much of what we regard
today as novel or revolutionary was in fact introduced at the margins of
society, in cultural niches that were unnoticed by the dominant actors
and institutions. The new technologies thus evolved against a
[]{#Page_11 type="pagebreak" title="11"}background of processes of
societal transformation that were already under way. They could only
have been developed once a vision of their potential had been
formulated, and they could only have been disseminated where demand for
them already existed. This demand was created by social, political, and
economic crises, which were themselves initiated by changes that were
already under way. The new technologies seemed to provide many differing
and promising answers to the urgent questions that these crises had
prompted. It was thus a combination of positive vision and pressure that
motivated a great variety of actors to change, at times with
considerable effort, the established processes, mature institutions, and
their own behavior. They intended to appropriate, for their own
projects, the various and partly contradictory possibilities that they
saw in these new technologies. Only then did a new technological
infrastructure arise.

This, in turn, created the preconditions for previously independent
developments to come together, strengthening one another and enabling
them to spread beyond the contexts in which they had originated. Thus,
they moved from the margins to the center of culture. And by
intensifying the crisis of previously established cultural forms and
institutions, they became dominant and established new forms and
institutions of their own.
:::

::: {.section}
The Expansion of the Social Basis of Culture {#c1-sec-0002}
--------------------------------------------

Watching television discussions from the 1950s and 1960s today, one is
struck not only by the billows of cigarette smoke in the studio but also
by the homogeneous spectrum of participants. Usually, it was a group of
white and heteronormatively behaving men speaking with one
another,[^2^](#c1-note-0002){#c1-note-0002a} as these were the people
who held the important institutional positions in the centers of the
West. As a rule, those involved were highly specialized representatives
from the cultural, economic, scientific, and political spheres. Above
all, they were legitimized to appear in public to articulate their
opinions, which were to be regarded by others as relevant and worthy of
discussion. They presided over the important debates of their time. With
few exceptions, other actors and their deviant opinions -- there
[]{#Page_12 type="pagebreak" title="12"}has never been a time without
them -- were either not taken seriously at all or were categorized as
indecent, incompetent, perverse, irrelevant, backward, exotic, or
idiosyncratic.[^3^](#c1-note-0003){#c1-note-0003a} Even at that time,
the social basis of culture was beginning to expand, though the actors
at the center of the discourse had failed to notice this. Communicative
and cultural pro­cesses were gaining significance in more and more
places, and excluded social groups were self-consciously developing
their own language in order to intervene in the discourse. The rise of
the knowledge economy, the increasingly loud critique of
heteronormativity, and a fundamental cultural critique posed by
post-colonialism enabled a greater number of people to participate in
public discussions. In what follows, I will subject each of these three
phenomena to closer examin­ation. In order to do justice to their
complexity, I will treat them on different levels: I will depict the
rise of the knowledge economy as a structural change in labor; I will
reconstruct the critique of heteronormativity by outlining the origins
and transformations of the gay movement in West Germany; and I will
discuss post-colonialism as a theory that introduced new concepts of
cultural multiplicity and hybridization -- concepts that are now
influencing the digital condition far beyond the limits of the
post-colonial discourse, and often without any reference to this
discourse at all.

::: {.section}
### The growth of the knowledge economy {#c1-sec-0003}

At the beginning of the 1950s, the Austrian-American economist Fritz
Machlup was immersed in his study of the polit­ical economy of
monopoly.[^4^](#c1-note-0004){#c1-note-0004a} Among other things, he was
concerned with patents and copyright law. In line with the neo-classical
Austrian School, he considered both to be problematic (because
state-created) monopolies.[^5^](#c1-note-0005){#c1-note-0005a} The
longer he studied the monopoly of the patent system in particular, the
more far-reaching its consequences seemed to him. He maintained that the
patent system was intertwined with something that might be called the
"economy of invention" -- ultimately, patentable insights had to be
produced in the first place -- and that this was in turn part of a much
larger economy of knowledge. The latter encompassed government agencies
as well as institutions of education, research, and development
[]{#Page_13 type="pagebreak" title="13"}(that is, schools, universities,
and certain corporate laboratories), which had been increasing steadily
in number since Roosevelt\'s New Deal. Yet it also included the
expanding media sector and those industries that were responsible for
providing technical infrastructure. Machlup subsumed all of these
institutions and sectors under the concept of the "knowledge economy," a
term of his own invention. Their common feature was that essential
aspects of their activities consisted in communicating things to other
people ("telling anyone anything," as he put it). Thus, the employees
were not only recipients of information or instructions; rather, in one
way or another, they themselves communicated, be it merely as a
secretary who typed up, edited, and forwarded a piece of shorthand
dictation. In his book *The Production and Distribution of Knowledge in
the United States*, published in 1962, Machlup gathered empirical
material to demonstrate that the American economy had entered a new
phase that was distinguished by the production, exchange, and
application of abstract, codified
knowledge.[^6^](#c1-note-0006){#c1-note-0006a} This opinion was no
longer entirely novel at the time, but it had never before been
presented in such an empirically detailed and comprehensive
manner.[^7^](#c1-note-0007){#c1-note-0007a} The extent of the knowledge
economy surprised Machlup himself: in his book, he concluded that as
much as 43 percent of all labor activity was already engaged in this
sector. This high number came about because, until then, no one had put
forward the idea of understanding such a variety of activities as a
single unit.

Machlup\'s categorization was indeed quite innovative, for the dynamics
that propelled the sectors that he associated with one another not only
were very different but also had originated as an integral component in
the development of the industrial production of goods. They were more of
an extension of such production than a break with it. The production and
circulation of goods had been expanding and accelerating as early as the
nineteenth century, though at highly divergent rates from one region or
sector to another. New markets were created in order to distribute goods
that were being produced in greater numbers; new infrastructure for
transportation and communication was established in order to serve these
large markets, which were mostly in the form of national territories
(including their colonies). This []{#Page_14 type="pagebreak"
title="14"}enabled even larger factories to be built in order to
exploit, to an even greater extent, the cost advantages of mass
production. In order to control these complex processes, new professions
arose with different types of competencies and working conditions. The
office became a workplace for an increasing number of people -- men and
women alike -- who, in one form or another, had something to do with
information processing and communication. Yet all of this required not
only new management techniques. Production and products also became more
complex, so that entire corporate sectors had to be restructured.
Whereas the first decisive inventions of the industrial era were still
made by more or less educated tinkerers, during the last third of the
nineteenth century, invention itself came to be institutionalized. In
Germany, Siemens (founded in 1847 as the Telegraphen-Bauanstalt von
Siemens & Halske) exemplifies this transformation. Within 50 years, a
company that began in a proverbial workshop in a Berlin backyard became
a multinational high-tech corporation. It was in such corporate
laboratories, which were established around the year 1900, that the
"industrialization of invention" or the "scientification of industrial
production" took place.[^8^](#c1-note-0008){#c1-note-0008a} In other
words, even the processes employed in factories and the goods that they
produced became knowledge-intensive. Their invention, planning, and
production required a steadily growing expansion of activities, which
today we would refer to as research and development. The informatization
of the economy -- the acceleration of mass production, the comprehensive
application of scientific methods to the organization of labor, and the
central role of research and development in industry -- was hastened
enormously by a world war that was waged on an industrial scale to an
extent that had never been seen before.

Another important factor for the increasing significance of the
knowledge economy was the development of the consumer society. Over the
course of the last third of the nineteenth century, despite dramatic
regional and social disparities, an increasing number of people profited
from the economic growth that the Industrial Revolution had instigated.
Wages increased and basic needs were largely met, so that a new social
stratum arose, the middle class, which was able to spend part of its
income on other things. But on what? First, []{#Page_15 type="pagebreak"
title="15"}new needs had to be created. The more production capacities
increased, the more they had to be rethought in terms of consumption.
Thus, in yet another way, the economy became more knowledge-intensive.
It was now necessary to become familiar with, understand, and stimulate
the interests and preferences of consumers, in order to entice them to
purchase products that they did not urgently need. This knowledge did
little to enhance the material or logistical complexity of goods or
their production; rather, it was reflected in the increasingly extensive
communication about and through these goods. The beginnings of this
development were captured by Émile Zola in his 1883 novel *The Ladies\'
Paradise*, which was set in the new world of a semi-fictitious
department store bearing that name. In its opening scene, the young
protagonist Denise Baudu and her brother Jean, both of whom have just
moved to Paris from a provincial town, encounter for the first time the
artfully arranged women\'s clothing -- exhibited with all sorts of
tricks involving lighting, mirrors, and mannequins -- in the window
displays of the store. The sensuality of the staged goods is so
overwhelming that both of them are not only struck dumb, but Jean even

blushes.

It was the economy of affects that brought blood to Jean\'s cheeks. At
that time, strategies for attracting the attention of customers did not
yet have a scientific and systematic basis. Just as the first inventions
in the age of industrialization were made by amateurs, so too was the
economy of affects developed intuitively and gradually rather than as a
planned or conscious paradigm shift. That it was possible to induce and
direct affects by means of targeted communication was the pioneering
discovery of the Austrian-American Edward Bernays. During the 1920s, he
combined the ideas of his uncle Sigmund Freud about unconscious
motivations with the sociological research methods of opinion surveys to
form a new discipline: market
research.[^9^](#c1-note-0009){#c1-note-0009a} It became the scientific
basis of a new field of activity, which he at first called "propa­ganda"
but then later referred to as "public
relations."[^10^](#c1-note-0010){#c1-note-0010a} Public communication,
be it for economic or political ends, was now placed on a systematic
foundation that came to distance itself more and more from the pure
"conveyance of information." Communication became a strategic field for
corporate and political disputes, and the mass media []{#Page_16
type="pagebreak" title="16"}became their locus of negotiation. Between
1880 and 1917, for instance, commercial advertising costs in the United
States increased by more than 800 percent, and the leading advertising
firms, using the same techniques with which they attracted consumers to
products, were successful in selling to the American public the idea of
their nation entering World War I. Thus, a media industry in the modern
sense was born, and it expanded along with the rapidly growing market
for advertising.[^11^](#c1-note-0011){#c1-note-0011a}

In his studies of labor markets conducted at the beginning of the 1960s,
Machlup brought these previously separ­ate developments together and
thus explained the existence of an already advanced knowledge economy in
the United States. His arguments fell on extremely fertile soil, for an
intellectual transformation had taken place in other areas of science as
well. A few years earlier, for instance, cybernetics had given the
concepts "information" and "communication" their first scientifically
precise (if somewhat idiosyncratic) definitions and had assigned to them
a position of central importance in all scientific disciplines, not to
mention life in general.[^12^](#c1-note-0012){#c1-note-0012a} Machlup\'s
investigation seemed to confirm this in the case of the economy, given
that the knowledge economy was primarily concerned with information and
communication. Since then, numerous analyses, formulas, and slogans have
repeated, modified, refined, and criticized the idea that the
knowledge-based activities of the economy have become increasingly
important. In the 1970s this discussion was associated above all with
the notion of the "post-industrial
society,"[^13^](#c1-note-0013){#c1-note-0013a} in the 1980s the guiding
idea was the "information society,"[^14^](#c1-note-0014){#c1-note-0014a}
and in the 1990s the debate revolved around the "network
society"[^15^](#c1-note-0015){#c1-note-0015a} -- to name just the most
popular concepts. What these approaches have in common is that they each
diagnose a comprehensive societal transformation that, as regards the
creation of economic value or jobs, has shifted the balance from
productive to communicative activ­ities. Accordingly, they presuppose
that we know how to distinguish the former from the latter. This is not
unproblematic, however, because in practice the two are usually tightly
intertwined. Moreover, whoever maintains that communicative activities
have taken the place of industrial production in our society has adopted
a very narrow point of []{#Page_17 type="pagebreak" title="17"}view.
Factory jobs have not simply disappeared; they have just been partially
relocated outside of Western economies. The assertion that communicative
activities are somehow of "greater value" hardly chimes with the reality
of today\'s new "service jobs," many of which pay no more than the
minimum wage.[^16^](#c1-note-0016){#c1-note-0016a} Critiques of this
sort, however, have done little to reduce the effectiveness of this
analysis -- especially its political effectiveness -- for it does more
than simply describe a condition. It also contains a set of political
instructions that imply or directly demand that precisely those sectors
should be promoted that it considers economically promising, and that
society should be reorganized accordingly. Since the 1970s, there has
thus been a feedback loop between scientific analysis and political
agendas. More often than not, it is hardly possible to distinguish
between the two. Especially in Britain and the United States, the
economic transformation of the 1980s was imposed insistently and with
political calculation (the weakening of labor unions).

There are, however, important differences between the developments of
the so-called "post-industrial society" of the 1970s and those of the
so-called "network society" of the 1990s, even if both terms are
supposed to stress the increased significance of information, knowledge,
and communication. With regard to the digital condition, the most
important of these differences are the greater flexibility of economic
activity in general and employment relations in particular, as well as
the dismantling of social security systems. Neither phenomenon played
much of a role in analyses of the early 1970s. The development since
then can be traced back to two currents that could not seem more
different from one another. At first, flexibility was demanded in the
name of a critique of the value system imposed by bureaucratic-bourgeois
society (including the traditional organization of the workforce). It
originated in the new social movements that had formed in the late
1960s. Later on, toward the end of the 1970s, it then became one of the
central points of the neoliberal critique of the welfare state. With
completely different motives, both sides sang the praises of autonomy
and spontaneity while rejecting the disciplinary nature of hierarchical
organization. They demanded individuality and diversity rather than
conformity to prescribed roles. Experimentation, openness to []{#Page_18
type="pagebreak" title="18"}new ideas, flexibility, and change were now
established as fundamental values with positive connotations. Both
movements operated with the attractive idea of personal freedom. The new
social movements understood this in a social sense as the freedom of
personal development and coexistence, whereas neoliberals understood it
in an economic sense as the freedom of the market. In the 1980s, the
neoliberal ideas prevailed in large part because some of the values,
strategies, and methods propagated by the new social movements were
removed from their political context and appropriated in order to
breathe new life -- a "new spirit" -- into capitalism and thus to rescue
industrial society from its crisis.[^17^](#c1-note-0017){#c1-note-0017a}
An army of management consultants, restructuring experts, and new
companies began to promote flat hierarchies, self-responsibility, and
innovation; with these aims in mind, they set about reorganizing large
corporations into small and flexible units. Labor and leisure were no
longer supposed to be separated, for all aspects of a given person could
be integrated into his or her work. In order to achieve economic success
in this new capitalism, it became necessary for every individual to
identify himself or herself with his or her profession. Large
corporations were restructured in such a way that entire departments
found themselves transformed into independent "profit centers." This
happened in the name of creating more leeway for decision-making and of
optimizing the entrepreneurial spirit on all levels, the goals being to
increase value creation and to provide management with more fine-grained
powers of intervention. These measures, in turn, created the need for
computers and the need for them to be networked. Large corporations
reacted in this way to the emergence of highly specialized small
companies which, by networking and cooperating with other firms,
succeeded in quickly and flexibly exploiting niches in the expanding
global markets. In the management literature of the 1980s, the
catchphrases for this were "company networks" and "flexible
specialization."[^18^](#c1-note-0018){#c1-note-0018a} By the middle of
the 1990s, the sociologist Manuel Castells was able to conclude that the
actual productive entity was no longer the individual company but rather
the network consisting of companies and corporate divisions of various
sizes. In Castells\'s estimation, the decisive advantage of the network
is its ability to customize its elements and their configuration
[]{#Page_19 type="pagebreak" title="19"}to suit the rapidly changing
requirements of the "project" at
hand.[^19^](#c1-note-0019){#c1-note-0019a} Aside from a few exceptions,
companies in their trad­itional forms came to function above all as
strategic control centers and as economic and legal units.

This economic structural transformation was already well under way when
the internet emerged as a mass medium around the turn of the millennium.
As a consequence, change became more radical and penetrated into an
increasing number of areas of value creation. The political agenda
oriented itself toward the vision of "creative industries," a concept
developed in 1997 by the newly elected British government under Tony
Blair. A Creative Industries Task Force was established right away, and
its first step was to identify "those activities which have their
origins in individual creativity, skill and talent and which have the
potential for wealth and job creation through the generation and
exploit­ation of intellectual
property."[^20^](#c1-note-0020){#c1-note-0020a} Like Fritz Machlup at
the beginning of the 1960s, the task force brought together existing
areas of activity into a new category. Such activities included
advertising, computer games, architecture, music, arts and antique
markets, publishing, design, software and computer services, fashion,
television and radio, and film and video. The latter were elevated to
matters of political importance on account of their potential to create
wealth and jobs. Not least because of this clever presentation of
categories -- no distinction was made between the BBC, an almighty
public-service provider, and fledgling companies in precarious
circumstances -- it was possible to proclaim not only that the creative
industries were contributing a relevant portion of the nation\'s
economic output, but also that this sector was growing at an especially
fast rate. It was reported that, in London, the creative industries were
already responsible for one out of every five new jobs. When compared
with traditional terms of employment as regards income, benefits, and
prospects for advancement, however, many of these positions entailed a
considerable downgrade for the employees in question (who were now
treated as independent contractors). This fact was either ignored or
explicitly interpreted as a sign of the sector\'s particular
dynamism.[^21^](#c1-note-0021){#c1-note-0021a} Around the turn of the
new millennium, the idea that individual creativity plays a central role
in the economy was given further traction by []{#Page_20
type="pagebreak" title="20"}the sociologist and consultant Richard
Florida, who argued that creativity was essential to the future of
cities and even announced the rise of the "creative class." As to the
preconditions that have to be met in order to tap into this source of
wealth, he devised a simple formula that would be easy for municipal
bureaucrats to understand: "technology, tolerance and talent." Talent,
as defined by Florida, is based on individual creativity and education
and manifests itself in the ability to generate new jobs. He was thus
able to declare talent a central element of economic
growth.[^22^](#c1-note-0022){#c1-note-0022a} In order to "unleash" these
resources, what we need in addition to technology is, above all,
tolerance; that is, "an open culture -- one that does not discriminate,
does not force people into boxes, allows us to be ourselves, and
validates various forms of family and of human
identity."[^23^](#c1-note-0023){#c1-note-0023a}

The idea that a public welfare state should ensure the social security
of individuals was considered obsolete. Collective institutions, which
could have provided a degree of stability for people\'s lifestyles, were
dismissed or regarded as bureaucratic obstacles. The more or less
directly evoked role model for all of this was the individual artist,
who was understood as an individual entrepreneur, a sort of genius
suitable for the masses. For Florida, a central problem was that,
according to his own calculations, only about a third of the people
living in North American and European cities were working in the
"creative sector," while the innate creativity of everyone else was
going to waste. Even today, the term "creative industry," along with the
assumption that the internet will provide increased opportunities,
serves to legitimize the effort to restructure all areas of the economy
according to the needs of the knowledge economy and to privilege the
network over the institution. In times of social cutbacks and empty
public purses, especially in municipalities, this message was warmly
received. One mayor, who as the first openly gay top politician in
Germany exemplified tolerance for diverse lifestyles, even adopted the
slogan "poor but sexy" for his city. Everyone was supposed to exploit
his or her own creativity to discover new niches and opportunities for
monet­ization -- a magic formula that was supposed to bring about a new
urban revival. Today there is hardly a city in Europe that does not
issue a report about its creative economy, []{#Page_21 type="pagebreak"
title="21"}and nearly all of these reports cite, directly or indirectly,
Richard Florida.

As already seen in the context of the knowledge economy, so too in the
case of creative industries do measurable social change, wishful
thinking, and political agendas blend together in such a way that it is
impossible to identify a single cause for the developments taking place.
The consequences, however, are significant. Over the last two
generations, the demands of the labor market have fundamentally changed.
Higher education and the ability to acquire new knowledge independently
are now, to an increasing extent, required and expected as
qualifications and personal attributes. The desired or enforced ability
to be flexible at work, the widespread cooperation across institutions,
the uprooted nature of labor, and the erosion of collective models for
social security have displaced many activities, which once took place
within clearly defined institutional or personal limits, into a new
interstitial space that is neither private nor public in the classical
sense. This is the space of networks, communities, and informal
cooperation -- the space of sharing and exchange that has since been
enabled by the emergence of ubiquitous digital communication. It allows
an increasing number of people, whether willingly or otherwise, to
envision themselves as active producers of information, knowledge,
capability, and meaning. And because it is associated in various ways
with the space of market-based exchange and with the bourgeois political
sphere, it has lasting effects on both. This interstitial space becomes
all the more important as fewer people are willing or able to rely on
traditional institutions for their economic security. For, within it,
personal and digital-based networks can and must be developed as
alternatives, regardless of whether they prove sustainable for the long
term. As a result, more and more actors, each with their own claims to
meaning, have been rushing away from the private personal sphere into
this new interstitial space. By now, this has become such a normal
practice that whoever is *not* active in this ever-expanding
interstitial space, which is rapidly becoming the main social sphere --
whoever, that is, lacks a publicly visible profile on social mass media
like Facebook, or does not number among those producing information and
meaning and is thus so inconspicuous online as []{#Page_22
type="pagebreak" title="22"}to yield no search results -- now stands out
in a negative light (or, in far fewer cases, acquires a certain prestige
on account of this very absence).
:::

::: {.section}
### The erosion of heteronormativity {#c1-sec-0004}

In this (sometimes more, sometimes less) public space for the continuous
production of social meaning (and its exploit­ation), there is no
question that the professional middle class is
over-represented.[^24^](#c1-note-0024){#c1-note-0024a} It would be
short-sighted, however, to reduce those seeking autonomy and the
recognition of individuality and social diversity to the role of poster
children for the new spirit of
capitalism.[^25^](#c1-note-0025){#c1-note-0025a} The new social
movements, for instance, initiated a social shift that has allowed an
increasing number of people to demand, if nothing else, the right to
participate in social life in a self-determined manner; that is,
according to their own standards and values.

Especially effective was the critique of patriarchal and heteronormative
power relations, modes of conduct, and
identities.[^26^](#c1-note-0026){#c1-note-0026a} In the context of the
political upheavals at the end of the 1960s, the new women\'s and gay
movements developed into influential actors. Their greatest achievement
was to establish alternative cultural forms, lifestyles, and strategies
of action in or around the mainstream of society. How this was done can
be demonstrated by tracing, for example, the development of the gay
movement in West Germany.

In the fall of 1969, the liberalization of Paragraph 175 of the German
Criminal Code came into effect. From then on, sexual activity between
adult men was no longer punishable by law (women were not mentioned in
this context). For the first time, a man could now express himself as a
homosexual outside of semi-private space without immediately being
exposed to the risk of criminal prosecution. This was a necessary
precondition for the ability to defend one\'s own rights. As early as
1971, the struggle for the recognition of gay life experiences reached
the broader public when Rosa von Praunheim\'s film *It Is Not the
Homosexual Who Is Perverse, but the Society in Which He Lives* was
screened at the Berlin International Film Festival and then, shortly
thereafter, broadcast on public television in North Rhine-Westphalia.
The film, which is firmly situated in the agitprop tradition,
[]{#Page_23 type="pagebreak" title="23"}follows a young provincial man
through the various milieus of Berlin\'s gay subcultures: from a
monogamous relationship to nightclubs and public bathrooms until, at the
end, he is enlightened by a political group of men who explain that it
is not possible to lead a free life in a niche, as his own emancipation
can only be achieved by a transformation of society as a whole. The film
closes with a not-so-subtle call to action: "Out of the closets, into
the streets!" Von Praunheim understood this emancipation to be a process
that encompassed all areas of life and had to be carried out in public;
it could only achieve success, moreover, in solidarity with other
freedom movements such as the Black Panthers in the United States and
the new women\'s movement. The goal, according to this film, is to
articulate one\'s own identity as a specific and differentiated identity
with its own experiences, values, and reference systems, and to anchor
this identity within a society that not only tolerates it but also
recognizes it as having equal validity.

At first, however, the film triggered vehement controversies, even
within the gay scene. The objection was that it attacked the gay
subculture, which was not yet prepared to defend itself publicly against
discrimination. Despite or (more likely) because of these controversies,
more than 50 groups of gay activists soon formed in Germany. Such
groups, largely composed of left-wing alternative students, included,
for instance, the Homosexuelle Aktion Westberlin (HAW) and the Rote
Zelle Schwul (RotZSchwul) in Frankfurt am
Main.[^27^](#c1-note-0027){#c1-note-0027a} One focus of their activities
was to have Paragraph 175 struck entirely from the legal code (which was
not achieved until 1994). This cause was framed within a general
struggle to overcome patriarchy and capitalism. At the earliest gay
demonstrations in Germany, which took place in Münster in April 1972,
protesters rallied behind the following slogan: "Brothers and sisters,
gay or not, it is our duty to fight capitalism." This was understood as
a necessary subordination to the greater struggle against what was known
in the terminology of left-wing radical groups as the "main
contradiction" of capitalism (that between capital and labor), and it
led to strident differences within the gay movement. The dispute
escalated during the next year. After the so-called *Tuntenstreit*, or
"Battle of the Queens," which was []{#Page_24 type="pagebreak"
title="24"}initiated by activists from Italy and France who had appeared
in drag at the closing ceremony of the HAW\'s Spring Meeting in West
Berlin, the gay movement was divided, or at least moving in a new
direction. At the heart of the matter were the following questions: "Is
there an inherent (many speak of an autonomous) position that gays hold
with respect to the issue of homosexuality? Or can a position on
homosexuality only be derived in association with the traditional
workers\' movement?"[^28^](#c1-note-0028){#c1-note-0028a} In other
words, was discrimination against homosexuality part of the social
divide caused by capitalism (that is, one of its "ancillary
contradictions") and thus only to be overcome by overcoming capitalism
itself, or was it something unrelated to the "essence" of capitalism, an
independent conflict requiring different strategies and methods? This
conflict could never be fully resolved, but the second position, which
was more interested in overcoming legal, social, and cultural
discrimination than in struggling against economic exploitation, and
which focused specifically on the social liberation of gays, proved to
be far more dynamic in the long term. This was not least because both
the old and new left were themselves not free of homophobia and because
the entire radical student movement of the 1970s fell into crisis.

Over the course of the 1970s and 1980s, "aesthetic self-empowerment" was
realized through the efforts of artistic and (increasingly) commercial
producers of images, texts, and
sounds.[^29^](#c1-note-0029){#c1-note-0029a} Activists, artists, and
intellectuals developed a language with which they could speak
assertively in public about topics that had previously been taboo.
Inspired by the expression "gay pride," which originated in the United
States, they began to use the term *schwul* ("gay"), which until then
had possessed negative connotations, with growing confidence. They
founded numerous gay and lesbian cultural initiatives, theaters,
publishing houses, magazines, bookstores, meeting places, and other
associations in order to counter the misleading or (in their eyes)
outright false representations of the mass media with their own
multifarious media productions. In doing so, they typically followed a
dual strategy: on the one hand, they wanted to create a space for the
members of the movement in which it would be possible to formulate and
live different identities; on the other hand, they were fighting to be
accepted by society at large. While []{#Page_25 type="pagebreak"
title="25"}a broader and broader spectrum of gay positions, experiences,
and aesthetics was becoming visible to the public, the connection to
left-wing radical contexts became weaker. Founded as early as 1974, and
likewise in West Berlin, the General Homosexual Working Group
(Allgemeine Homosexuelle Arbeitsgemeinschaft) sought to integrate gay
politics into mainstream society by defining the latter -- on the basis
of bourgeois, individual rights -- as a "politics of
anti-discrimination." These efforts achieved a milestone in 1980 when,
in the run-up to the parliamentary election, a podium discussion was
held with representatives of all major political parties on the topic of
the law governing sexual offences. The discussion took place in the
Beethovenhalle in Bonn, which was the largest venue for political events
in the former capital. Several participants considered the event to be a
"disaster,"[^30^](#c1-note-0030){#c1-note-0030a} for it revived a number
of internal conflicts (not least that between revolutionary and
integrative positions). Yet the fact remains that representatives were
present from every political party, and this alone was indicative of an
unprecedented amount of public awareness for those demanding equal
rights.

The struggle against discrimination and for social recognition reached
an entirely new level of urgency with the outbreak of HIV/AIDS. In 1983,
the magazine *Der Spiegel* devoted its first cover story to the disease,
thus bringing it to the awareness of the broader public. In the same
year, the non-profit organization Deutsche Aids-Hilfe was founded to
prevent further cases of discrimination, for *Der Spiegel* was not the
only publication at the time to refer to AIDS as a "homosexual
epidemic."[^31^](#c1-note-0031){#c1-note-0031a} The struggle against
HIV/AIDS required a comprehensive mobilization. Funding had to be raised
in order to deal with the social repercussions of the epidemic, to teach
people about safe sexual practices for everyone and to direct research
toward discovering causes and developing potential cures. The immediate
threat that AIDS represented, especially while so little was known about
the illness and its treatment remained a distant hope, created an
impetus for mobilization that led to alliances between the gay movement,
the healthcare system, and public authorities. Thus, the AIDS Inquiry
Committee, sponsored by the conservative Christian Democratic Union,
concluded in 1988 that, in the fight against the illness, "the
homosexual subculture is []{#Page_26 type="pagebreak"
title="26"}especially important. This informal structure should
therefore neither be impeded nor repressed but rather, on the contrary,
recognized and supported."[^32^](#c1-note-0032){#c1-note-0032a} The AIDS
crisis proved to be a catalyst for advancing the integration of gays
into society and for expanding what could be regarded as acceptable
lifestyles, opinions, and cultural practices. As a consequence,
homosexuals began to appear more frequently in the media, though their
presence would never match that of hetero­sexuals. As of 1985, the
television show *Lindenstraße* featured an openly gay protagonist, and
the first kiss between men was aired in 1987. The episode still provoked
a storm of protest -- Bayerische Rundfunk refused to broadcast it a
second time -- but this was already a rearguard action and the
integration of gays (and lesbians) into the social mainstream continued.
In 1993, the first gay and lesbian city festival took place in Berlin,
and the first Rainbow Parade was held in Vienna in 1996. In 2002, the
Cologne Pride Day involved 1.2 million participants and attendees, thus
surpassing for the first time the attendance at the traditional Rose
Monday parade. By the end of the 1990s, the sociologist Rüdiger Lautmann
was already prepared to maintain: "To be homosexual has become
increasingly normalized, even if homophobia lives on in the depths of
the collective disposition."[^33^](#c1-note-0033){#c1-note-0033a} This
normalization was also reflected in a study published by the Ministry of
Justice in the year 2000, which stressed "the similarity between
homosexual and heterosexual relationships" and, on this basis, made an
argument against discrimination.[^34^](#c1-note-0034){#c1-note-0034a}
Around the year 2000, however, the classical gay movement had already
passed its peak. A profound transformation had begun to take place in
the middle of the 1990s. It lost its character as a new social movement
(in the style of the 1970s) and began to splinter inwardly and
outwardly. One could say that it transformed from a mass movement into a
multitude of variously networked communities. The clearest sign of this
transformation is the abbreviation "LGBT" (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and
transgender), which, since the mid-1990s, has represented the internal
heterogeneity of the movement as it has shifted toward becoming a
network.[^35^](#c1-note-0035){#c1-note-0035a} At this point, the more
radical actors were already speaking against the normalization of
homosexuality. Queer theory, for example, was calling into question the
"essentialist" definition of gender []{#Page_27 type="pagebreak"
title="27"}-- that is, any definition reducing it to an immutable
essence -- with respect to both its physical dimension (sex) and its
social and cultural dimension (gender
proper).[^36^](#c1-note-0036){#c1-note-0036a} It thus opened up a space
for the articulation of experiences, self-descriptions, and lifestyles
that, on every level, are located beyond the classical attributions of
men and women. A new generation of intellectuals, activists, and artists
took the stage and developed -- yet again through acts of aesthetic
self-empowerment -- a language that enabled them to import, with
confidence, different self-definitions into the public sphere. An
example of this is the adoption of inclusive plural forms in German
(*Aktivist\_innen* "activists," *Künstler\_innen* "artists"), which draw
attention to the gaps and possibilities between male and female
identities that are also expressed in the language itself. Just as with
the terms "gay" or *schwul* some 30 years before, in this case, too, an
important element was the confident and public adoption and semantic
conversion of a formerly insulting word ("queer") by the very people and
communities against whom it used to be
directed.[^37^](#c1-note-0037){#c1-note-0037a} Likewise observable in
these developments was the simultaneity of social (amateur) and
artistic/scientific (professional) cultural production. The goal,
however, was less to produce a clear antithesis than it was to oppose
rigid attributions by underscoring mutability, hybridity, and
uniqueness. Both the scope of what could be expressed in public and the
circle of potential speakers expanded yet again. And, at least to some
extent, the drag queen Conchita Wurst popularized complex gender
constructions that went beyond the simple woman/man dualism. All of that
said, the assertion by Rüdiger Lautmann quoted above -- "homophobia
lives on in the depths of the collective dis­position" -- continued to
hold true.

If the gay movement is representative of the social liber­ation of the
1970s and 1980s, then it is possible to regard its transformation into
the LGBT movement during the 1990s -- with its multiplicity and fluidity
of identity models and its stress on mutability and hybridity -- as a
sign of the reinvention of this project within the context of an
increasingly dominant digital condition. With this transformation,
however, the diversification and fluidification of cultural practices
and social roles have not yet come to an end. Ways of life that were
initially subcultural and facing existential pressure []{#Page_28
type="pagebreak" title="28"}are gradually entering the mainstream. They
are expanding the range of readily available models of identity for
anyone who might be interested, be it with respect to family forms
(e.g., patchwork families, adoption by same-sex couples), diets (e.g.,
vegetarianism and veganism), healthcare (e.g., anti-vaccination), or
other principles of life and belief. All of them are seeking public
recognition for a new frame of reference for social meaning that has
originated from their own activity. This is necessarily a process
characterized by conflicts and various degrees of resistance, including
right-wing populism that seeks to defend "traditional values," but many
of these movements will ultimately succeed in providing more people with
the opportunity to speak in public, thus broadening the palette of
themes that are considered to be important and legitimate.
:::

::: {.section}
### Beyond center and periphery {#c1-sec-0005}

In order to reach a better understanding of the complexity involved in
the expanding social basis of cultural production, it is necessary to
shift yet again to a different level. For, just as it would be myopic to
examine the multiplication of cultural producers only in terms of
professional knowledge workers from the middle class, it would likewise
be insufficient to situate this multiplication exclusively in the
centers of the West. The entire system of categories that justified the
differentiation between the cultural "center" and the cultural
"periphery" has begun to falter. This complex and multilayered process
has been formulated and analyzed by the theory of "post-colonialism."
Long before digital media made the challenge of cultural multiplicity a
quotidian issue in the West, proponents of this theory had developed
languages and terminologies for negotiating different positions without
needing to impose a hierarchical order.

Since the 1970s, the theoretical current of post-colonialism has been
examining the cultural and epistemic dimensions of colonialism that,
even after its end as a territorial system, have remained responsible
for the continuation of dependent relations and power differentials. For
my purposes -- which are to develop a European perspective on the
factors ensuring that more and more people are able to participate in
cultural []{#Page_29 type="pagebreak" title="29"}production -- two
points are especially relevant because their effects reverberate in
Europe itself. First is the deconstruction of the categories "West" (in
the sense of the center) and "East" (in the sense of the periphery). And
second is the focus on hybridity as a specific way for non-Western
actors to deal with the dominant cultures of former colonial powers,
which have continued to determine significant portions of globalized
culture. The terms "West" and "East," "center" and "periphery," do not
simply describe existing conditions; rather, they are categories that
contribute, in an important way, to the creation of the very conditions
that they presume to describe. This may sound somewhat circular, but it
is precisely from this circularity that such cultural classifications
derive their strength. The world that they illuminate is immersed in
their own light. The category "East" -- or, to use the term of the
literary theorist Edward Said,
"orientalism"[^38^](#c1-note-0038){#c1-note-0038a} -- is a system of
representation that pervades Western thinking. Within this system,
Europe or the West (as the center) and the East (as the periphery)
represent asymmetrical and antithetical concepts. This construction
achieves a dual effect. As a self-description, on the one hand, it
contributes to the formation of our own identity, for Europeans
attrib­ute to themselves and to their continent such features as
"rationality," "order," and "progress," while on the other hand
identifying the alternative with "superstition," "chaos," or
"stagnation." The East, moreover, is used as an exotic projection screen
for our own suppressed desires. According to Said, a representational
system of this sort can only take effect if it becomes "hegemonic"; that
is, if it is perceived as self-evident and no longer as an act of
attribution but rather as one of description, even and precisely by
those against whom the system discriminates. Said\'s accomplishment is
to have worked out how far-reaching this system was and, in many areas,
it remains so today. It extended (and extends) from scientific
disciplines, whose researchers discussed (until the 1980s) the theory of
"oriental despotism,"[^39^](#c1-note-0039){#c1-note-0039a} to literature
and art -- the motif of the harem was especially popular, particularly
in paintings of the late nineteenth
century[^40^](#c1-note-0040){#c1-note-0040a} -- all the way to everyday
culture, where, as of 1913 in the United States, the cigarette brand
Camel (introduced to compete with the then-leading brand, Fatima) was
meant to evoke the []{#Page_30 type="pagebreak" title="30"}mystique and
sensuality of the Orient.[^41^](#c1-note-0041){#c1-note-0041a} This
system of representation, however, was more than a means of describing
oneself and others; it also served to legitimize the allocation of all
knowledge and agency on to one side, that of the West. Such an order was
not restricted to culture; it also created and legitimized a sense of
domination for colonial projects.[^42^](#c1-note-0042){#c1-note-0042a}
This cultural legitimation, as Said points out, also persists after the
end of formal colonial domination and continues to marginalize the
postcolonial subjects. As before, they are unable to speak for
themselves and therefore remain in the dependent periphery, which is
defined by their subordinate position in relation to the center. Said
directed the focus of critique to this arrangement of center and
periphery, which he saw as being (re)produced and legitimized on the
cultural level. From this arose the demand that everyone should have the
right to speak, to place him- or herself in the center. To achieve this,
it was necessary first of all to develop a language -- indeed, a
cultural landscape -- that can manage without a hegemonic center and is
thus oriented toward multiplicity instead of
uniformity.[^43^](#c1-note-0043){#c1-note-0043a}

A somewhat different approach has been taken by the literary theorist
Homi K. Bhabha. He proceeds from the idea that the colonized never fully
passively adopt the culture of the colonialists -- the "English book,"
as he calls it. Their previous culture is never simply wiped out and
replaced by another. What always and necessarily occurs is rather a
process of hybridization. This concept, according to Bhabha,

::: {.extract}
suggests that all of culture is constructed around negotiations and
conflicts. Every cultural practice involves an attempt -- sometimes
good, sometimes bad -- to establish authority. Even classical works of
art, such as a painting by Brueghel or a composition by Beethoven, are
concerned with the establishment of cultural authority. Now, this poses
the following question: How does one function as a negotiator when
one\'s own sense of agency is limited, for instance, on account of being
excluded or oppressed? I think that, even in the role of the underdog,
there are opportunities to upend the imposed cultural authorities -- to
accept some aspects while rejecting others. It is in this way that
symbols of authority are hybridized and made into something of one\'s
own. For me, hybridization is not simply a mixture but rather a
[]{#Page_31 type="pagebreak" title="31"}strategic and selective
appropriation of meanings; it is a way to create space for negotiators
whose freedom and equality are
endangered.[^44^](#c1-note-0044){#c1-note-0044a}
:::

Hybridization is thus a cultural strategy for evading marginality that
is imposed from the outside: subjects, who from the dominant perspective
are incapable of doing so, appropriate certain aspects of culture for
themselves and transform them into something else. What is decisive is
that this hybrid, created by means of active and unauthorized
appropriation, opposes the dominant version and the resulting speech is
thus legitimized from another -- that is, from one\'s own -- position.
In this way, a cultural engagement is set under way and the superiority
of one meaning or another is called into question. Who has the right to
determine how and why a relationship with others should be entered,
which resources should be appropriated from them, and how these
resources should be used? At the heart of the matter lie the abilities
of speech and interpretation; these can be seized in order to create
space for a "cultural hybridity that entertains difference without an
assumed or imposed hierarchy."[^45^](#c1-note-0045){#c1-note-0045a}

At issue is thus a strategy for breaking down hegemonic cultural
conditions, which distribute agency in a highly uneven manner, and for
turning one\'s own cultural production -- which has been dismissed by
cultural authorities as flawed, misconceived, or outright ignorant --
into something negotiable and independently valuable. Bhabha is thus
interested in fissures, differences, diversity, multiplicity, and
processes of negotiation that generate something like shared meaning --
culture, as he defines it -- instead of conceiving of it as something
that precedes these processes and is threatened by them. Accordingly, he
proceeds not from the idea of unity, which is threatened whenever
"others" are empowered to speak and needs to be preserved, but rather
from the irreducible multiplicity that, through laborious processes, can
be brought into temporary and limited consensus. Bhabha\'s vision of
culture is one without immutable authorities, interpretations, and
truths. In theory, everything can be brought to the table. This is not a
situation in which anything goes, yet the central meaning of
negotiation, the contextuality of consensus, and the mutability of every
frame of reference []{#Page_32 type="pagebreak" title="32"}-- none of
which can be shared equally by everyone -- are always potentially
negotiable.

Post-colonialism draws attention to the "disruptive power of the
excluded-included third," which becomes especially virulent when it
"emerges in the middle of semantic
structures."[^46^](#c1-note-0046){#c1-note-0046a} The recognition of
this power reveals the increasing cultural independence of those
formerly colonized, and it also transforms the cultural self-perception
of the West, for, even in Western nations that were not significant
colonial powers, there are multifaceted tensions between dominant
cultures and those who are on the defensive against discrimination and
attributions by others. Instead of relying on the old recipe of
integration through assimilation (that is, the dissolution of the
"other"), the right to self-determined difference is being called for
more emphatically. In such a manner, collective identities, such as
national identities, are freed from their questionable appeals to
cultural homogeneity and essentiality, and reconceived in terms of the
experience of immanent difference. Instead of one binding and
unnegotiable frame of reference for everyone, which hierarchizes
individual pos­itions and makes them appear unified, a new order without
such limitations needs to be established. Ultimately, the aim is to
provide nothing less than an "alternative reading of
modernity,"[^47^](#c1-note-0047){#c1-note-0047a} which influences both
the construction of the past and the modalities of the future. For
European culture in particular, such a project is an immense challenge.

Of course, these demands do not derive their everyday relevance
primarily from theory but rather from the experiences of
(de)colonization, migration, and globalization. Multifaceted as it is,
however, the theory does provide forms and languages for articulating
these phenomena, legitimizing new positions in public debates, and
attacking persistent mechanisms of cultural marginalization. It helps to
empower broader societal groups to become actively involved in cultural
processes, namely people, such as migrants and their children, whose
identity and experience are essentially shaped by non-Western cultures.
The latter have been giving voice to their experiences more frequently
and with greater confidence in all areas of public life, be it in
politics, literature, music, or
art.[^48^](#c1-note-0048){#c1-note-0048a} In Germany, for instance, the
films by Fatih Akin (*Head-On* from 2004 and *Soul Kitchen* from 2009,
to []{#Page_33 type="pagebreak" title="33"}name just two), in which the
experience of immigration is represented as part of the German
experience, have reached a wide public audience. In 2002, the group
Kanak Attak organized a series of conferences with the telling motto *no
integración*, and these did much to introduce postcolonial positions to
the debates taking place in German-speaking
countries.[^49^](#c1-note-0049){#c1-note-0049a} For a long time,
politicians with "migration backgrounds" were considered to be competent
in only one area, namely integration policy. This has since changed,
though not entirely. In 2008, for instance, Cem Özdemir was elected
co-chair of the Green Party and thus shares responsibility for all of
its political positions. Developments of this sort have been enabled
(and strengthened) by a shift in society\'s self-perception. In 2014,
Cemile Giousouf, the integration commissioner for the conservative
CDU/CSU alliance in the German Parliament, was able to make the
following statement without inciting any controversy: "Over the past few
years, Germany has become a modern land of
immigration."[^50^](#c1-note-0050){#c1-note-0050a} A remarkable
proclamation. Not ten years earlier, her party colleague Norbert Lammert
had expressed, in his function as parliamentary president, interest in
reviving the debate about the term "leading culture." The increasingly
well-educated migrants of the first, second, or third gener­ation no
longer accept the choice of being either marginalized as an exotic
representative of the "other" or entirely assimilated. Rather, they are
insisting on being able to introduce their specific experience as a
constitutive contribution to the formation of the present -- in
association and in conflict with other contributions, but at the same
level and with the same legitimacy. It is no surprise that various forms
of discrimin­ation and violence against "foreigners" not only continue
in everyday life but have also been increasing in reaction to this new
situation. Ultimately, established claims to power are being called into
question.

To summarize, at least three secular historical tendencies or movements,
some of which can be traced back to the late nineteenth century but each
of which gained considerable momentum during the last third of the
twentieth (the spread of the knowledge economy, the erosion of
heteronormativity, and the focus of post-colonialism on cultural
hybridity), have greatly expanded the sphere of those who actively
negotiate []{#Page_34 type="pagebreak" title="34"}social meaning. In
large part, the patterns and cultural foundations of these processes
developed long before the internet. Through the use of the internet, and
through the experiences of dealing with it, they have encroached upon
far greater portions of all societies.
:::
:::

::: {.section}
The Culturalization of the World {#c1-sec-0006}
--------------------------------

The number of participants in cultural processes, however, is not the
only thing that has increased. Parallel to that development, the field
of the cultural has expanded as well -- that is, those areas of life
that are not simply characterized by unalterable necessities, but rather
contain or generate competing options and thus require conscious
decisions.

The term "culturalization of the economy" refers to the central position
of knowledge-based, meaning-based, and affect-oriented processes in the
creation of value. With the emergence of consumption as the driving
force behind the production of goods and the concomitant necessity of
having not only to satisfy existing demands but also to create new ones,
the cultural and affective dimensions of the economy began to gain
significance. I have already discussed the beginnings of product
staging, advertising, and public relations. In addition to all of the
continuities that remain with us from that time, it is also possible to
point out a number of major changes that consumer society has undergone
since the late 1960s. These changes can be delineated by examining the
greater role played by design, which has been called the "core
discipline of the creative
economy."[^51^](#c1-note-0051){#c1-note-0051a}

As a field of its own, design originated alongside industrialization,
when, in collaborative processes, the activities of planning and
designing were separated from those of carrying out
production.[^52^](#c1-note-0052){#c1-note-0052a} It was not until the
modern era that designers consciously endeavored to seek new forms for
the logic inherent to mass production. With the aim of economic
efficiency, they intended their designs to optimize the clearly defined
functions of anonymous and endlessly reproducible objects. At the end of
the nineteenth century, the architect Louis Sullivan, whose buildings
still distinguish the skyline of Chicago, condensed this new attitude
into the famous axiom []{#Page_35 type="pagebreak" title="35"}"form
follows function." Mies van der Rohe, working as an architect in Chicago
in the middle of the twentieth century, supplemented this with a pithy
and famous formulation of his own: "less is more." The rationality of
design, in the sense of isolating and improving specific functions, and
the economical use of resources were of chief importance to modern
(industrial) designers. Even the ten design principles of Dieter Rams,
who led the design division of the consumer products company Braun from
1965 to 1991 -- one of the main sources of inspiration for Jonathan Ive,
Apple\'s chief design officer -- aimed to make products "usable,"
"understandable," "honest," and "long-lasting." "Good design," according
to his guiding principle, "is as little design as
possible."[^53^](#c1-note-0053){#c1-note-0053a} This orientation toward
the technical and functional promised to solve problems for everyone in
a long-term and binding manner, for the inherent material and design
qual­ities of an object were supposed to make it independent from
changing times and from the tastes of consumers.

::: {.section}
### Beyond the object {#c1-sec-0007}

At the end of the 1960s, a new generation of designers rebelled against
this industrial and instrumental rationality, which was now felt to be
authoritarian, soulless, and reductionist. In the works associated with
"anti-design" or "radical design," the objectives of the discipline were
redefined and a new formal language was developed. In the place of
tech­nical and functional optimization, recombination -- ecological
recycling or the postmodern interplay of forms -- emerged as a design
method and aesthetic strategy. Moreover, the aspiration of design
shifted from the individual object to its entire social and material
environment. The processes of design and production, which had been
closed off from one another and restricted to specialists, were opened
up precisely to encourage the participation of non-designers, be it
through interdisciplinary cooperation with other types of professions or
through the empowerment of laymen. The objectives of design were
radically expanded: rather than ending with the completion of an
individual product, it was now supposed to engage with society. In the
sense of cybernetics, this was regarded as a "system," controlled by
feedback processes, []{#Page_36 type="pagebreak" title="36"}which
connected social, technical, and biological dimensions to one
another.[^54^](#c1-note-0054){#c1-note-0054a} Design, according to this
new approach, was meant to be a "socially significant
activity."[^55^](#c1-note-0055){#c1-note-0055a}

Embedded in the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s, this new
generation of designers was curious about the social and political
potential of their discipline, and about possibilities for promoting
flexibility and autonomy instead of rigid industrial efficiency. Design
was no longer expected to solve problems once and for all, for such an
idea did not correspond to the self-perception of an open and mutable
society. Rather, it was expected to offer better opportun­ities for
enabling people to react to continuously changing conditions. A radical
proposal was developed by the Italian designer Enzo Mari, who in 1974
published his handbook *Autoprogettazione* (Self-Design). It contained
19 simple designs with which people could make, on their own,
aesthetically and functionally sophisticated furniture out of pre-cut
pieces of wood. In this case, the designs themselves were less important
than the critique of conventional design as elitist and of consumer
society as alienated and wasteful. Mari\'s aim was to reconceive the
relations among designers, the manufacturing industry, and users.
Increasingly, design came to be understood as a holistic and open
process. Victor Papanek, the founder of ecological design, took things a
step further. For him, design was "basic to all human activity. The
planning and patterning of any act towards a desired, foreseeable end
constitutes the design process. Any attempt to separate design, to make
it a thing-by-itself, works counter to the inherent value of design as
the primary underlying matrix of
life."[^56^](#c1-note-0056){#c1-note-0056a}

Potentially all aspects of life could therefore fall under the purview
of design. This came about from the desire to oppose industrialism,
which was blind to its catastrophic social and ecological consequences,
with a new and comprehensive manner of seeing and acting that was
unrestricted by economics.

Toward the end of the 1970s, this expanded notion of design owed less
and less to emancipatory social movements, and its socio-political goals
began to fall by the wayside. Three fundamental patterns survived,
however, which go beyond design and remain characteristic of the
culturalization []{#Page_37 type="pagebreak" title="37"}of the economy:
the discovery of the public as emancipated users and active
participants; the use of appropriation, transformation, and
recombination as methods for creating ever-new aesthetic
differentiations; and, finally, the intention of shaping the lifeworld
of the user.[^57^](#c1-note-0057){#c1-note-0057a}

As these patterns became depoliticized and commercialized, the focus of
designing the "lifeworld" shifted more and more toward designing the
"experiential world." By the end of the 1990s, this had become so
normalized that even management consultants could assert that
"\[e\]xperiences represent an existing but previously unarticulated
*genre of economic output*."[^58^](#c1-note-0058){#c1-note-0058a} It was
possible to define the dimensions of the experiential world in various
ways. For instance, it could be clearly delimited and product-oriented,
like the flagship stores introduced by Nike in 1990, which, with their
elaborate displays, were meant to turn shopping into an experience. This
experience, as the company\'s executives hoped, radiated outward and
influenced how the brand was perceived as a whole. The experiential
world could also, however, be conceived in somewhat broader terms, for
instance by design­ing entire institutions around the idea of creating a
more attractive work environment and thereby increasing the commitment
of employees. This approach is widespread today in creative industries
and has become popularized through countless stories about ping-pong
tables, gourmet cafeterias, and massage rooms in certain offices. In
this case, the process of creativity is applied back to itself in order
to systematize and optimize a given workplace\'s basis of operation. The
development is comparable to the "invention of invention" that
characterized industrial research around the end of the nineteenth
century, though now the concept has been re­located to the field of
knowledge production.

Yet the "experiential world" can be expanded even further, for instance
when entire cities attempt to make themselves attractive to
international clientele and compete with others by building spectacular
museums or sporting arenas. Displays in cities, as well as a few other
central locations, are regularly constructed in order to produce a
particular experience. This also entails, however, that certain forms of
use that fail to fit the "urban
script"[^59^](#c1-note-0059){#c1-note-0059a} are pushed to the margins
or driven away.[^60^](#c1-note-0060){#c1-note-0060a} Thus, today, there
is hardly a single area of life to []{#Page_38 type="pagebreak"
title="38"}which the strategies and methods of design do not have
access, and this access occurs at all levels. For some time, design has
not been a purely visible matter, restricted to material objects; it
rather forms and controls all of the senses. Cities, for example, have
come to be understood increasingly as "sound spaces" and have
accordingly been reconfigured with the goal of modulating their various
noises.[^61^](#c1-note-0061){#c1-note-0061a} Yet design is no longer
just a matter of objects, processes, and experiences. By now, in the
context of reproductive medicine, it has even been applied to the
biological foundations of life ("designer babies"). I will revisit this
topic below.
:::

::: {.section}
### Culture everywhere {#c1-sec-0008}

Of course, design is not the only field of culture that has imposed
itself over society as a whole. A similar development has occurred in
the field of advertising, which, since the 1970s, has been integrated
into many more physical and social spaces and by now has a broad range
of methods at its disposal. Advertising is no longer found simply on
billboards or in display windows. In the form of "guerilla marketing" or
"product placement," it has penetrated every space and occupied every
discourse -- by blending with political messages, for instance -- and
can now even be spread, as "viral marketing," by the addressees of the
advertisements themselves. Similar processes can be observed in the
fields of art, fashion, music, theater, and sports. This has taken place
perhaps most radically in the field of "gaming," which has drawn upon
technical progress in the most direct possible manner and, with the
spread of powerful computers and mobile applications, has left behind
the confines of the traditional playing field. In alternate reality
games, the realm of the virtual and fictitious has also been
transcended, as physical spaces have been overlaid with their various
scripts.[^62^](#c1-note-0062){#c1-note-0062a}

This list could be extended, but the basic trend is clear enough,
especially as the individual fields overlap and mutually influence one
another. They are blending into a single interdependent field for
generating social meaning in the form of economic activity. Moreover,
through digitalization and networking, many new opportunities have
arisen for large-scale involvement by the public in design processes.
Thanks []{#Page_39 type="pagebreak" title="39"}to new communication
technologies and flexible production processes, today\'s users can
personalize and create products to suit their wishes. Here, the spectrum
extends from tiny batches of creative-industrial products all the way to
global processes of "mass customization," in which factory-based mass
production is combined with personalization. One of the first
applications of this was introduced in 1999 when, through its website, a
sporting-goods company allowed customers to design certain elements of a
shoe by altering it within a set of guidelines. This was taken a step
further by the idea of "user-centered innovation," which relies on the
specific knowledge of users to enhance a product, with the additional
hope of discovering unintended applications and transforming these into
new areas of business.[^63^](#c1-note-0063){#c1-note-0063a} It has also
become possible for end users to take over the design process from the
beginning, which has become considerably easier with the advent of
specialized platforms for exchanging knowledge, alongside semi-automated
production tools such as mechanical mills and 3D printers.
Digitalization, which has allowed all content to be processed, and
networking, which has created an endless amount of content ("raw
material"), have turned appropriation and recombination into general
methods of cultural production.[^64^](#c1-note-0064){#c1-note-0064a}
This phenomenon will be examined more closely in the next chapter.

Both the involvement of users in the production process and the methods
of appropriation and recombination are extremely information-intensive
and communication-intensive. Without the corresponding technological
infrastructure, neither could be achieved efficiently or on a large
scale. This was evident in the 1970s, when such approaches never made it
beyond subcultures and conceptual studies. With today\'s search engines,
every single user can trawl through an amount of information that, just
a generation ago, would have been unmanageable even by professional
archivists. A broad array of communication platforms (together with
flexible production capacities and efficient logistics) not only weakens
the contradiction between mass fabrication and personalization; it also
allows users to network directly with one another in order to develop
specialized knowledge together and thus to enable themselves to
intervene directly in design processes, both as []{#Page_40
type="pagebreak" title="40"}willing participants in and as critics of
flexible global production processes.
:::
:::

::: {.section}
The Technologization of Culture {#c1-sec-0009}
-------------------------------

That society is dependent on complex information technologies in order
to organize its constitutive processes is, in itself, nothing new.
Rather, this began as early as the late nineteenth century. It is
directly correlated with the expansion and acceleration of the
circulation of goods, which came about through industrialization. As the
historian and sociologist James Beniger has noted, this led to a
"control crisis," for administrative control centers were faced with the
problem of losing sight of what was happening in their own factories,
with their suppliers, and in the important markets of the time.
Management was in a bind: decisions had to be made either on the basis
of insufficient information or too late. The existing administrative and
control mechanisms could no longer deal with the rapidly increasing
complexity and time-sensitive nature of extensively organized production
and distribution. The office became more important, and ever more people
were needed there to fulfill a growing number of functions. Yet this was
not enough for the crisis to subside. The old administrative methods,
which involved manual information processing, simply could no longer
keep up. The crisis reached its first dramatic peak in 1889 in the
United States, with the realization that the census data from the year
1880 had not yet been analyzed when the next census was already
scheduled to take place during the subsequent year. In the same year,
the Secretary of the Interior organized a conference to investigate
faster methods of data processing. Two methods were tested for making
manual labor more efficient, one of which had the potential to achieve
greater efficiency by means of novel data-processing machines. The
latter system emerged as the clear victor; developed by an engineer
named Hermann Hollerith, it mechanically processed and stored data on
punch cards. The idea was based on Hollerith\'s observations of the
coup­ling and decoupling of railroad cars, which he interpreted as
modular units that could be combined in any desired order. The punch
card transferred this approach to information []{#Page_41
type="pagebreak" title="41"}management. Data were no longer stored in
fixed, linear arrangements (tables and lists) but rather in small units
(the punch cards) that, like railroad cars, could be combined in any
given way. The increase in efficiency -- with respect to speed *and*
flexibility -- was enormous, and nearly a hundred of Hollerith\'s
machines were used by the Census
Bureau.[^65^](#c1-note-0065){#c1-note-0065a} This marked a turning point
in the history of information processing, with technical means no longer
being used exclusively to store data, but to process data as well. This
was the only way to avoid the impending crisis, ensuring that
bureaucratic management could maintain centralized control. Hollerith\'s
machines proved to be a resounding success and were implemented in many
more branches of government and corporate administration, where
data-intensive processes had increased so rapidly they could not have
been managed without such machines. This growth was accompanied by that
of Hollerith\'s Tabulating Machine Company, which he founded in 1896 and
which, after a number of mergers, was renamed in 1924 as the
International Business Machines Corporation (IBM). Throughout the
following decades, dependence on information-processing machines only
deepened. The growing number of social, commercial, and military
processes could only be managed by means of information technology. This
largely took place, however, outside of public view, namely in the
specialized divisions of large government and private organizations.
These were the only institutions in command of the necessary resources
for operating the complex technical infrastructure -- so-called
mainframe computers -- that was essential to automatic information
processing.

::: {.section}
### The independent media {#c1-sec-0010}

As with so much else, this situation began to change in the 1960s. Mass
media and information-processing technologies began to attract
criticism, even though all of the involved subcultures, media activists,
and hackers continued to act independently from one another until the
1990s. The freedom-oriented social movements of the 1960s began to view
the mass media as part of the political system against which they were
struggling. The connections among the economy, politics, and the media
were becoming more apparent, not []{#Page_42 type="pagebreak"
title="42"}least because many mass media companies, especially those in
Germany related to the Springer publishing house, were openly inimical
to these social movements. Critical theor­ies arose that, borrowing
Louis Althusser\'s influential term, regarded the media as part of the
"ideological state apparatus"; that is, as one of the authorities whose
task is to influence people to accept social relations to such a degree
that the "repressive state apparatuses" (the police, the military, etc.)
form a constant background in everyday
life.[^66^](#c1-note-0066){#c1-note-0066a} Similarly influential,
Antonio Gramsci\'s theory of "cultural hegemony" emphasized the
condition in which the governed are manipulated to form a cultural
consensus with the ruling class; they accept the latter\'s
presuppositions (and the politics which are thus justified) even though,
by doing so, they are forced to suffer economic
disadvantages.[^67^](#c1-note-0067){#c1-note-0067a} Guy Debord and the
Situationists attributed to the media a central role in the new form of
rule known as "the spectacle," the glittery surfaces and superficial
manifestations of which served to conceal society\'s true
relations.[^68^](#c1-note-0068){#c1-note-0068a} In doing so, they
aligned themselves with the critique of the "culture industry," which
had been formulated by Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno at the
beginning of the 1940s and had become a widely discussed key text by the
1960s.

Their differences aside, these perspectives were united in that they no
longer understood the "public" as a neutral sphere, in which citizens
could inform themselves freely and form their opinions, but rather as
something that was created with specific intentions and consequences.
From this grew an interest in "counter-publics"; that is, in forums
where other actors could appear and negotiate theories of their own. The
mass media thus became an important instrument for organizing the
bourgeois--capitalist public, but they were also responsible for the
development of alternatives. Media, according to one of the core ideas
of these new approaches, are less a sphere in which an external reality
is depicted; rather, they are themselves a constitutive element of
reality.
:::

::: {.section}
### Media as lifeworlds {#c1-sec-0011}

Another branch of new media theories, that of Marshall McLuhan and the
Toronto School of Communication,[^69^](#c1-note-0069){#c1-note-0069a}
[]{#Page_43 type="pagebreak" title="43"}reached a similar conclusion on
different grounds. In 1964, McLuhan aroused a great deal of attention
with his slogan "the medium is the message." He maintained that every
medium of communication, by means of its media-specific characteristics,
directly affected the consciousness, self-perception, and worldview of
every individual.[^70^](#c1-note-0070){#c1-note-0070a} This, he
believed, happens independently of and in addition to whatever specific
message a medium might be conveying. From this perspective, reality does
not exist outside of media, given that media codetermine our personal
relation to and behavior in the world. For McLuhan and the Toronto
School, media were thus not channels for transporting content but rather
the all-encompassing environments -- galaxies -- in which we live.

Such ideas were circulating much earlier and were intensively developed
by artists, many of whom were beginning to experiment with new
electronic media. An important starting point in this regard was the
1963 exhibit *Exposition of Music -- Electronic Television* by the
Korean artist Nam June Paik, who was then collaborating with Karlheinz
Stockhausen in Düsseldorf. Among other things, Paik presented 12
television sets, the screens of which were "distorted" by magnets. Here,
however, "distorted" is a problematic term, for, as Paik explicitly
noted, the electronic images were "a beautiful slap in the face of
classic dualism in philosophy since the time of Plato. \[...\] Essence
AND existence, essentia AND existentia. In the case of the electron,
however, EXISTENTIA IS ESSENTIA."[^71^](#c1-note-0071){#c1-note-0071a}
Paik no longer understood the electronic image on the television screen
as a portrayal or representation of anything. Rather, it engendered in
the moment of its appearance an autonomous reality beyond and
independent of its representational function. A whole generation of
artists began to explore forms of existence in electronic media, which
they no longer understood as pure media of information. In his work
*Video Corridor* (1969--70), Bruce Nauman stacked two monitors at the
end of a corridor that was approximately 10 meters long but only 50
centimeters wide. On the lower monitor ran a video showing the empty
hallway. The upper monitor displayed an image captured by a camera
installed at the entrance of the hall, about 3 meters high. If the
viewer moved down the corridor toward the two []{#Page_44
type="pagebreak" title="44"}monitors, he or she would thus be recorded
by the latter camera. Yet the closer one came to the monitor, the
farther one would be from the camera, so that one\'s image on the
monitor would become smaller and smaller. Recorded from behind, viewers
would thus watch themselves walking away from themselves. Surveillance
by others, self-surveillance, recording, and disappearance were directly
and intuitively connected with one another and thematized as fundamental
issues of electronic media.

Toward the end of the 1960s, the easier availability and mobility of
analog electronic production technologies promoted the search for
counter-publics and the exploration of media as comprehensive
lifeworlds. In 1967, Sony introduced its first Portapak system: a
battery-powered, self-contained recording system -- consisting of a
camera, a cord, and a recorder -- with which it was possible to make
(black-and-white) video recordings outside of a studio. Although the
recording apparatus, which required additional devices for editing and
projection, was offered at the relatively expensive price of \$1,500
(which corresponds to about €8,000 today), it was still affordable for
interested groups. Compared with the situation of traditional film
cameras, these new cameras considerably lowered the initial hurdle for
media production, for video tapes were not only much cheaper than film
reels (and could be used for multiple recordings); they also made it
possible to view recorded material immediately and on location. This
enabled the production of works that were far more intuitive and
spontaneous than earlier ones. The 1970s saw the formation of many video
groups, media workshops, and other initiatives for the independent
production of electronic media. Through their own distribution,
festivals, and other channels, such groups created alternative public
spheres. The latter became especially prominent in the United States
where, at the end of the 1960s, the providers of cable networks were
legally obligated to establish public-access channels, on which citizens
were able to operate self-organized and non-commercial television
programs. This gave rise to a considerable public-access movement there,
which at one point extended across 4,000 cities and was responsible for
producing programs from and for these different
communities.[^72[]{#Page_45 type="pagebreak"
title="45"}^](#c1-note-0072){#c1-note-0072a}

What these initiatives shared in common, in Western Europe and the
United States, was their attempt to close the gap between the
consumption and production of media, to activate the public, and at
least in part to experiment with the media themselves. Non-professional
producers were empowered with the ability to control who told their
stories and how this happened. Groups that previously had no access to
the medial public sphere now had opportunities to represent themselves
and their own interests. By working together on their own productions,
such groups demystified the medium of television and simultaneously
equipped it with a critical consciousness.

Especially well received in Germany was the work of Hans Magnus
Enzensberger, who in 1970 argued (on the basis of Bertolt Brecht\'s
radio theory) in favor of distinguishing between "repressive" and
"emancipatory" uses of media. For him, the emancipatory potential of
media lay in the fact that "every receiver is \[...\] a potential
transmitter" that can participate "interactively" in "collective
production."[^73^](#c1-note-0073){#c1-note-0073a} In the same year, the
first German video group, Telewissen, debuted in public with a
demonstration in downtown Darmstadt. In 1980, at the peak of the
movement for independent video production, there were approximately a
hundred such groups throughout (West) Germany. The lack of distribution
channels, however, represented a nearly insuperable obstacle and ensured
that many independent productions were seldom viewed outside of
small-scale settings. Tapes had to be exchanged between groups through
the mail, and they were mainly shown at gatherings and events, and in
bars. The dynamic of alternative media shifted toward a small subculture
(though one networked throughout all of Europe) of pirate radio and
television broadcasters. At the beginning of the 1980s and in the space
of Radio Dreyeckland in Freiburg, which had been founded in 1977 as
Radio Verte Fessenheim, operations began at Germany\'s first pirate or
citizens\' radio station, which regularly broadcast information about
the political protest movements that had arisen against the use of
nuclear power in Fessenheim (France), Wyhl (Germany), and Kaiseraugst
(Switzerland). The epicenter of the scene, however, was located in
Amsterdam, where the group known as Rabotnik TV, which was an offshoot
[]{#Page_46 type="pagebreak" title="46"}of the squatter scene there,
would illegally feed its signal through official television stations
after their programming had ended at night (many stations then stopped
broadcasting at midnight). In 1988, the group acquired legal
broadcasting slots on the cable network and reached up to 50,000 viewers
with their weekly experimental shows, which largely consisted of footage
appropriated freely from elsewhere.[^74^](#c1-note-0074){#c1-note-0074a}
Early in 1990, the pirate television station Kanal X was created in
Leipzig; it produced its own citizens\' television programming in the
quasi-lawless milieu of the GDR before
reunification.[^75^](#c1-note-0075){#c1-note-0075a}

These illegal, independent, or public-access stations only managed to
establish themselves as real mass media to a very limited extent.
Nevertheless, they played an important role in sensitizing an entire
generation of media activists, whose opportunities expanded as the means
of production became both better and cheaper. In the name of "tactical
media," a new generation of artistic and political media activists came
together in the middle of the
1990s.[^76^](#c1-note-0076){#c1-note-0076a} They combined the "camcorder
revolution," which in the late 1980s had made video equipment available
to broader swaths of society, stirring visions of democratic media
production, with the newly arrived medium of the internet. Despite still
struggling with numerous technical difficulties, they remained constant
in their belief that the internet would solve the hitherto intractable
problem of distributing content. The transition from analog to digital
media lowered the production hurdle yet again, not least through the
ongoing development of improved software. Now, many stages of production
that had previously required professional or semi-professional expertise
and equipment could also be carried out by engaged laymen. As a
consequence, the focus of interest broadened to include not only the
development of alternative production groups but also the possibility of
a flexible means of rapid intervention in existing structures. Media --
both television and the internet -- were understood as environments in
which one could act without directly representing a reality outside of
the media. Television was analyzed down to its own legalities, which
could then be manipulated to affect things beyond the media.
Increasingly, culture jamming and the campaigns of so-called
communication guerrillas were blurring the difference between media and
political activity.[^77[]{#Page_47 type="pagebreak"
title="47"}^](#c1-note-0077){#c1-note-0077a}

This difference was dissolved entirely by a new generation of
politically motivated artists, activists, and hackers, who transferred
the tactics of civil disobedience -- blockading a building with a
sit-in, for instance -- to the
internet.[^78^](#c1-note-0078){#c1-note-0078a} When, in 1994, the
Zapatista Army of National Liberation rose up in the south of Mexico,
several media projects were created to support its mostly peaceful
opposition and to make the movement known in Europe and North America.
As part of this loose network, in 1998 the American artist collective
Electronic Disturbance Theater developed a relatively simple computer
program called FloodNet that enabled networked sympathizers to shut down
websites, such as those of the Mexican government, in a targeted and
temporary manner. The principle was easy enough: the program would
automatic­ally reload a certain website over and over again in order to
exhaust the capacities of its network
servers.[^79^](#c1-note-0079){#c1-note-0079a} The goal was not to
destroy data but rather to disturb the normal functioning of an
institution in order to draw attention to the activities and interests
of the protesters.
:::

::: {.section}
### Networks as places of action {#c1-sec-0012}

What this new generation of media activists shared in common with the
hackers and pioneers of computer networks was the idea that
communication media are spaces for agency. During the 1960s, these
programmers were also in search of alternatives. The difference during
the 1960s is that they did not pursue these alternatives in
counter-publics, but rather in alternative lifestyles and communication.
The rejection of bureaucracy as a form of social organization played a
significant role in the critique of industrial society formulated by
freedom-oriented social movements. At the beginning of the previous
century, Max Weber had still regarded bureaucracy as a clear sign of
progress toward a rational and method­ical
organization.[^80^](#c1-note-0080){#c1-note-0080a} He based this
assessment on processes that were impersonal, rule-bound, and
transparent (in the sense that they were documented with files). But
now, in the 1960s, bureaucracy was being criticized as soulless,
alienated, oppressive, non-transparent, and unfit for an increasingly
complex society. Whereas the first four of these points are in basic
agreement with Weber\'s thesis about "disenchanting" []{#Page_48
type="pagebreak" title="48"}the world, the last point represents a
radical departure from his analysis. Bureaucracies were no longer
regarded as hyper-efficient but rather as inefficient, and their size
and rule-bound nature were no longer seen as strengths but rather as
decisive weaknesses. The social bargain of offering prosperity and
security in exchange for subordination to hierarchical relations struck
many as being anything but attractive, and what blossomed instead was a
broad interest in alternative forms of coexistence. New institutions
were expected to be more flexible and more open. The desire to step away
from the system was widespread, and many (mostly young) people set about
doing exactly that. Alternative ways of life -- communes, shared
apartments, and cooperatives -- were explored in the country and in
cities. They were meant to provide the individual with greater autonomy
and the opportunity to develop his or her own unique potential. Despite
all of the differences between these concepts of life, they nevertheless
shared something of a common denominator: the promise of
reconceptualizing social institutions and the fundamentals of
coexistence, with the aim of reformulating them in such a way as to
allow everyone\'s personal potential to develop fully in the here and
now.

According to critics of such alternatives, bureaucracy was necessary in
order to organize social life as it radically reduced the world\'s
complexity by forcing it through the bottleneck of official procedures.
However, the price paid for such efficiency involved the atrophying of
human relationships, which had to be subordinated to rigid processes
that were incapable of registering unique characteristics and
differences and were unable to react in a timely manner to changing
circumstances.

In the 1960s, many countercultural attempts to find new forms of
organization placed personal and open communication at the center of
their efforts. Each individual was understood as a singular person with
untapped potential rather than a carrier of abstract and clearly defined
functions. It was soon realized, however, that every common activity and
every common decision entailed processes that were time-intensive and
communication-intensive. As soon as a group exceeded a certain size, it
became practically impossible for it to reach any consensus. As a result
of these experiences, an entire worldview emerged that propagated
"smallness" as a central []{#Page_49 type="pagebreak" title="49"}value
("small is beautiful"). It was thought that in this way society might
escape from bureaucracy with its ostensibly disastrous consequences for
humanity and the environment.[^81^](#c1-note-0081){#c1-note-0081a} But
this belief did not last for long. For, unlike the majority of European
alternative movements, the counterculture in the United States was not
overwhelmingly critical of technology. On the contrary, many actors
there sought suitable technologies for solving the practical problems of
social organization. At the end of the 1960s, a considerable amount of
attention was devoted to the field of basic technological research. This
field brought together the interests of the military, academics,
businesses, and activists from the counterculture. The common ground for
all of them was a cybernetic vision of institutions, or, in the words of
the historian Fred Turner:

::: {.extract}
a picture of humans and machines as dynamic, collaborating elements in a
single, highly fluid, socio-technical system. Within that system,
control emerged not from the mind of a commanding officer, but from the
complex, probabilistic interactions of humans, machines and events
around them. Moreover, the mechanical elements of the system in question
-- in this case, the predictor -- enabled the human elements to achieve
what all Americans would agree was a worthwhile goal. \[...\] Over the
coming decades, this second vision of benevolent man-machine systems, of
circular flows of information, would emerge as a driving force in the
establishment of the military--industrial--academic complex and as a
model of an alternative to that
complex.[^82^](#c1-note-0082){#c1-note-0082a}
:::

This complex was possible because, as a theory, cybernetics was
formulated in extraordinarily abstract terms, so much so that a whole
variety of competing visions could be associated with
it.[^83^](#c1-note-0083){#c1-note-0083a} With cybernetics as a
meta-science, it was possible to investigate the common features of
technical, social, and biological
processes.[^84^](#c1-note-0084){#c1-note-0084a} They were analyzed as
open, interactive, and information-processing systems. It was especially
consequential that cybernetics defined control and communication as the
same thing, namely as activities oriented toward informational
feedback.[^85^](#c1-note-0085){#c1-note-0085a} The heterogeneous legacy
of cybernetics and its synonymous treatment of the terms "communication"
and "control" continue to influence information technology and the
internet today.[]{#Page_50 type="pagebreak" title="50"}

The various actors who contributed to the development of the internet
shared a common interest for forms of organ­ization based on the
comprehensive, dynamic, and open exchange of information. Both on the
micro and macro level (and this is decisive at this point),
decentralized and flexible communication technologies were meant to
become the foundation of new organizational models. Militaries feared
attacks on their command and communication centers; academics wanted to
broaden their culture of autonomy, collaboration among peers, and the
free exchange of information; businesses were looking for new areas of
activity; and countercultural activists were longing for new forms of
peaceful coexistence.[^86^](#c1-note-0086){#c1-note-0086a} They all
rejected the bureaucratic model, and the counterculture provided them
with the central catchword for their alternative vision: community.
Though rather difficult to define, it was a powerful and positive term
that somehow promised the opposite of bureaucracy: humanity,
cooperation, horizontality, mutual trust, and consensus. Now, however,
humanity was expected to be reconfigured as a community in cooperation
with and inseparable from machines. And what was yearned for had become
a liberating symbiosis of man and machine, an idea that the author
Richard Brautigan was quick to mock in his poem "All Watched Over by
Machines of Loving Grace" from 1967:

::: {.poem}
::: {.lineGroup}
I like to think (and

the sooner the better!)

of a cybernetic meadow

where mammals and computers

live together in mutually

programming harmony

like pure water

touching clear sky.[^87^](#c1-note-0087){#c1-note-0087a}
:::
:::

Here, Brautigan is ridiculing both the impatience (*the sooner the
better!*) and the naïve optimism (*harmony, clear sky*) of the
countercultural activists. Primarily, he regarded the underlying vision
as an innocent but amusing fantasy and not as a potential threat against
which something had to be done. And there were also reasons to believe
that, ultimately, the new communities would be free from the coercive
nature that []{#Page_51 type="pagebreak" title="51"}had traditionally
characterized the downside of community experiences. It was thought that
the autonomy and freedom of the individual could be regained in and by
means of the community. The conditions for this were that participation
in the community had to be voluntary and that the rules of participation
had to be self-imposed. I will return to this topic in greater detail
below.

In line with their solution-oriented engineering culture and the
results-focused military funders who by and large set the agenda, a
relatively small group of computer scientists now took it upon
themselves to establish the technological foundations for new
institutions. This was not an abstract goal for the distant future;
rather, they wanted to change everyday practices as soon as possible. It
was around this time that advanced technology became the basis of social
communication, which now adopted forms that would have been
inconceivable (not to mention impracticable) without these
preconditions. Of course, effective communication technologies already
existed at the time. Large corporations had begun long before then to
operate their own computing centers. In contrast to the latter, however,
the new infrastructure could also be used by individuals outside of
established institutions and could be implemented for all forms of
communication and exchange. This idea gave rise to a pragmatic culture
of horizontal, voluntary cooperation. The clearest summary of this early
ethos -- which originated at the unusual intersection of military,
academic, and countercultural interests -- was offered by David D.
Clark, a computer scientist who for some time coordinated the
development of technical standards for the internet: "We reject: kings,
presidents and voting. We believe in: rough consensus and running
code."[^88^](#c1-note-0088){#c1-note-0088a}

All forms of classical, formal hierarchies and their methods for
resolving conflicts -- commands (by kings and presidents) and votes --
were dismissed. Implemented in their place was a pragmatics of open
cooperation that was oriented around two guiding principles. The first
was that different views should be discussed without a single individual
being able to block any final decisions. Such was the meaning of the
expression "rough consensus." The second was that, in accordance with
the classical engineering tradition, the focus should remain on concrete
solutions that had to be measured against one []{#Page_52
type="pagebreak" title="52"}another on the basis of transparent
criteria. Such was the meaning of the expression "running code." In
large part, this method was possible because the group oriented around
these principles was, internally, relatively homogeneous: it consisted
of top-notch computer scientists -- all of them men -- at respected
American universities and research centers. For this very reason, many
potential and fundamental conflicts were avoided, at least at first.
This internal homogeneity lends rather dark undertones to their sunny
vision, but this was hardly recognized at the time. Today these
undertones are far more apparent, and I will return to them below.

Not only were technical protocols developed on the basis of these
principles, but organizational forms as well. Along with the Internet
Engineering Task Force (which he directed), Clark created the so-called
Request-for-Comments documents, with which ideas could be presented to
interested members of the community and simultaneous feedback could be
collected in order to work through the ideas in question and thus reach
a rough consensus. If such a consensus could not be reached -- if, for
instance, an idea failed to resonate with anyone or was too
controversial -- then the matter would be dropped. The feedback was
organized as a form of many-to-many communication through email lists,
newsgroups, and online chat systems. This proved to be so effective that
horizontal communication within large groups or between multiple groups
could take place without resulting in chaos. This therefore invalidated
the traditional trend that social units, once they reach a certain size,
would necessarily introduce hierarchical structures for the sake of
reducing complexity and communication. In other words, the foundations
were laid for larger numbers of (changing) people to organize flexibly
and with the aim of building an open consensus. For Manuel Castells,
this combination of organizational flexibility and scalability in size
is the decisive innovation that was enabled by the rise of the network
society.[^89^](#c1-note-0089){#c1-note-0089a} At the same time, however,
this meant that forms of organization spread that could only be possible
on the basis of technologies that have formed (and continue to form)
part of the infrastructure of the internet. Digital technology and the
social activity of individual users were linked together to an
unprecedented extent. Social and cultural agendas were now directly
related []{#Page_53 type="pagebreak" title="53"}to and entangled with
technical design. Each of the four original interest groups -- the
military, scientists, businesses, and the counterculture -- implemented
new technologies to pursue their own projects, which partly complemented
and partly contradicted one another. As we know today, the first three
groups still cooperate closely with each other. To a great extent, this
has allowed the military and corporations, which are willingly supported
by researchers in need of funding, to determine the technology and thus
aspects of the social and cultural agendas that depend on it.

The software developers\' immediate environment experienced its first
major change in the late 1970s. Software, which for many had been a mere
supplement to more expensive and highly specialized hardware, became a
marketable good with stringent licensing restrictions. A new generation
of businesses, led by Bill Gates, suddenly began to label co­operation
among programmers as theft.[^90^](#c1-note-0090){#c1-note-0090a}
Previously it had been par for the course, and above all necessary, for
programmers to share software with one another. The former culture of
horizontal cooperation between developers transformed into a
hierarchical and commercially oriented relation between developers and
users (many of whom, at least at the beginning, had developed programs
of their own). For the first time, copyright came to play an important
role in digital culture. In order to survive in this environment, the
practice of open cooperation had to be placed on a new legal foundation.
Copyright law, which served to separate programmers (producers) from
users (consumers), had to be neutralized or circumvented. The first step
in this direction was taken in 1984 by the activist and programmer
Richard Stallman. Composed by Stallman, the GNU General Public License
was and remains a brilliant hack that uses the letter of copyright law
against its own spirit. This happens in the form of a license that
defines "four freedoms":

1. The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom
0).
2. The freedom to study how the program works and change it so it does
your computing as you wish (freedom 1).
3. The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor
(freedom 2).[]{#Page_54 type="pagebreak" title="54"}
4. The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others
(freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance
to benefit from your changes.[^91^](#c1-note-0091){#c1-note-0091a}

Thanks to this license, people who were personally unacquainted and did
not share a common social environment could now cooperate (freedoms 2
and 3) and simultaneously remain autonomous and unrestricted (freedoms 0
and 1). For many, the tension between the need to develop complex
software in large teams and the desire to maintain one\'s own autonomy
represented an incentive to try out new forms of
cooperation.[^92^](#c1-note-0092){#c1-note-0092a}

Stallman\'s influence was at first limited to a small circle of
programmers. In the middle of the 1980s, the goal of developing a
completely free operating system seemed a distant one. Communication
between those interested in doing so was often slow and complicated. In
part, program codes still had to be sent by mail. It was not until the
beginning of the 1990s that students in technical departments at many
universities could access the
internet.[^93^](#c1-note-0093){#c1-note-0093a} One of the first to use
these new opportunities in an innovative way was a Finnish student named
Linus Torvalds. He built upon Stallman\'s work and programmed a kernel,
which, as the most important module of an operating system, governs the
interaction between hardware and software. He published the first free
version of this in 1991 and encouraged anyone interested to give him
feedback.[^94^](#c1-note-0094){#c1-note-0094a} And it poured in.
Torvalds reacted promptly and issued new versions of his software in
quick succession. Instead of understanding his software as a finished
product, he treated it like an open-ended process. This, in turn,
motiv­ated even more developers to participate, because they saw that
their contributions were being adopted swiftly, which led to the
formation of an open community of interested programmers who swapped
ideas over the internet and continued writing software. In order to
maintain an overview of the different versions of the program, which
appeared in parallel with one another, it soon became necessary to
employ specialized platforms. The fusion of social processes --
horizontal and voluntary cooperation among developers -- and
technological platforms, which enabled this form of cooperation
[]{#Page_55 type="pagebreak" title="55"}by providing archives, filter
functions, and search capabil­ities that made it possible to organize
large amounts of data, was thus advanced even further. The programmers
were no longer primarily working on the development of the internet
itself, which by then was functioning quite reliably, but were rather
using the internet to apply their cooperative principles to other
arenas. By the end of the 1990s, the free-software movement had
established a new, internet-based form of organization and had
demonstrated its efficiency in practice: horizontal, informal
communities of actors -- voluntary, autonomous, and focused on a common
interest -- that, on the basis of high-tech infrastructure, could
include thousands of people without having to create formal hierarchies.
:::
:::

::: {.section}
From the Margins to the Center of Society {#c1-sec-0013}
-----------------------------------------

It was around this same time that the technologies in question, which
were already no longer very new, entered mainstream society. Within a
few years, the internet became part of everyday life. Three years before
the turn of the millennium, only about 6 percent of the entire German
population used the internet, often only occasionally. Three years after
the millennium, the number of users already exceeded 53 percent. Since
then, this share has increased even further. In 2014, it was more than
97 percent for people under the age of
40.[^95^](#c1-note-0095){#c1-note-0095a} Parallel to these developments,
data transfer rates increased considerably, broadband connections ousted
the need for dial-up modems, and the internet was suddenly "here" and no
longer "there." With the spread of mobile devices, especially since the
year 2007 when the first iPhone was introduced, digital communication
became available both extensively and continuously. Since then, the
internet has been ubiquitous. The amount of time that users spend online
has increased and, with the rapid ascent of social mass media such as
Facebook, people have been online in almost every situation and
circumstance in life.[^96^](#c1-note-0096){#c1-note-0096a} The internet,
like water or electricity, has become for many people a utility that is
simply taken for granted.

In a BBC survey from 2010, 80 percent of those polled believed that
internet access -- a precondition for participating []{#Page_56
type="pagebreak" title="56"}in the now dominant digital condition --
should be regarded as a fundamental human right. This idea was most
popular in South Korea (96 percent) and Mexico (94 percent), while in
Germany at least 72 percent were of the same
opinion.[^97^](#c1-note-0097){#c1-note-0097a}

On the basis of this new infrastructure, which is now relevant in all
areas of life, the cultural developments described above have been
severed from the specific historical conditions from which they emerged
and have permeated society as a whole. Expressivity -- the ability to
communicate something "unique" -- is no longer a trait of artists and
know­ledge workers alone, but rather something that is required by an
increasingly broader stratum of society and is already being taught in
schools. Users of social mass media must produce (themselves). The
development of specific, differentiated identities and the demand that
each be treated equally are no longer promoted exclusively by groups who
have to struggle against repression, existential threats, and
marginalization, but have penetrated deeply into the former mainstream,
not least because the present forms of capitalism have learned to profit
from the spread of niches and segmentation. When even conservative
parties have abandoned the idea of a "leading culture," then cultural
differences can no longer be classified by enforcing an absolute and
indisputable hierarchy, the top of which is occupied by specific
(geographical and cultural) centers. Rather, a space has been opened up
for endless negotiations, a space in which -- at least in principle --
everything can be called into question. This is not, of course, a
peaceful and egalitarian process. In addition to the practical hurdles
that exist in polarizing societies, there are also violent backlashes
and new forms of fundamentalism that are attempting once again to remove
certain religious, social, cultural, or political dimensions of
existence from the discussion. Yet these can only be understood in light
of a sweeping cultural transformation that has already reached
mainstream society.[^98^](#c1-note-0098){#c1-note-0098a} In other words,
the digital condition has become quotidian and dominant. It forms a
cultural constellation that determines all areas of life, and its
characteristic features are clearly recognizable. These will be the
focus of the next chapter.[]{#Page_57 type="pagebreak" title="57"}
:::

::: {.section .notesSet type="rearnotes"}
[]{#notesSet}Notes {#c1-ntgp-9999}
------------------

::: {.section .notesList}
[1](#c1-note-0001a){#c1-note-0001}  Kathrin Passig and Sascha Lobo,
*Internet: Segen oder Fluch* (Berlin: Rowohlt, 2012) \[--trans.\].

[2](#c1-note-0002a){#c1-note-0002}  The expression "heteronormatively
behaving" is used here to mean that, while in the public eye, the
behavior of the people []{#Page_177 type="pagebreak" title="177"}in
question conformed to heterosexual norms regardless of their personal
sexual orientations.

[3](#c1-note-0003a){#c1-note-0003}  No order is ever entirely closed
off. In this case, too, there was also room for exceptions and for
collective moments of greater cultural multiplicity. That said, the
social openness of the end of the 1920s, for instance, was restricted to
particular milieus within large cities and was accordingly short-lived.

[4](#c1-note-0004a){#c1-note-0004}  Fritz Machlup, *The Political
Economy of Monopoly: Business, Labor and Government Policies*
(Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1952).

[5](#c1-note-0005a){#c1-note-0005}  Machlup was a student of Ludwig von
Mises, the most influential representative of this radically
individualist school. See Hans-Hermann Hoppe, "Die Österreichische
Schule und ihre Bedeutung für die moderne Wirtschaftswissenschaft," in
Karl-Dieter Grüske (ed.), *Die Gemeinwirtschaft: Kommentarband zur
Neuauflage von Ludwig von Mises' "Die Gemeinwirtschaft"* (Düsseldorf:
Verlag Wirtschaft und Finanzen, 1996), pp. 65--90.

[6](#c1-note-0006a){#c1-note-0006}  Fritz Machlup, *The Production and
Distribution of Knowledge in the United States* (New York: John Wiley &
Sons, 1962).

[7](#c1-note-0007a){#c1-note-0007}  The term "knowledge worker" had
already been introduced to the discussion a few years before; see Peter
Drucker, *Landmarks of Tomorrow: A Report on the New* (New York: Harper,
1959).

[8](#c1-note-0008a){#c1-note-0008}  Peter Ecker, "Die
Verwissenschaftlichung der Industrie: Zur Geschichte der
Industrieforschung in den europäischen und amerikanischen
Elektrokonzernen 1890--1930," *Zeitschrift für Unternehmensgeschichte*
35 (1990): 73--94.

[9](#c1-note-0009a){#c1-note-0009}  Edward Bernays was the son of
Sigmund Freud\'s sister Anna and Ely Bernays, the brother of Freud\'s
wife, Martha Bernays.

[10](#c1-note-0010a){#c1-note-0010}  Edward L. Bernays, *Propaganda*
(New York: Horace Liverlight, 1928).

[11](#c1-note-0011a){#c1-note-0011}  James Beniger, *The Control
Revolution: Technological and Economic Origins of the Information
Society* (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), p. 350.

[12](#c1-note-0012a){#c1-note-0012}  Norbert Wiener, *Cybernetics: Or
Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine* (New York: J.
Wiley, 1948).

[13](#c1-note-0013a){#c1-note-0013}  Daniel Bell, *The Coming of
Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting* (New York:
Basic Books, 1973).

[14](#c1-note-0014a){#c1-note-0014}  Simon Nora and Alain Minc, *The
Computerization of Society: A Report to the President of France*
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1980).

[15](#c1-note-0015a){#c1-note-0015}  Manuel Castells, *The Rise of the
Network Society* (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996).

[16](#c1-note-0016a){#c1-note-0016}  Hans-Dieter Kübler, *Mythos
Wissensgesellschaft: Gesellschaft­licher Wandel zwischen Information,
Medien und Wissen -- Eine Einführung* (Wiesbaden: Verlag für
Sozialwissenschaften, 2009).[]{#Page_178 type="pagebreak" title="178"}

[17](#c1-note-0017a){#c1-note-0017}  Luc Boltanski and Ève Chiapello,
*The New Spirit of Capitalism*, trans. Gregory Elliott (London: Verso,
2005).

[18](#c1-note-0018a){#c1-note-0018}  Michael Piore and Charles Sabel,
*The Second Industrial Divide: Possibilities of Prosperity* (New York:
Basic Books, 1984).

[19](#c1-note-0019a){#c1-note-0019}  Castells, *The Rise of the Network
Society*. For a critical evaluation of Castells\'s work, see Felix
Stalder, *Manuel Castells and the Theory of the Network Society*
(Cambridge: Polity, 2006).

[20](#c1-note-0020a){#c1-note-0020}  "UK Creative Industries Mapping
Documents" (1998); quoted from Terry Flew, *The Creative Industries:
Culture and Policy* (Los Angeles, CA: Sage, 2012), pp. 9--10.

[21](#c1-note-0021a){#c1-note-0021}  The rise of the creative
industries, and the hope that they inspired among politicians, did not
escape criticism. Among the first works to draw attention to the
precarious nature of working in such industries was Angela McRobbie\'s
*British Fashion Design: Rag Trade or Image Industry?* (New York:
Routledge, 1998).

[22](#c1-note-0022a){#c1-note-0022}  This definition is not without a
degree of tautology, given that economic growth is based on talent,
which itself is defined by its ability to create new jobs; that is,
economic growth. At the same time, he employs the term "talent" in an
extremely narrow sense. Apparently, if something has nothing to do with
job creation, it also has nothing to do with talent or creativity. All
forms of creativity are thus measured and compared according to a common
criterion.

[23](#c1-note-0023a){#c1-note-0023}  Richard Florida, *Cities and the
Creative Class* (New York: Routledge, 2005), p. 5.

[24](#c1-note-0024a){#c1-note-0024}  One study has reached the
conclusion that, despite mass participation, "a new form of
communicative elite has developed, namely digitally and technically
versed actors who inform themselves in this way, exchange ideas and thus
gain influence. For them, the possibilities of platforms mainly
represent an expansion of useful tools. Above all, the dissemination of
digital technology makes it easier for versed and highly networked
individuals to convey their news more simply -- and, for these groups of
people, it lowers the threshold for active participation." Michael
Bauer, "Digitale Technologien und Partizipation," in Clara Landler et
al. (eds), *Netzpolitik in Österreich: Internet, Macht, Menschenrechte*
(Krems: Donau-Universität Krems, 2013), pp. 219--24, at 224
\[--trans.\].

[25](#c1-note-0025a){#c1-note-0025}  Boltanski and Chiapello, *The New
Spirit of Capitalism*.

[26](#c1-note-0026a){#c1-note-0026}  According to Wikipedia,
"Heteronormativity is the belief that people fall into distinct and
complementary genders (man and woman) with natural roles in life. It
assumes that heterosexuality is the only sexual orientation or only
norm, and states that sexual and marital relations are most (or only)
fitting between people of opposite sexes."[]{#Page_179 type="pagebreak"
title="179"}

[27](#c1-note-0027a){#c1-note-0027}  Jannis Plastargias, *RotZSchwul:
Der Beginn einer Bewegung (1971--1975)* (Berlin: Querverlag, 2015).

[28](#c1-note-0028a){#c1-note-0028}  Helmut Ahrens et al. (eds),
*Tuntenstreit: Theoriediskussion der Homosexuellen Aktion Westberlin*
(Berlin: Rosa Winkel, 1975), p. 4.

[29](#c1-note-0029a){#c1-note-0029}  Susanne Regener and Katrin Köppert
(eds), *Privat/öffentlich: Mediale Selbstentwürfe von Homosexualität*
(Vienna: Turia + Kant, 2013).

[30](#c1-note-0030a){#c1-note-0030}  Such, for instance, was the
assessment of Manfred Bruns, the spokesperson for the Lesbian and Gay
Association in Germany, in his text "Schwulenpolitik früher" (link no
longer active). From today\'s perspective, however, the main problem
with this event was the unclear position of the Green Party with respect
to pedophilia. See Franz Walter et al. (eds), *Die Grünen und die
Pädosexualität: Eine bundesdeutsche Geschichte* (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck
& Ruprecht, 2014).

[31](#c1-note-0031a){#c1-note-0031}  "AIDS: Tödliche Seuche," *Der
Spiegel* 23 (1983) \[--trans.\].

[32](#c1-note-0032a){#c1-note-0032}  Quoted from Frank Niggemeier, "Gay
Pride: Schwules Selbst­bewußtsein aus dem Village," in Bernd Polster
(ed.), *West-Wind: Die Amerikanisierung Europas* (Cologne: Dumont,
1995), pp. 179--87, at 184 \[--trans.\].

[33](#c1-note-0033a){#c1-note-0033}  Quoted from Regener and Köppert,
*Privat/öffentlich*, p. 7 \[--trans.\].

[34](#c1-note-0034a){#c1-note-0034}  Hans-Peter Buba and László A.
Vaskovics, *Benachteiligung gleichgeschlechtlich orientierter Personen
und Paare: Studie im Auftrag des Bundesministerium der Justiz* (Cologne:
Bundes­anzeiger, 2001).

[35](#c1-note-0035a){#c1-note-0035}  This process of internal
differentiation has not yet reached its conclusion, and thus the
acronyms have become longer and longer: LGBPTTQQIIAA+ stands for

lesbian, gay, bisexual, pansexual, transgender, transsexual, queer,
questioning, intersex, intergender, asexual, ally.

[36](#c1-note-0036a){#c1-note-0036}  Judith Butler, *Gender Trouble:
Feminism and the Subversion of Identity* (New York: Routledge, 1989).

[37](#c1-note-0037a){#c1-note-0037}  Andreas Krass, "Queer Studies: Eine
Einführung," in Krass (ed.), *Queer denken: Gegen die Ordnung der
Sexualität* (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2003), pp. 7--27.

[38](#c1-note-0038a){#c1-note-0038}  Edward W. Said, *Orientalism* (New
York: Vintage Books, 1978).

[39](#c1-note-0039a){#c1-note-0039}  Kark August Wittfogel, *Oriental
Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power* (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1957).

[40](#c1-note-0040a){#c1-note-0040}  Silke Förschler, *Bilder des Harem:
Medienwandel und kultereller Austausch* (Berlin: Reimer, 2010).

[41](#c1-note-0041a){#c1-note-0041}  The selection and effectiveness of
these images is not a coincidence. Camel was one of the first brands of
cigarettes for []{#Page_180 type="pagebreak" title="180"}which
advertising, in the sense described above, was used in a systematic
manner.

[42](#c1-note-0042a){#c1-note-0042}  This would not exclude feelings of
regret about the loss of an exotic and romantic way of life, such as
those of T. E. Lawrence, whose activities in the Near East during the
First World War were memorialized in the film *Lawrence of Arabia*
(1962).

[43](#c1-note-0043a){#c1-note-0043}  Said has often been criticized,
however, for portraying orientalism so dominantly that there seems to be
no way out of the existing dependent relations. For an overview of the
debates that Said has instigated, see María do Mar Castro Varela and
Nikita Dhawan, *Postkoloniale Theorie: Eine kritische Ein­führung*
(Bielefeld: Transcript, 2005), pp. 37--46.

[44](#c1-note-0044a){#c1-note-0044}  "Migration führt zu 'hybrider'
Gesellschaft" (an interview with Homi K. Bhabha), *ORF Science*
(November 9, 2007), online \[--trans.\].

[45](#c1-note-0045a){#c1-note-0045}  Homi K. Bhabha, *The Location of
Culture* (New York: Routledge, 1994), p. 4.

[46](#c1-note-0046a){#c1-note-0046}  Elisabeth Bronfen and Benjamin
Marius, "Hybride Kulturen: Einleitung zur anglo-amerikanischen
Multikulturismusdebatte," in Bronfen et al. (eds), *Hybride Kulturen*
(Tübingen: Stauffenburg), pp. 1--30, at 8 \[--trans.\].

[47](#c1-note-0047a){#c1-note-0047}  "What Is Postcolonial Thinking? An
Interview with Achille Mbembe," *Eurozine* (December 2006), online.

[48](#c1-note-0048a){#c1-note-0048}  Migrants have always created their
own culture, which deals in various ways with the experience of
migration itself, but non-migrant populations have long tended to ignore
this. Things have now begun to change in this regard, for instance
through Imra Ayata and Bülent Kullukcu\'s compilation of songs by the
Turkish diaspora of the 1970s and 1980s: *Songs of Gastarbeiter*
(Munich: Trikont, 2013).

[49](#c1-note-0049a){#c1-note-0049}  The conference programs can be
found at: \<\>.

[50](#c1-note-0050a){#c1-note-0050}  "Deutschland entwickelt sich zu
einem attraktiven Einwanderungsland für hochqualifizierte Zuwanderer,"
press release by the CDU/CSU Alliance in the German Parliament (June 4,
2014), online \[--trans.\].

[51](#c1-note-0051a){#c1-note-0051}  Andreas Reckwitz, *Die Erfindung
der Kreativität: Zum Prozess gesellschaftlicher Ästhetisierung* (Berlin:
Suhrkamp, 2011), p. 180 \[--trans.\]. An English translation of this
book is forthcoming: *The Invention of Creativity: Modern Society and
the Culture of the New*, trans. Steven Black (Cambridge: Polity, 2017).

[52](#c1-note-0052a){#c1-note-0052}  Gert Selle, *Geschichte des Design
in Deutschland* (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2007).

[53](#c1-note-0053a){#c1-note-0053}  "Less Is More: The Design Ethos of
Dieter Rams," *SFMOMA* (June 29, 2011), online.[]{#Page_181
type="pagebreak" title="181"}

[54](#c1-note-0054a){#c1-note-0054}  The cybernetic perspective was
introduced to the field of design primarily by Buckminster Fuller. See
Diedrich Diederichsen and Anselm Franke, *The Whole Earth: California
and the Disappearance of the Outside* (Berlin: Sternberg, 2013).

[55](#c1-note-0055a){#c1-note-0055}  Clive Dilnot, "Design as a Socially
Significant Activity: An Introduction," *Design Studies* 3/3 (1982):
139--46.

[56](#c1-note-0056a){#c1-note-0056}  Victor J. Papanek, *Design for the
Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change* (New York: Pantheon, 1972),
p. 2.

[57](#c1-note-0057a){#c1-note-0057}  Reckwitz, *Die Erfindung der
Kreativität*.

[58](#c1-note-0058a){#c1-note-0058}  B. Joseph Pine and James H.
Gilmore, *The Experience Economy: Work Is Theater and Every Business Is
a Stage* (Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1999), p. ix (the
emphasis is original).

[59](#c1-note-0059a){#c1-note-0059}  Mona El Khafif, *Inszenierter
Urbanismus: Stadtraum für Kunst, Kultur und Konsum im Zeitalter der
Erlebnisgesellschaft* (Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag Dr. Müller, 2013).

[60](#c1-note-0060a){#c1-note-0060}  Konrad Becker and Martin Wassermair
(eds), *Phantom Kulturstadt* (Vienna: Löcker, 2009).

[61](#c1-note-0061a){#c1-note-0061}  See, for example, Andres Bosshard,
*Stadt hören: Klang­spaziergänge durch Zürich* (Zurich: NZZ Libro,
2009).

[62](#c1-note-0062a){#c1-note-0062}  "An alternate realty game (ARG),"
according to Wikipedia, "is an interactive networked narrative that uses
the real world as a platform and employs transmedia storytelling to
deliver a story that may be altered by players\' ideas or actions."

[63](#c1-note-0063a){#c1-note-0063}  Eric von Hippel, *Democratizing
Innovation* (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005).

[64](#c1-note-0064a){#c1-note-0064}  It is often the case that the
involvement of users simply serves to increase the efficiency of
production processes and customer service. Many activities that were
once undertaken at the expense of businesses now have to be carried out
by the customers themselves. See Günter Voss, *Der arbeitende Kunde:
Wenn Konsumenten zu unbezahlten Mitarbeitern werden* (Frankfurt am Main:
Campus, 2005).

[65](#c1-note-0065a){#c1-note-0065}  Beniger, *The Control Revolution*,
pp. 411--16.

[66](#c1-note-0066a){#c1-note-0066}  Louis Althusser, "Ideology and
Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation)," in
Althusser, *Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays*, trans. Ben Brewster
(New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971), pp. 127--86.

[67](#c1-note-0067a){#c1-note-0067}  Florian Becker et al. (eds),
*Gramsci lesen! Einstiege in die Gefängnis­hefte* (Hamburg: Argument,
2013), pp. 20--35.

[68](#c1-note-0068a){#c1-note-0068}  Guy Debord, *The Society of the
Spectacle*, trans. Fredy Perlman and Jon Supak (Detroit: Black & Red,
1977).

[69](#c1-note-0069a){#c1-note-0069}  Derrick de Kerckhove, "McLuhan and
the Toronto School of Communication," *Canadian Journal of
Communication* 14/4 (1989): 73--9.[]{#Page_182 type="pagebreak"
title="182"}

[70](#c1-note-0070a){#c1-note-0070}  Marshall McLuhan, *Understanding
Media: The Extensions of Man* (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964).

[71](#c1-note-0071a){#c1-note-0071}  Nam Jun Paik, "Exposition of Music
-- Electronic Television" (leaflet accompanying the exhibition). Quoted
from Zhang Ga, "Sounds, Images, Perception and Electrons," *Douban*
(March 3, 2016), online.

[72](#c1-note-0072a){#c1-note-0072}  Laura R. Linder, *Public Access
Television: America\'s Electronic Soapbox* (Westport, CT: Praeger,
1999).

[73](#c1-note-0073a){#c1-note-0073}  Hans Magnus Enzensberger,
"Constituents of a Theory of the Media," in Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick
Montfort (eds), *The New Media Reader* (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003),
pp. 259--75.

[74](#c1-note-0074a){#c1-note-0074}  Paul Groot, "Rabotnik TV,"
*Mediamatic* 2/3 (1988), online.

[75](#c1-note-0075a){#c1-note-0075}  Inke Arns, "Social Technologies:
Deconstruction, Subversion and the Utopia of Democratic Communication,"
*Medien Kunst Netz* (2004), online.

[76](#c1-note-0076a){#c1-note-0076}  The term was coined at a series of
conferences titled The Next Five Minutes (N5M), which were held in
Amsterdam from 1993 to 2003. See \<\>.

[77](#c1-note-0077a){#c1-note-0077}  Mark Dery, *Culture Jamming:
Hacking, Slashing and Sniping in the Empire of Signs* (Westfield: Open
Media, 1993); Luther Blisset et al., *Handbuch der
Kommunikationsguerilla*, 5th edn (Berlin: Assoziationen A, 2012).

[78](#c1-note-0078a){#c1-note-0078}  Critical Art Ensemble, *Electronic
Civil Disobedience and Other Unpopular Ideas* (New York: Autonomedia,
1996).

[79](#c1-note-0079a){#c1-note-0079}  Today this method is known as a
"distributed denial of service attack" (DDOS).

[80](#c1-note-0080a){#c1-note-0080}  Max Weber, *Economy and Society: An
Outline of Interpretive Sociology*, trans. Guenther Roth and Claus
Wittich (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1978), pp. 26--8.

[81](#c1-note-0081a){#c1-note-0081}  Ernst Friedrich Schumacher, *Small
Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered*, 8th edn (New York:
Harper Perennial, 2014).

[82](#c1-note-0082a){#c1-note-0082}  Fred Turner, *From Counterculture
to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Movement and the Rise of
Digital Utopianism* (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2006), p.
21. In this regard, see also the documentary films *Das Netz* by Lutz
Dammbeck (2003) and *All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace* by
Adam Curtis (2011).

[83](#c1-note-0083a){#c1-note-0083}  It was possible to understand
cybernetics as a language of free markets or also as one of centralized
planned economies. See Slava Gerovitch, *From Newspeak to Cyberspeak: A
History of Soviet Cybernetics* (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002). The
great interest of Soviet scientists in cybernetics rendered the term
rather suspicious in the West, where it was disassociated from
artificial intelligence.[]{#Page_183 type="pagebreak" title="183"}

[84](#c1-note-0084a){#c1-note-0084}  Claus Pias, "The Age of
Cybernetics," in Pias (ed.), *Cybernetics: The Macy Conferences
1946--1953* (Zurich: Diaphanes, 2016), pp. 11--27.

[85](#c1-note-0085a){#c1-note-0085}  Norbert Wiener, one of the
cofounders of cybernetics, explained this as follows in 1950: "In giving
the definition of Cybernetics in the original book, I classed
communication and control together. Why did I do this? When I
communicate with another person, I impart a message to him, and when he
communicates back with me he returns a related message which contains
information primarily accessible to him and not to me. When I control
the actions of another person, I communicate a message to him, and
although this message is in the imperative mood, the technique of
communication does not differ from that of a message of fact.
Furthermore, if my control is to be effective I must take cognizance of
any messages from him which may indicate that the order is understood
and has been obeyed." Norbert Wiener, *The Human Use of Human Beings:
Cybernetics and Society*, 2nd edn (London: Free Association Books,
1989), p. 16.

[86](#c1-note-0086a){#c1-note-0086}  Though presented here as distinct,
these interests could in fact be held by one and the same person. In
*From Counterculture to Cyberculture*, for instance, Turner discusses

countercultural entrepreneurs.

[87](#c1-note-0087a){#c1-note-0087}  Richard Brautigan, "All Watched
Over by Machines of Loving Grace," in *All Watched Over by Machines of
Loving Grace*, by Brautigan (San Francisco: The Communication Company,
1967).

[88](#c1-note-0088a){#c1-note-0088}  David D. Clark, "A Cloudy Crystal
Ball: Visions of the Future," *Internet Engineering Taskforce* (July
1992), online.

[89](#c1-note-0089a){#c1-note-0089}  Castells, *The Rise of the Network
Society*.

[90](#c1-note-0090a){#c1-note-0090}  Bill Gates, "An Open Letter to
Hobbyists," *Homebrew Computer Club Newsletter* 2/1 (1976): 2.

[91](#c1-note-0091a){#c1-note-0091}  Richard Stallman, "What Is Free
Software?", *GNU Operating System*, online.

[92](#c1-note-0092a){#c1-note-0092}  The fundamentally cooperative
nature of programming was recognized early on. See Gerald M. Weinberg,
*The Psychology of Computer Programming*, rev. edn (New York: Dorset
House, 1998 \[originally published in 1971\]).

[93](#c1-note-0093a){#c1-note-0093}  On the history of free software,
see Volker Grassmuck, *Freie Software: Zwischen Privat- und
Gemeineigentum* (Berlin: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 2002).

[94](#c1-note-0094a){#c1-note-0094}  In his first email on the topic, he
wrote: "Hello everybody out there \[...\]. I'm doing a (free) operating
system (just a hobby, won\'t be big and professional like gnu) \[...\].
This has been brewing since April, and is starting to get ready. I\'d
like any feedback on things people like/dislike." Linus Torvalds, "What
[]{#Page_184 type="pagebreak" title="184"}Would You Like to See Most in
Minix," *Usenet Group* (August 1991), online.

[95](#c1-note-0095a){#c1-note-0095}  ARD/ZDF, "Onlinestudie" (2015),
online.

[96](#c1-note-0096a){#c1-note-0096}  From 1997 to 2003, the average use
of online media in Germany climbed from 76 to 138 minutes per day, and
by 2013 it reached 169 minutes. Over the same span of time, the average
frequency of use increased from 3.3 to 4.4 days per week, and by 2013 it
was 5.8. From 2007 to 2013, the percentage of people who were members of
private social networks like Facebook grew from 15 percent to 46
percent. Of these, nearly 60 percent -- around 19 million people -- used
such services on a daily basis. The source of this information is the
article cited in the previous note.

[97](#c1-note-0097a){#c1-note-0097}  "Internet Access Is 'a Fundamental
Right'," *BBC News* (8 March 2010), online.

[98](#c1-note-0098a){#c1-note-0098}  Manuel Castells, *The Power of
Identity* (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), pp. 7--22.
:::
:::

[II]{.chapterNumber} [Forms]{.chapterTitle} {#c2}

::: {.section}
With the emergence of the internet around the turn of the millennium as
an omnipresent infrastructure for communication and coordination,
previously independent cultural developments began to spread beyond
their specific original contexts, mutually influencing and enhancing one
another, and becoming increasingly intertwined. Out of a disconnected
conglomeration of more or less marginalized practices, a new and
specific cultural environment thus took shape, usurping or marginalizing
an ever greater variety of cultural constellations. The following
discussion will focus on three *forms* of the digital condition; that
is, on those formal qualities that (notwithstanding all of its internal
conflicts and contradictions) lend a particular shape to this cultural
environment as a whole: *referentiality*, *communality*, and
*algorithmicity*. It is only because most of the cultural processes
operating under the digital condition are characterized by common formal
features such as these that it is reasonable to speak of the digital
condition in the singular.

"Referentiality" is a method with which individuals can inscribe
themselves into cultural processes and constitute themselves as
producers. Understood as shared social meaning, the arena of culture
entails that such an undertaking cannot be limited to the individual.
Rather, it takes place within a larger framework whose existence and
development depend on []{#Page_58 type="pagebreak" title="58"}communal
formations. "Algorithmicity" denotes those aspects of cultural processes
that are (pre-)arranged by the activities of machines. Algorithms
transform the vast quantities of data and information that characterize
so many facets of present-day life into dimensions and formats that can
be registered by human perception. It is impossible to read the content
of billions of websites. Therefore we turn to services such as Google\'s
search algorithm, which reduces the data flood ("big data") to a
manageable amount and translates it into a format that humans can
understand ("small data"). Without them, human beings could not
comprehend or do anything within a culture built around digital
technologies, but they influence our understanding and activity in an
ambivalent way. They create new dependencies by pre-sorting and making
the (informational) world available to us, yet simultaneously ensure our
autonomy by providing the preconditions that enable us to act.
:::

::: {.section}
Referentiality {#c2-sec-0002}
--------------

In the digital condition, one of the methods (if not *the* most
fundamental method) enabling humans to participate -- alone or in groups
-- in the collective negotiation of meaning is the system of creating
references. In a number of arenas, referential processes play an
important role in the assignment of both meaning and form. According to
the art historian André Rottmann, for instance, "one might claim that
working with references has in recent years become the dominant
production-aesthetic model in contemporary
art."[^1^](#c2-note-0001){#c2-note-0001a} This burgeoning engagement
with references, however, is hardly restricted to the world of
contemporary art. Referentiality is a feature of many processes that
encompass the operations of various genres of professional and everyday
culture. In its essence, it is the use of materials that are already
equipped with meaning -- as opposed to so-called raw material -- to
create new meanings. The referential techniques used to achieve this are
extremely diverse, a fact reflected in the numerous terms that exist to
describe them: re-mix, re-make, re-enactment, appropriation, sampling,
meme, imitation, homage, tropicália, parody, quotation, post-production,
re-performance, []{#Page_59 type="pagebreak" title="59"}camouflage,
(non-academic) research, re-creativity, mashup, transformative use, and
so on.

These processes have two important aspects in common: the
recognizability of the sources and the freedom to deal with them however
one likes. The first creates an internal system of references from which
meaning and aesthetics are derived in an essential
manner.[^2^](#c2-note-0002){#c2-note-0002a} The second is the
precondition enabling the creation of something that is both new and on
the same level as the re-used material. This represents a clear
departure from the historical--critical method, which endeavors to embed
a source in its original context in order to re-determine its meaning,
but also a departure from classical forms of rendition such as
translations, adaptations (for instance, adapting a book for a film), or
cover versions, which, though they translate a work into another
language or medium, still attempt to preserve its original meaning.
Re-mixes produced by DJs are one example of the referential treatment of
source material. In his book on the history of DJ culture, the
journalist Ulf Poschardt notes: "The remixer isn\'t concerned with
salvaging authenticity, but with creating a new
authenticity."[^3^](#c2-note-0003){#c2-note-0003a} For instead of
distancing themselves from the past, which would follow the (Western)
logic of progress or the spirit of the avant-garde, these processes
refer explicitly to precursors and to existing material. In one and the
same gesture, both one\'s own new position and the context and cultural
tradition that is being carried on in one\'s own work are constituted
performatively; that is, through one\'s own activity in the moment. I
will discuss this phenomenon in greater depth below.

To work with existing cultural material is, in itself, nothing new. In
modern montages, artists likewise drew upon available texts, images, and
treated materials. Yet there is an important difference: montages were
concerned with bringing together seemingly incongruous but stable
"finished pieces" in a more or less unmediated and fragmentary manner.
This is especially clear in the collages by the Dadaists or in
Expressionist literature such as Alfred Döblin\'s *Berlin
Alexanderplatz*. In these works, the experience of Modernity\'s many
fractures -- its fragmentation and turmoil -- was given a new aesthetic
form. In his reference to montages, Adorno thus observed that the
"negation of synthesis becomes a principle []{#Page_60 type="pagebreak"
title="60"}of form."[^4^](#c2-note-0004){#c2-note-0004a} At least for a
brief moment, he considered them an adequate expression for the
impossibility of reconciling the contradictions of capitalist culture.
Influenced by Adorno, the literary theorist Peter Bürger went so far as
to call the montage the true "paradigm of
modernity."[^5^](#c2-note-0005){#c2-note-0005a} In today\'s referential
processes, on the contrary, pieces are not brought together as much as
they are integrated into one another by being altered, adapted, and
transformed. Unlike the older arrangement, it is not the fissures
between elements that are foregrounded but rather their synthesis in the
present. Conchita Wurst, the bearded diva, is not torn between two
conflicting poles. Rather, she represents a successful synthesis --
something new and harmonious that distinguishes itself by showcasing
elements of the old order (man/woman) and simultaneously transcending
them.

This synthesis, however, is usually just temporary, for at any time it
can itself serve as material for yet another rendering. Of course, this
is far easier to pull off with digital objects than with analog objects,
though these categories have become increasingly porous and thus
increasingly problematic as opposites. More and more objects exist both
in an analog and in a digital form. Think of photographs and slides,
which have become so easy to digitalize. Even three-dimensional objects
can now be scanned and printed. In the future, programmable materials
with controllable and reversible features will cause the difference
between the two domains to vanish: analog is becoming more and more
digital.

Montages and referential processes can only become widespread methods
if, in a given society, cultural objects are available in three
different respects. The first is economic and organizational: they must
be affordable and easily accessible. Whoever is unable to afford books
or get hold of them by some other means will not be able to reconfigure
any texts. The second is cultural: working with cultural objects --
which can always create deviations from the source in unpredictable ways
-- must not be treated as taboo or illegal, but rather as an everyday
activity without any special preconditions. It is much easier to
manipulate a text from a secular newspaper than one from a religious
canon. The third is material: it must be possible to use the material
and to change it.[^6[]{#Page_61 type="pagebreak"
title="61"}^](#c2-note-0006){#c2-note-0006a}

In terms of this third form of availability, montages differ from
referential processes, for cultural objects can be integrated into one
another -- instead of simply being placed side by side -- far more
readily when they are digitally coded. Information is digitally coded
when it is stored by means of a limited system of discrete (that is,
separated by finite intervals or distances) signs that are meaningless
in themselves. This allows information to be copied from one carrier to
another without any loss and it allows the respective signs, whether
individually or in groups, to be arranged freely. Seen in this way,
digital coding is not necessarily bound to computers but can rather be
realized with all materials: a mosaic is a digital process in which
information is coded by means of variously colored tiles, just as a
digital image consists of pixels. In the case of the mosaic, of course,
the resolution is far lower. Alphabetic writing is a form of coding
linguistic information by means of discrete signs that are, in
themselves, meaningless. Consequently, Florian Cramer has argued that
"every form of literature that is recorded alphabetically and not based
on analog parameters such as ideograms or orality is already digital in
that it is stored in discrete
signs."[^7^](#c2-note-0007){#c2-note-0007a} However, the specific
features of the alphabet, as Marshall McLuhan repeatedly underscored,
did not fully develop until the advent of the printing
press.[^8^](#c2-note-0008){#c2-note-0008a} It was the printing press, in
other words, that first abstracted written signs from analog handwriting
and transformed them into standardized symbols that could be repeated
without any loss of information. In this practical sense, the printing
press made writing digital, with the result that dealing with texts soon
became radically different.

::: {.section}
### Information overload 1.0 {#c2-sec-0003}

The printing press made texts available in the three respects mentioned
above. For one thing, their number increased rapidly, while their price
significantly sank. During the first two generations after Gutenberg\'s
invention -- that is, between 1450 and 1500 -- more books were produced
than during the thousand years
before.[^9^](#c2-note-0009){#c2-note-0009a} And that was just the
beginning. Dealing with books and their content changed from the ground
up. In manuscript culture, every new copy represented a potential
degradation of the original, and therefore []{#Page_62 type="pagebreak"
title="62"}the oldest sources (those that had undergone as little
corruption as possible) were valued above all. With the advent of print
culture, the idea took hold that texts could be improved by the process
of editing, not least because the availability of old sources, through
reprints and facsimiles, had also improved dramatically. Pure
reproduction was mechanized and overcome as a cultural challenge.

According to the historian Elizabeth Eisenstein, one of the first
consequences of the greatly increased availability of the printed book
was that it overcame the "tyranny of major authorities, which was common
in small libraries."[^10^](#c2-note-0010){#c2-note-0010a} Scientists
were now able to compare texts with one another and critique them to an
unprecedented extent. Their general orientation turned around: instead
of looking back in order to preserve what they knew, they were now
looking ahead toward what they might not (yet) know.

In order to organize this information flood of rapidly amassing texts,
it was necessary to create new conventions: books were now specified by
their author, publisher, and date of publication, not to mention
furnished with page numbers. This enabled large numbers of texts to be
catalogued and every individual text -- indeed, every single passage --
to be referenced.[^11^](#c2-note-0011){#c2-note-0011a} Scientists could
legitimize the pursuit of new knowledge by drawing attention to specific
mistakes or gaps in existing texts. In the scientific culture that was
developing at the time, the close connection between old and new
ma­terial was not simply regarded as something positive; it was also
urgently prescribed as a method of argumentation. Every text had to
contain an internal system of references, and this was the basis for the
development of schools, disciplines, and specific discourses.

The digital character of printed writing also made texts available in
the third respect mentioned above. Because discrete signs could be
reproduced without any loss of information, it was possible not only to
make perfect copies but also to remove content from one carrier and
transfer it to another. Materials were no longer simply arranged
sequentially, as in medieval compilations and almanacs, but manipulated
to give rise to a new and independent fluid text. A set of conventions
was developed -- one that remains in use today -- for modifying embedded
or quoted material in order for it []{#Page_63 type="pagebreak"
title="63"}to fit into its new environment. In this manner, quotations
could be altered in such a way that they could be integrated seamlessly
into a new text while remaining recognizable as direct citations.
Several of these conventions, for instance the use of square brackets to
indicate additions ("\[ \]") or ellipses to indicate omissions ("..."),
are also used in this very book. At the same time, the conventions for
making explicit references led to the creation of an internal reference
system that made the singular position of the new text legible within a
collective field of work. "Printing," to quote Elizabeth Eisenstein once
again, "encouraged forms of combinatory activity which were social as
well as intellectual. It changed relationships between men of learning
as well as between systems of
ideas."[^12^](#c2-note-0012){#c2-note-0012a} Exchange between scholars,
in the form of letters and visits, intensified. The seventeenth century
saw the formation of the *respublica literaria* or the "Republic of
Letters," a loose network of scholars devoted to promoting the ideas of
the Enlightenment. Beginning in the eighteenth century, the rapidly
growing number of scientific fields was arranged and institutionalized
into clearly distinct disciplines. In the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, diverse media-technical innovations made images, sounds, and
moving images available, though at first only in analog formats. These
created the preconditions that enabled the montage in all of its forms
-- film cuts, collages, readymades, *musique concrète*, found-footage
films, literary cut-ups, and artistic assemblages (to name only the
best-known genres) -- to become the paradigm of Modernity.
:::

::: {.section}
### Information overload 2.0 {#c2-sec-0004}

It was not until new technical possibilities for recording, storing,
processing, and reproduction appeared over the course of the 1990s that
it also became increasingly possible to code and edit images, audio, and
video digitally. Through the networking that was taking place not far
behind, society was flooded with an unprecedented amount of digit­ally
coded information *of every sort*, and the circulation of this
information accelerated. This was not, however, simply a quantitative
change but also and above all a qualitative one. Cultural materials
became available in a comprehensive []{#Page_64 type="pagebreak"
title="64"}sense -- economically and organizationally, culturally
(despite legal problems), and materially (because digitalized). Today it
would not be bold to predict that nearly every text, image, or sound
will soon exist in a digital form. Most of the new reproducible works
are already "born digital" and digit­ally distributed, or they are
physically produced according to digital instructions. Many initiatives
are working to digitalize older, analog works. We are now anchored in
the digital.

Among the numerous digitalization projects currently under way, the most
ambitious is that of Google Books, which, since its launch in 2004, has
digitalized around 20 million books from the collections of large
libraries and prepared them for full-text searches. Right from the
start, a fierce debate arose about the legal and cultural acceptability
of this project. One concern was whether Google\'s process infringed
upon the rights of the authors and publishers of the scanned books or
whether, according to American law, it qualified as "fair use," in which
case there would be no obligation for the company to seek authorization
or offer compensation. The second main concern was whether it would be
culturally or politically appropriate for a private corporation to hold
a de facto monopoly over the digital heritage of book culture. The first
issue incited a complex legal battle that, in 2013, was decided in
Google\'s favor by a judge on the United States District Court in New
York.[^13^](#c2-note-0013){#c2-note-0013a} At the heart of the second
issue was the question of how a public library should look in the
twenty-first century.[^14^](#c2-note-0014){#c2-note-0014a} In November
of 2008, the European Commission and the cultural minister of the
European Union launched the virtual Europeana library, which occurred
after a number of European countries had already invested hundreds of
millions of euros in various digitalization
initiatives.[^15^](#c2-note-0015){#c2-note-0015a} Today, Europeana
serves as a common access point to the online archives of around 2,500
European cultural institutions. By the end of 2015, its digital holdings
had grown to include more than 40 million objects. This is still,
however, a relatively small number, for it has been estimated that
European archives and museums contain more than 220 million
natural-historical and more than 260 million cultural-historical
objects. In the United States, discussions about the future of libraries
[]{#Page_65 type="pagebreak" title="65"}led to the 2013 launch of the
Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), which, like Europeana,
provides common access to the digitalized holdings of archives, museums,
and libraries. By now, more than 14 million items can be viewed there.

In one way or another, however, both the private and the public projects
of this sort have been limited by binding copyright laws. The librarian
and book historian Robert Darnton, one of the most prominent advocates
of the Digital Public Library of America, has accordingly stated: "The
main impediment to the DPLA\'s growth is legal, not financial. Copyright
laws could exclude everything published after 1964, most works published
after 1923, and some that go back as far as
1873."[^16^](#c2-note-0016){#c2-note-0016a} The legal situation in
Europe is similar to that in the United States. It, too, massively
obstructs the work of public
institutions.[^17^](#c2-note-0017){#c2-note-0017a} In many cases, this
has had the absurd consequence that certain materials, though they have
been fully digitalized, may only be accessed in part or exclusively
inside the facilities of a particular institution. Whereas companies
such as Google can afford to wage long legal battles, and in the
meantime create precedents, public institutions must proceed with great
caution, not least to avoid the accusation of using public funds to
violate copyright laws. Thus, they tend to fade into the background and
leave users, who are unfamiliar with the complex legal situation, with
the impression that they are even more out-of-date than they often are.

Informal actors, who explicitly operate beyond the realm of copyright
law, are not faced with such restrictions. UbuWeb, for instance, which
is the largest online archive devoted to the history of
twentieth-century avant-garde art, was not created by an art museum but
rather by the initiative of an individual artist, Kenneth Goldsmith.
Since 1996, he has been collecting historically relevant materials that
were no longer in distribution and placing them online for free and
without any stipulations. He forgoes the process of obtaining the rights
to certain works of art because, as he remarks on the website, "Let\'s
face it, if we had to get permission from everyone on UbuWeb, there
would be no UbuWeb."[^18^](#c2-note-0018){#c2-note-0018a} It would
simply be too demanding to do so. Because he pursues the project without
any financial interest and has saved so much []{#Page_66
type="pagebreak" title="66"}from oblivion, his efforts have provoked
hardly any legal difficulties. On the contrary, UbuWeb has become so
important that Goldsmith has begun to receive more and more material
directly from artists and their heirs, who would like certain works not
to be forgotten. Nevertheless, or perhaps for this very reason,
Goldsmith repeatedly stresses the instability of his archive, which
could disappear at any moment if he loses interest in maintaining it or
if something else happens. Users are therefore able to download works
from UbuWeb and archive, on their own, whatever items they find most
important. Of course, this fragility contradicts the idea of an archive
as a place for long-term preservation. Yet such a task could only be
undertaken by an institution that is oriented toward the long term.
Because of the existing legal conditions, however, it is hardly likely
that such an institution will come about.

Whereas Goldsmith is highly adept at operating within a niche that not
only tolerates but also accepts the violation of formal copyright
claims, large websites responsible for the uncontrolled dissemination of
digital content do not bother with such niceties. Their purpose is
rather to ensure that all popular content is made available digitally
and for free, whether legally or not. These sites, too, have experienced
uninterrupted growth. By the end of 2015, dozens of millions of people
were simultaneously using the BitTorrent tracker The Pirate Bay -- the
largest nodal point for file-sharing networks during the last decade --
to exchange several million digital files with one
another.[^19^](#c2-note-0019){#c2-note-0019a} And this was happening
despite protracted attempts to block or close down the file-sharing site
by legal means and despite a variety of competing services. Even when
the founders of the website were sentenced in Sweden to pay large fines
(around €3 million) and to serve time in prison, the site still did not
disappear from the internet.[^20^](#c2-note-0020){#c2-note-0020a} At the
same time, new providers have entered the market of free access; their
method is not to facilitate distributed downloads but rather to offer,
on account of the drastically reduced cost of data transfers, direct
streaming. Although some of these services are relatively easy to locate
and some have been legally banned -- the best-known case in Germany
being that of the popular site kino.to -- more of them continue to
appear.[^21^](#c2-note-0021){#c2-note-0021a} Moreover, this phenomenon
[]{#Page_67 type="pagebreak" title="67"}is not limited to music and
films, but encompasses all media formats. For instance, it is
foreseeable that the number of freely available plans for 3D objects
will increase along with the popularity of 3D printing. It has almost
escaped notice, however, that so-called "shadow libraries" have been
popping up everywhere; the latter are not accessible to the public but
rather to members, for instance, of closed exchange platforms or of
university intranets. Few seminars take place any more without a corpus
of scanned texts, regardless of whether this practice is legal or
not.[^22^](#c2-note-0022){#c2-note-0022a}

The lines between these different mechanisms of access are highly
permeable. Content acquired legally can make its way to file-sharing
networks as an illegal copy; content available for free can be sold in
special editions; content from shadow libraries can make its way to
publicly accessible sites; and, conversely, content that was once freely
available can disappear into shadow libraries. As regards free access,
the details of this rapidly changing landscape are almost
inconsequential, for the general trend that has emerged from these
various dynamics -- legal and illegal, public and private -- is
unambiguous: in a comprehensive and practical sense, cultural works of
all sorts will become freely available despite whatever legal and
technical restrictions might be in place. Whether absolutely all
material will be made available in this way is not the decisive factor,
at least not for the individual, for, as the German Library Association
has stated, "it is foreseeable that non-digitalized material will
increasingly escape the awareness of users, who have understandably come
to appreciate the ubiquitous availability and more convenient
processability of the digital versions of analog
objects."[^23^](#c2-note-0023){#c2-note-0023a} In this context of excess
information, it is difficult to determine whether a particular work or a
crucial reference is missing, given that a multitude of other works and
references can be found in their place.

At the same time, prodigious amounts of new material are being produced
that, before the era of digitalization and networks, never could have
existed at all or never would have left the private sphere. An example
of this is amateur photography. This is nothing new in itself; as early
as 1899, Kodak was marketing its films and apparatus with the slogan
"You press the button, we do the rest," and ever since, []{#Page_68
type="pagebreak" title="68"}drawers and albums have been overflowing
with photographs. With the advent of digitalization, however, certain
economic and material limitations ceased to exist that, until then, had
caused most private photographers to think twice about how many shots
they wanted to take. After all, they had to pay for the film to be
developed and then store the pictures somewhere. Cameras also became
increasingly "intelligent," which improved the technical quality of
photo­graphs. Even complex procedures such as increasing the level of
detail or the contrast ratio -- the difference between an image\'s
brightest and darkest points -- no longer require any specialized
knowledge of photochemical processes in the darkroom. Today, such
features are often pre-installed in many cameras as an option (high
dynamic range). Ever since the introduction of built-in digital cameras
for smartphones, anyone with such a device can take pictures everywhere
and at any time and then store them digitally. Images can then be posted
on online platforms and shared with others. By the middle of 2015,
Flickr -- the largest but certainly not the only specialized platform of
this sort -- had more than 112 million registered users participating in
more than 2 million groups. Every user has access to free storage space
for about half a million of his or her own pictures. At that point, in
other words, the platform was equipped to manage more than 55 billion
photographs. Around 3.5 million images were being uploaded every day,
many of which could be accessed by anyone. This may seem like a lot, but
in reality it is just a small portion of the pictures that are posted
online on a daily basis. Around that same time -- again, the middle of
2015 -- approximately 350 million pictures were being posted on Facebook
*every day*. The total number of photographs saved there has been
estimated to be 250 billion. In addition, there are also large platforms
for professional "stock photos" (supplies of pre-produced images that
are supposed to depict generic situations) and the databanks of
professional agencies such Getty Images or Corbis. All of these images
can be found easily and acquired quickly (though not always for free).
Yet photography is not unique in this regard. In all fields, the number
of cultural artifacts available to the public on specialized platforms
has been increasing rapidly in recent years.[]{#Page_69 type="pagebreak"
title="69"}
:::

::: {.section}
### The great disorder {#c2-sec-0005}

The old orders that had been responsible for filtering, organ­izing, and
publishing cultural material -- culture industries, mass media,
libraries, museums, archives, etc. -- are incapable of managing almost
any aspect of this deluge. They can barely function as gatekeepers any
more between those realms that, with their help, were once defined as
"private" and "public." Their decisions about what is or is not
important matter less and less. Moreover, having already been subjected
to a decades-long critique, their rules, which had been relatively
binding and formative over long periods of time, are rapidly losing
practical significance.

Even Europeana, a relatively small project based on trad­itional museums
and archives and with a mandate to make the European cultural heritage
available online, has contributed to the disintegration of established
orders: it indiscriminately brings together 2,500 previously separated
institutions. The specific semantic contexts that formerly shaped the
history and orientation of institutions have been dissolved or reduced
to dry meta-data, and millions upon millions of cultural artifacts are
now equidistant from one another. Instead of certain artifacts being
firmly anchored in a location, for instance in an ethnographic
collection devoted to the colonial history of France, it is now possible
for everything to exist side by side. Europeana is not an archive in the
traditional sense, or even a museum with a fixed and meaningful order;
rather, it is just a standard database. Everything in it is just one
search request away, and every search generates a unique order in the
form of a sequence of visible artifacts. As a result, individual objects
are freed from those meta-narratives, created by the museums and
archives that preserve them, which situate them within broader contexts
and assign more or less clear meanings to them. They consequently become
more open to interpretation. A search result does not articulate an
interpretive field of reference but merely a connection, created by
constantly changing search algorithms, between a request and the corpus
of material, which is likewise constantly changing.

Precisely because it offers so many different approaches to more or less
freely combinable elements of information, []{#Page_70 type="pagebreak"
title="70"}the order of the database no longer really provides a
framework for interpreting search results in a meaningful way.
Al­together, the meaning of many objects and signs is becoming even more
uncertain. On the one hand, this is because the connection to their
original context is becoming fragile; on the other hand, it is because
they can appear in every possible combination and in the greatest
variety of reception contexts. In less official archives and in less
specialized search engines, the dissolution of context is far more
pronounced than it is in the case of the Europeana project. For the sake
of orienting its users, for instance, YouTube provides the date when a
video has been posted, but there is no indication of when a video was
actually produced. Further information provided about a video, for
example in the comments section, is essentially unreliable. It might be
true -- or it might not. The internet researcher David Weinberger has
called this the "new digital disorder," which, at least for many users,
is an entirely apt description.[^24^](#c2-note-0024){#c2-note-0024a} For
individuals, this disorder has created both the freedom to establish
their own orders and the obligation of doing so, regardless of whether
or not they are ready for the task.

This tension between freedom and obligation is at its strongest online,
where the excess of culture and its more or less free availability are
immediate and omnipresent. In fact, everything that can be retrieved
online is culture in the sense that everything -- from the deepest layer
of hardware to the most superficial tweet -- has been made by someone
with a particular intention, and everything has been made to fit a
particular order. And it is precisely this excess of often contradictory
meanings and limited, regional, and incompatible orders that leads to
disorder and meaninglessness. This is not limited to the online world,
however, because the latter is not self-contained. In an essential way,
digital media also serve to organize the material world. On the basis of
extremely complex and opaque yet highly efficient logistical and
production processes, people are also confronted with constantly
changing material things about whose origins and meanings they have
little idea. Even something as simple to produce as yoghurt usually has
a thousand kilometers behind it before it ends up on a shelf in the
supermarket. The logistics that enable this are oriented toward
flexibility; []{#Page_71 type="pagebreak" title="71"}they bring elements
together as efficiently as possible. It is nearly impossible for final
customers to find out anything about the ingredients. Customers are
merely supposed to be oriented by signs and notices such as "new" or "as
before," "natural," and "healthy," which are written by specialists and
meant to manipulate shoppers as much as the law allows. Even here, in
corporeal everyday life, every individual has to deal with a surge of
excess and disorder that threatens to erode the original meaning
conferred on every object -- even where such meaning was once entirely
unproblematic, as in the case of
yoghurt.[^25^](#c2-note-0025){#c2-note-0025a}
:::

::: {.section}
### Selecting and organizing {#c2-sec-0006}

In this situation, the creation of one\'s own system of references has
become a ubiquitous and generally accessible method for organizing all
of the ambivalent things that one encounters on a given day. Such things
are thus arranged within a specific context of meaning that also
(co)determines one\'s own relation to the world and subjective position
in it. Referentiality takes place through three types of activity, the
first being simply to attract attention to certain things, which affirms
(at least implicitly) that they are important. With every single picture
posted on Flickr, every tweet, every blog post, every forum post, and
every status update, the user is doing exactly that; he or she is
communicating to others: "Look over here! I think this is important!" Of
course, there is nothing new to filtering and allocating meaning. What
is new, however, is that these processes are no longer being carried out
primarily by specialists at editorial offices, museums, or archives, but
have become daily requirements for a large portion of the population,
regardless of whether they possess the material and cultural resources
that are necessary for the task.
:::

::: {.section}
### The loop through the body {#c2-sec-0007}

Given the flood of information that perpetually surrounds everyone, the
act of focusing attention and reducing vast numbers of possibilities
into something concrete has become a productive achievement, however
banal each of these micro-activities might seem on its own, and even if,
at first, []{#Page_72 type="pagebreak" title="72"}the only concern might
be to focus the attention of the person doing it. The value of this
(often very brief) activity is that it singles out elements from the
uniform sludge of unmanageable complexity. Something plucked out in this
way gains value because it has required the use of a resource that
cannot be reproduced, that exists outside of the world of information
and that is invariably limited for every individual: our own lifetime.
Every status update that is not machine-generated means that someone has
invested time, be it only a second, in order to point to this and not to
something else. Thus, a process of validating what exists in the excess
takes place in connection with the ultimate scarcity -- our own
lifetimes, our own bodies. Even if the value generated by this act is
minimal or diffuse, it is still -- to borrow from Gregory Bateson\'s
famous definition of information -- a difference that makes a difference
in this stream of equivalencies and
meaninglessness.[^26^](#c2-note-0026){#c2-note-0026a} This singling out
-- this use of one\'s own body to generate meaning -- does not, however,
take place by means of mere micro-activities throughout the day; it is
also a defining aspect of complex cultural strategies. In recent years,
re-enactment (that is, the re-staging of historical situ­ations and
events) has established itself as a common practice in contemporary art.
Unlike traditional re-enactments, such as those of historically
significant battles, which attempt to represent the past as faithfully
as possible, "artistic re-enactments," according to the curator Inke
Arns, "are not an affirmative confirmation of the past; rather, they are
*questionings* of the present through reaching back to historical
events," especially as they are represented in images and other forms of
documentation. Thanks to search engines and databases, such
representations are more or less always present, though in the form of
indeterminate images, ambivalent documents, and contentious
interpretations. Artists in this situation, as Arns explains,

::: {.extract}
do not ask the naïve question about what really happened outside of the
history represented in the media -- the "authenticity" beyond the images
-- instead, they ask what the images we see might mean concretely to us,
if we were to experience these situations personally. In this way the
artistic reenactment confronts the general feeling of insecurity about
the meaning []{#Page_73 type="pagebreak" title="73"}of images by using a
paradoxical approach: through erasing distance to the images and at the
same time distancing itself from the
images.[^27^](#c2-note-0027){#c2-note-0027a}
:::

This paradox manifests itself in that the images are appropriated and
sublated through the use of one\'s own body in the re-enactments. They
simultaneously refer to the past and create a new reality in the
present. In perhaps the best-known re-enactment of this type, the artist
Jeremy Deller revived, in 2001, the Battle of Orgreave, one of the
central episodes of the British miners\' strike of 1984 and 1985. This
historical event is regarded as a turning point in the protracted
conflict between Margaret Thatcher\'s government and the labor unions --
a key moment in the implementation of Great Britain\'s neoliberal
regime, which is still in effect today. In Deller\'s re-enactment, the
heart of the matter is not historical accuracy, which is always
controversial in such epoch-changing events. Rather, he focuses on the
former participants -- the miners and police officers alike, who, along
with non-professional actors, lived through the situation again -- in
order to explore both the distance from the events and their
representation in the media, as well as their ongoing biographical and
societal presence.[^28^](#c2-note-0028){#c2-note-0028a}

Elaborate practices of embodying medial images through processes of
appropriation and distancing have also found their way into popular
culture, for instance in so-called "cosplay." The term, which is a
contraction of the words "costume" and "play," was coined by a Japanese
man named Nobuyuki Takahashi. In 1984, while attending the World Science
Fiction Convention in Los Angeles, he used the word to describe the
practice of certain attendees to dress up as their favorite characters.
Participants in cosplay embody fictitious figures -- mostly from the
worlds of science fiction, comics/manga, or computer games -- by donning
home-made costumes and striking characteristic
poses.[^29^](#c2-note-0029){#c2-note-0029a} The often considerable
effort that goes into this is mostly reflected in the costumes, not in
the choreography or dramaturgy of the performance. What is significant
is that these costumes are usually not exact replicas but are rather
freely adapted by each player to represent the character as he or she
interprets it to be. Accordingly, "Cosplay is a form of appropriation
[]{#Page_74 type="pagebreak" title="74"}that transforms, actualizes and
performs an existing story in close connection to the fan\'s own
identity."[^30^](#c2-note-0030){#c2-note-0030a} This practice,
admittedly, goes back quite far in the history of fan culture, but it
has experienced a striking surge through the opportunity for fans to
network with one another around the world, to produce costumes and
images of professional quality, and to place themselves on the same
level as their (fictitious) idols. By now it has become a global
subculture whose members are active not only online but also at hundreds
of conventions throughout the world. In Germany, an annual cosplay
competition has been held since 2007 (it is organized by the Frankfurt
Book Fair and Animexx, the country\'s largest manga and anime
community). The scene, which has grown and branched out considerably
over the past few years, has slowly begun to professionalize, with
shops, books, and players who make paid appearances. Even in fan
culture, stars are born. As soon as the subculture has exceeded a
certain size, this gradual onset of commercialization will undoubtedly
lead to tensions within the community. For now, however, two of its
noteworthy features remain: the power of the desire to appropriate, in a
bodily manner, characters from vast cultural universes, and the
widespread combination of free interpretation and meticulous attention
to detail.
:::

::: {.section}
### Lineages and transformations {#c2-sec-0008}

Because of the great effort tha they require, re-enactment and cosplay
are somewhat extreme examples of singling out, appropriating, and
referencing. As everyday activities that almost take place incidentally,
however, these three practices usually do not make any significant or
lasting differences. Yet they do not happen just once, but over and over
again. They accumulate and thus constitute referentiality\'s second type
of activity: the creation of connections between the many things that
have attracted attention. In such a way, paths are forged through the
vast complexity. These paths, which can be formed, for instance, by
referring to different things one after another, likewise serve to
produce and filter meaning. Things that can potentially belong in
multiple contexts are brought into a single, specific context. For the
individual []{#Page_75 type="pagebreak" title="75"}producer, this is how
fields of attention, reference systems, and contexts of meaning are
first established. In the third step, the things that have been selected
and brought together are changed. Perhaps something is removed to modify
the meaning, or perhaps something is added that was previously absent or
unavailable. Either way, referential culture is always producing
something new.

These processes are applied both within individual works (referentiality
in a strict sense) and within currents of communication that consist of
numerous molecular acts (referentiality in a broader sense). This latter
sort of compilation is far more widespread than the creation of new
re-mix works. Consider, for example, the billionfold sequences of status
updates, which sometimes involve a link to an interesting video,
sometimes a post of a photograph, then a short list of favorite songs, a
top 10 chart from one\'s own feed, or anything else. Such methods of
inscribing oneself into the world by means of references, combinations,
or alterations are used to create meaning through one\'s own activity in
the world and to constitute oneself in it, both for one\'s self and for
others. In a culture that manifests itself to a great extent through
mediatized communication, people have to constitute themselves through
such acts, if only by posting
"selfies."[^31^](#c2-note-0031){#c2-note-0031a} Not to do so would be to
risk invisibility and being forgotten.

On this basis, a genuine digital folk culture of re-mixing and mashups
has formed in recent years on online platforms, in game worlds, but also
through cultural-economic productions of individual pieces or short
series. It is generated and maintained by innumerable people with
varying degrees of intensity and ambition. Its common feature with
trad­itional folk culture, in choirs or elsewhere, is that production
and reception (but also reproduction and creation) largely coincide.
Active participation admittedly requires a certain degree of
proficiency, interest, and engagement, but usually not any extraordinary
talent. Many classical institutions such as museums and archives have
been attempting to take part in this folk culture by setting up their
own re-mix services. They know that the "public" is no longer able or
willing to limit its engagement with works of art and cultural history
to one of quiet contemplation. At the end of 2013, even []{#Page_76
type="pagebreak" title="76"}the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin
initiated a re-mix competition. A year earlier, the Rijksmuseum in
Amsterdam launched so-called "Rijksstudios." Since then, the museum has
made available on its website more than 200,000 high-resolution images
from its collection. Users are free to use these to create their own
re-mixes online and share them with others. Interestingly, the
Rijksmuseum does not distinguish between the work involved in
transforming existing pieces and that involved in curating its own
online gallery.

Referential processes have no beginning and no end. Any material that is
used to make something new has a pre-history of its own, even if its
traces are lost in clouds of uncertainty. Upon closer inspection, this
cloud might clear a little bit, but it is extremely uncommon for a
genuine beginning -- a *creatio ex nihilo* -- to be revealed. This
raises the question of whether there can really be something like
originality in the emphatic sense.[^32^](#c2-note-0032){#c2-note-0032a}
Regardless of the answer to this question, the fact that by now many
people select, combine, and alter objects on a daily basis has led to a
slow shift in our perception and sensibilities. In light of the
experiences that so many people are creating, the formerly exotic
theories of deconstruction suddenly seem anything but outlandish. Nearly
half a century ago, Roland Barthes defined the text as a fabric of
quotations, and this incited vehement
opposition.[^33^](#c2-note-0033){#c2-note-0033a} "But of course," one
would be inclined to say today, "that can be statistically proven
through software analysis!" Amazon identifies books by means of their
"statistically improbable phrases"; that is, by means of textual
elements that are highly unlikely to occur elsewhere. This implies, of
course, that books contain many textual elements that are highly likely
to be found in other texts, without suggesting that such elements would
have to be regarded as plagiarism.

In the Gutenberg Galaxy, with its fixation on writing, the earliest
textual document is usually understood to represent a beginning. If no
references to anything before can be identified, the text is then
interpreted as a closed entity, as a new text. Thus, fairy tales and
sagas, which are typical elements of oral culture, are still more
strongly associated with the names of those who recorded them than with
the names of those who narrated them. This does not seem very convincing
today. In recent years, literary historians have made strong []{#Page_77
type="pagebreak" title="77"}efforts to shift the focus of attention to
the people (mostly women) who actually told certain fairy tales. In
doing so, they have been able to work out to what extent the respective
narrators gave shape to specific stories, which were written down as
common versions, and to what extent these stories reflect their
narrators\' personal histories.[^34^](#c2-note-0034){#c2-note-0034a}

Today, after more than 40 years of deconstructionist theory and a change
in our everyday practices, it is no longer controversial to read works
-- even by canonical figures like Wagner or Mozart -- in such a way as
to highlight the other works, either by the artists in question or by
other artists, that are contained within
them.[^35^](#c2-note-0035){#c2-note-0035a} This is not an expression of
decreased appreciation but rather an indication that, as Zygmunt Bauman
has stressed, "The way human beings understand the world tends to be at
all times *praxeomorphic*: it is always shaped by the know-how of the
day, by what people can do and how they usually go about doing
it."[^36^](#c2-note-0036){#c2-note-0036a} And the everyday practice of
today is one of singling out, bringing together, altering, and adding.
Accordingly, not only has our view of current cultural production
shifted; our view of cultural history has shifted as well. As always,
the past is made to suit the sensibilities of the present.

As a rule, however, things that have no beginning also have no end. This
is not only because they can in turn serve as elements for other new
contexts of meaning, but also because the attention paid to the context
in which they take on specific meaning is sensitive to the work that has
to be done to maintain the context itself. Even timelessness is an
elaborate everyday business. The attempt to rescue works of art from the
ravages of time -- to preserve them forever -- means that they regularly
need to be restored. Every restoration inevit­ably stirs a debate about
whether the planned interventions are appropriate and about how to deal
with the traces of previous interventions, which, from the current
perspective, often seem to be highly problematic. Whereas, just a
generation ago, preservationists ensured that such interventions
remained visible (as articulations of the historical fissures that are
typical of Modernity), today greater emphasis is placed on reducing
their visibility and re-creating the illusion of an "original condition"
(without, however, impeding any new functionality that a piece might
have in the present). []{#Page_78 type="pagebreak" title="78"}The
historically faithful restoration of the Berlin City Palace, and yet its
repurposed function as a museum and meeting place, are typical of this
new attitude in dealing with our historical heritage.

In everyday activity, too, the never-ending necessity of this work can
be felt at all times. Here the issue is not timelessness, but rather
that the established contexts of meaning quickly become obsolete and
therefore have to be continuously affirmed, expanded, and changed in
order to maintain the relevance of the field that they define. This
lends referentiality a performative character that combines productive
and reproductive dimensions. That which is not constantly used and
renewed simply disappears. Often, however, this only means that it will
sink into an endless archive and become unrealized potential until
someone reactivates it, breathes new life into it, rouses it from its
slumber, and incorporates it into a newly relevant context of meaning.
"To be relevant," according to the artist Eran Schaerf, "things must be
recyclable."[^37^](#c2-note-0037){#c2-note-0037a}

Alone, everyone is overwhelmed by the task of having to generate meaning
against this backdrop of all-encompassing meaninglessness. First, the
challenge is too great for any individual to overcome; second, meaning
itself is only created intersubjectively. While it can admittedly be
asserted by a single person, others have to confirm it before it can
become a part of culture. For this reason, the actual subject of
cultural production under the digital condition is not the individual
but rather the next-largest unit.
:::
:::

::: {.section}
Communality {#c2-sec-0009}
-----------

As an individual, it is impossible to orient oneself within a complex
environment. Meaning -- as well as the ability to act -- can only be
created, reinforced, and altered in exchange with others. This is
nothing noteworthy; biologically and culturally, people are social
beings. What has changed historically is how people are integrated into
larger contexts, how processes of exchange are organized, and what every
individual is expected to do in order to become a fully fledged
participant in these processes. For nearly 50 years, traditional
[]{#Page_79 type="pagebreak" title="79"}institutions -- that is,
hierarchically and bureaucratically organ­ized civic institutions such
as established churches, labor unions, and political parties -- have
continuously been losing members.[^38^](#c2-note-0038){#c2-note-0038a}
In tandem with this, the overall commitment to the identities, family
values, and lifestyles promoted by these institutions has likewise been
in decline. The great mech­anisms of socialization from the late stages
of the Gutenberg Galaxy have been losing more and more of their
influence, though at different speeds and to different extents. All
told, however, explicitly and collectively normative impulses are
decreasing, while others (implicitly economic, above all) are on the
rise. According to mainstream sociology, a cause or consequence of this
is the individualization and atomization of society. As early as the
middle of the 1980s, Ulrich Beck claimed: "In the individualized society
the individual must therefore learn, on pain of permanent disadvantage,
to conceive of himself or herself as the center of action, as the
planning office with respect to his/her own biography, abil­ities,
orientations, relationships and so
on."[^39^](#c2-note-0039){#c2-note-0039a} Over the past three decades,
the dominant neoliberal political orientation, with its strong stress on
the freedom of the individual -- to realize oneself as an individual
actor in the allegedly open market and in opposition to allegedly
domineering collective mechanisms -- has radicalized these tendencies
even further. The ability to act, however, is not only a question of
one\'s personal attitude but also of material resources. And it is this
same neoliberal politics that deprives so many people of the resources
needed to take advantage of these new freedoms in their own lives. As a
result they suffer, in Ulrich Beck\'s terms, "permanent disadvantage."

Under the digital condition, this process has permeated the finest
structures of social life. Individualization, commercialization, and the
production of differences (through design, for instance) are ubiquitous.
Established civic institutions are not alone in being hollowed out;
relatively new collectives are also becoming more differentiated, a
development that I outlined above with reference to the transformation
of the gay movement into the LGBT community. Yet nevertheless, or
perhaps for this very reason, new forms of communality are being formed
in these offshoots -- in the small activities of everyday life. And
these new communal formations -- rather []{#Page_80 type="pagebreak"
title="80"}than individual people -- are the actual subjects who create
the shared meaning that we call culture.

::: {.section}
### The problem of the "community" {#c2-sec-0010}

I have chosen the rather cumbersome expression "communal formation" in
order to avoid the term "community" (*Gemeinschaft*), although the
latter is used increasingly often in discussions of digital cultures and
has played an import­ant role, from the beginning, in conceptions of
networking. Viewed analytically, however, "community" is a problematic
term because it is almost hopelessly overloaded. Particularly in the
German-speaking tradition, Ferdinand Tönnies\'s polar distinction
between "community" (*Gemeinschaft*) and "society" (*Gesellschaft*),
which he introduced in 1887, remains
influential.[^40^](#c2-note-0040){#c2-note-0040a} Tönnies contrasted two
fundamentally different and exclusive types of social relations. Whereas
community is characterized by the overlapping multidimensional nature of
social relationships, society is defined by the functional separation of
its sectors and spheres. Community embeds every individual into complex
social relationships, all of which tend to be simultaneously present. In
the traditional village community ("communities of place," in Tönnies\'s
terms), neighbors are involved with one another, for better or for
worse, both on a familiar basis and economically or religiously. Every
activity takes place on several different levels at the same time.
Communities are comprehensive social institutions that penetrate all
areas of life, endowing them with meaning. Through mutual dependency,
they create stability and security, but they also obstruct change and
hinder social mobility. Because everyone is connected with each other,
no can leave his or her place without calling into question the
arrangement as a whole. Communities are thus structurally conservative.
Because every human activity is embedded in multifaceted social
relationships, every change requires adjustments across the entire
interrelational web -- a task that is not easy to accomplish.
Accordingly, the trad­itional communities of the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries fiercely opposed the establishment of capitalist
society. In order to impose the latter, the old community structures
were broken apart with considerable violence. This is what Marx
[]{#Page_81 type="pagebreak" title="81"}and Engels were referring to in
that famous passage from *The Communist Manifesto*: "All the settled,
age-old relations with their train of time-honoured preconceptions and
viewpoints are dissolved. \[...\] Everything feudal and fixed goes up in
smoke, everything sacred is
profaned."[^41^](#c2-note-0041){#c2-note-0041a}

The defining feature of society, on the contrary, is that it frees the
individual from such multifarious relationships. Society, according to
Tönnies, separates its members from one another. Although they
coordinate their activity with others, they do so in order to pursue
partial, short-term, and personal goals. Not only are people separated,
but so too are different areas of life. In a market-oriented society,
for instance, the economy is conceptualized as an independent sphere. It
can therefore break away from social connections to be organized simply
by limited formal or legal obligations between actors who, beyond these
obligations, have nothing else to do with one another. Costs or benefits
that inadvertently affect people who are uninvolved in a given market
transaction are referred to by economists as "externalities," and market
participants do not need to care about these because they are strictly
pursuing their own private interests. One of the consequences of this
form of social relationship is a heightened social dynamic, for now it
is possible to introduce changes into one area of life without
considering its effects on other areas. In the end, the dissolution of
mutual obligations, increased uncertainty, and the reduction of many
social connections go hand in hand with what Marx and Engels referred to
in *The Communist Manifesto* as "unfeeling hard cash."

From this perspective, the historical development looks like an
ambivalent process of modernization in which society (dynamic, but cold)
is erected over the ruins of community (static, but warm). This is an
unusual combination of romanticism and progress-oriented thinking, and
the problems with this influential perspective are numerous. There is,
first, the matter of its dichotomy; that is, its assumption that there
can only be these two types of arrangement, community and society. Or
there is the notion that the one form can be completely ousted by the
other, even though aspects of community and aspects of society exist at
the same time in specific historical situations, be it in harmony or in
conflict.[^42^](#c2-note-0042){#c2-note-0042a} []{#Page_82
type="pagebreak" title="82"}These impressions, however, which are so
firmly associated with the German concept of *Gemeinschaft*, make it
rather difficult to comprehend the new forms of communality that have
developed in the offshoots of networked life. This is because, at least
for now, these latter forms do not represent a genuine alternative to
societal types of social
connectedness.[^43^](#c2-note-0043){#c2-note-0043a} The English word
"community" is somewhat more open. The opposition between community and
society resonates with it as well, although the dichotomy is not as
clear-cut. American communitarianism, for instance, considers the
difference between community and society to be gradual and not
categorical. Its primary aim is to strengthen civic institutions and
mechanisms, and it regards community as an intermediary level between
the individual and society.[^44^](#c2-note-0044){#c2-note-0044a} But
there is a related English term, which seems even more productive for my
purposes, namely "community of practice," a concept that is more firmly
grounded in the empirical observation of concrete social relationships.
The term was introduced at the beginning of the 1990s by the social
researchers Jean Lave and Étienne Wenger. They observed that, in most
cases, professional learning (for instance, in their case study of
midwives) does not take place as a one-sided transfer of knowledge or
proficiency, but rather as an open exchange, often outside of the formal
learning environment, between people with different levels of knowledge
and experience. In this sense, learning is an activity that, though
distinguishable, cannot easily be separated from other "normal"
activities of everyday life. As Lave and Wenger stress, however, the
community of practice is not only a social space of exchange; it is
rather, and much more fundamentally, "an intrinsic condition for the
existence of knowledge, not least because it provides the interpretive
support necessary for making sense of its
heritage."[^45^](#c2-note-0045){#c2-note-0045a} Communities of practice
are thus always epistemic communities that form around certain ways of
looking at the world and one\'s own activity in it. What constitutes a
community of practice is thus the joint acquisition, development, and
preservation of a specific field of practice that contains abstract
knowledge, concrete proficiencies, the necessary material and social
resources, guidelines, expectations, and room to interpret one\'s own
activity. All members are active participants in the constitution of
this field, and this reinforces the stress on []{#Page_83
type="pagebreak" title="83"}practice. Each of them, however, brings
along different presuppositions and experiences, for their situations
are embedded within numerous and specific situations of life or work.
The processes within the community are mostly informal, and yet they are
thoroughly structured, for authority is distributed unequally and is
based on the extent to which the members value each other\'s (and their
own) levels of knowledge and experience. At first glance, then, the term
"community of practice" seems apt to describe the meaning-generating
communal formations that are at issue here. It is also somewhat
problematic, however, because, having since been subordinated to
management strategies, its use is now narrowly applied to professional
learning and managing knowledge.[^46^](#c2-note-0046){#c2-note-0046a}

From these various notions of community, it is possible to develop the
following way of looking at new types of communality: they are formed in
a field of practice, characterized by informal yet structured exchange,
focused on the generation of new ways of knowing and acting, and
maintained through the reflexive interpretation of their own activity.
This last point in particular -- the communal creation, preservation,
and alteration of the interpretive framework in which actions,
processes, and objects acquire a firm meaning and connection -- can be
seen as the central role of communal formations.

Communication is especially significant to them. Indi­viduals must
continuously communicate in order to constitute themselves within the
fields and practices, or else they will remain invisible. The mass of
tweets, updates, emails, blogs, shared pictures, texts, posts on
collaborative platforms, and databases (etc.) that are necessary for
this can only be produced and processed by means of digital
technologies. In this act of incessant communication, which is a
constitutive element of social existence, the personal desire for
self-constitution and orientation becomes enmeshed with the outward
pressure of having to be present and available to form a new and binding
set of requirements. This relation between inward motivation and outward
pressure can vary highly, depending on the character of the communal
formation and the position of the individual within it (although it is
not the individual who determines what successful communication is, what
represents a contribution to the communal formation, or in which form
one has to be present). []{#Page_84 type="pagebreak" title="84"}Such
decisions are made by other members of the formation in the form of
positive or negative feedback (or none at all), and they are made with
recourse to the interpretive framework that has been developed in
common. These communal and continuous acts of learning, practicing, and
orientation -- the exchange, that is, between "novices" and "experts" on
the same field, be it concerned with internet politics, illegal street
racing, extreme right-wing music, body modification, or a free
encyclopedia -- serve to maintain the framework of shared meaning,
expand the constituted field, recruit new members, and adapt the
framework of interpretation and activity to changing conditions. Such
communal formations constitute themselves; they preserve and modify
themselves by constantly working out the foundations of their
constitution. This may sound circular, for the process of reflexive
self-constitution -- "autopoiesis" in the language of systems theory --
is circular in the sense that control is maintained through continuous,
self-generating feedback. Self-referentiality is a structural feature of
these formations.
:::

::: {.section}
### Singularity and communality {#c2-sec-0011}

The new communal formations are informal forms of organ­ization that are
based on voluntary action. No one is born into them, and no one
possesses the authority to force anyone else to join or remain against
his or her will, or to assign anyone with tasks that he or she might be
unwilling to do. Such a formation is not an enclosed disciplinary
institution in Foucault\'s sense,[^47^](#c2-note-0047){#c2-note-0047a}
and, within it, power is not exercised through commands, as in the
classical sense formulated by Max
Weber.[^48^](#c2-note-0048){#c2-note-0048a} The condition of not being
locked up and not being subordinated can, at least at first, represent
for the individual a gain in freedom. Under a given set of conditions,
everyone can (and must) choose which formations to participate in, and
he or she, in doing so, will have a better or worse chance to influence
the communal field of reference.

On the everyday level of communicative self-constitution and creating a
personal cognitive horizon -- in innumerable streams, updates, and
timelines on social mass media -- the most important resource is the
attention of others; that is, their feedback and the mutual recognition
that results from it. []{#Page_85 type="pagebreak" title="85"}And this
recognition may simply be in the form of a quickly clicked "like," which
is the smallest unit that can assure the sender that, somewhere out
there, there is a receiver. Without the latter, communication has no
meaning. The situation is somewhat menacing if no one clicks the "like"
button beneath a post or a photo. It is a sign that communication has
broken, and the result is the dissolution of one\'s own communicatively
constituted social existence. In this context, the boundaries are
blurred between the categories of information, communication, and
activity. Making information available always involves the active --
that is, communicating -- person, and not only in the case of ubiquitous
selfies, for in an overwhelming and chaotic environment, as discussed
above, selection itself is of such central importance that the
differences between the selected and the selecting become fluid,
particularly when the goal of the latter is to experience confirmation
from others. In this back-and-forth between one\'s own presence and the
validation of others, one\'s own motives and those of the community are
not in opposition but rather mutually depend on one another. Condensed
to simple norms and to a basic set of guidelines within the context of
an image-oriented social mass media service, the rule (or better:
friendly tip) that one need not but probably ought to follow is this:

::: {.extract}
Be an active member of the Instagram community to receive likes and
comments. Take time to comment on a friend\'s photo, or to like photos.
If you do this, others will reciprocate. If you never acknowledge your
followers\' photos, then they won\'t acknowledge
you.[^49^](#c2-note-0049){#c2-note-0049a}
:::

The context of this widespread and highly conventional piece of advice
is not, for instance, a professional marketing campaign; it is simply
about personally positioning oneself within a social network. The goal
is to establish one\'s own, singular, identity. The process required to
do so is not primarily inward-oriented; it is not based on questions
such as: "Who am I really, apart from external influences?" It is rather
outward-oriented. It takes place through making connections with others
and is concerned with questions such as: "Who is in my network, and what
is my position within it?" It is []{#Page_86 type="pagebreak"
title="86"}revealing that none of the tips in the collection cited above
offers advice about achieving success within a community of
photographers; there are not suggestions, for instance, about how to
take high-quality photographs. With smart cameras and built-in filters
for post-production, this is not especially challenging any more,
especially because individual pictures, to be examined closely and on
their own terms, have become less important gauges of value than streams
of images that are meant to be quickly scrolled through. Moreover, the
function of the critic, who once monopolized the right to interpret and
evaluate an image for everyone, is no longer of much significance.
Instead, the quality of a picture is primarily judged according to
whether "others like it"; that is, according to its performance in the
ongoing popularity contest within a specific niche. But users do not
rely on communal formations and the feedback they provide just for the
sharing and evaluation of pictures. Rather, this dynamic has come to
determine more and more facets of life. Users experience the
constitution of singularity and communality, in which a person can be
perceived as such, as simultaneous and reciprocal processes. A million
times over and nearly subconsciously (because it is so commonplace),
they engage in a relationship between the individual and others that no
longer really corresponds to the liberal opposition between
individuality and society, between personal and group identity. Instead
of viewing themselves as exclusive entities (either in terms of the
emphatic affirmation of individuality or its dissolution within a
homogeneous group), the new formations require that the production of
difference and commonality takes place
simultaneously.[^50^](#c2-note-0050){#c2-note-0050a}
:::

::: {.section}
### Authenticity and subjectivity {#c2-sec-0012}

Because members have decided to participate voluntarily in the
community, their expressions and actions are regarded as authentic, for
it is implicitly assumed that, in making these gestures, they are not
following anyone else\'s instructions but rather their own motivations.
The individual does not act as a representative or functionary of an
organization but rather as a private and singular (that is, unique)
person. While at a gathering of the Occupy movement, a sure way to be
kicked out to is to stick stubbornly to a party line, even if this way
[]{#Page_87 type="pagebreak" title="87"}of thinking happens to agree
with that of the movement. Not only at Occupy gatherings, however, but
in all new communal formations it is expected that everyone there is
representing his or her own interests. As most people are aware, this
assumption is theoretically naïve and often proves to be false in
practice. Even spontaneity can be calculated, and in many cases it is.
Nevertheless, the expectation of authenticity is relevant because it
creates a minimum of trust. As the basis of social trust, such
contra-factual expectations exist elsewhere as well. Critical readers of
newspapers, for instance, must assume that what they are reading has
been well researched and is presented as objectively as possible, even
though they know that objectivity is theoretically a highly problematic
concept -- to this extent, postmodern theory has become common knowledge
-- and that newspapers often pursue (hidden) interests or lead
campaigns. Yet without such contra-factual assumptions, the respective
orders of knowledge and communication would not function, for they
provide the normative framework within which deviations can be
perceived, criticized, and sanctioned.

In a seemingly traditional manner, the "authentic self" is formulated
with reference to one\'s inner world, for instance to personal
knowledge, interests, or desires. As the core of personality, however,
this inner world no longer represents an immutable and essential
characteristic but rather a temporary position. Today, even someone\'s
radical reinvention can be regarded as authentic. This is the central
difference from the classical, bourgeois conception of the subject. The
self is no longer understood in essentialist terms but rather
performatively. Accordingly, the main demand on the individual who
voluntarily opts to participate in a communal formation is no longer to
be self-aware but rather to be
self-motivated.[^51^](#c2-note-0051){#c2-note-0051a} Nor is it necessary
any more for one\'s core self to be coherent. It is not a contradiction
to appear in various communal formations, each different from the next,
as a different "I myself," for every formation is comprehensive, in that
it appeals to the whole person, and simultaneously partial, in that it
is oriented toward a particular goal and not toward all areas of life.
As in the case of re-mixes and other referential processes, the concern
here is not to preserve authenticity but rather to create it in the
moment. The success or failure []{#Page_88 type="pagebreak"
title="88"}of these efforts is determined by the continuous feedback of
others -- one like after another.

These practices have led to a modified form of subject constitution for
which some sociologists, engaged in empir­ical research, have introduced
the term "networked individualism."[^52^](#c2-note-0052){#c2-note-0052a}
The idea is based on the observation that people in Western societies
(the case studies were mostly in North America) are defining their
identity less and less by their family, profession, or other stable
collective, but rather increasingly in terms of their personal social
networks; that is, according to the communal formations in which they
are active as individuals and in which they are perceived as singular
people. In this regard, individualization and atomization no longer
necessarily go hand in hand. On the contrary, the intertwined nature of
personal identity and communality can be experienced on an everyday
level, given that both are continuously created, adapted, and affirmed
by means of personal communication. This makes the networks in question
simultaneously fragile and stable. Fragile because they require the
ongoing presence of every individual and because communication can break
down quickly. Stable because the networks of relationships that can
support a single person -- as regards the number of those included,
their geograph­ical distribution, and the duration of their cohesion --
have expanded enormously by means of digital communication technologies.

Here the issue is not that of close friendships, whose number remains
relatively constant for most people and over long periods of
time,[^53^](#c2-note-0053){#c2-note-0053a} but rather so-called "weak
ties"; that is, more or less loose acquaintances that can be tapped for
new information and resources that do not exist within one\'s close
circle of friends.[^54^](#c2-note-0054){#c2-note-0054a} The more they
are expanded, the more sustainable and valuable these networks become,
for they bring together a large number of people and thus multiply the
material and organizational resources that are (potentially) accessible
to the individual. It is impossible to make a sweeping statement as to
whether these formations actually represent communities in a
comprehensive sense and how stable they really are, especially in times
of crisis, for this is something that can only be found out on a
case-by-case basis. It is relevant that the development of personal
networks []{#Page_89 type="pagebreak" title="89"}has not taken place in
a vacuum. The disintegration of institutions that were formerly
influential in the formation of identity and meaning began long before
the large-scale spread of networks. For most people, there is no other
choice but to attempt to orient and organize oneself, regardless of how
provisional or uncertain this may be. Or, as Manuel Castells somewhat
melodramatically put it, "At the turn of the millennium, the king and
the queen, the state and civil society, are both naked, and their
children-citizens are wandering around a variety of foster
homes."[^55^](#c2-note-0055){#c2-note-0055a}
:::

::: {.section}
### Space and time as a communal practice {#c2-sec-0013}

Although participation in a communal formation is voluntary, it is not
unselfish. Quite the contrary: an important motivation is to gain access
to a formation\'s constitutive field of practice and to the resources
associated with it. A communal formation ultimately does more than
simply steer the attention of its members toward one another. Through
the common production of culture, it also structures how the members
perceive the world and how they are able to design themselves and their
potential actions in it. It is thus a co­operative mechanism of
filtering, interpretation, and constitution. Through the everyday
referential work of its members, the community selects a manageable
amount of information from the excess of potentially available
information and brings it into a meaningful context, whereby it
validates the selection itself and orients the activity of each of its
members.

The new communal formations consist of self-referential worlds whose
constructive common practice affects the foundations of social activity
itself -- the constitution of space and time. How? The spatio-temporal
horizon of digital communication is a global (that is, placeless) and
ongoing present. The technical vision of digital communication is always
the here and now. With the instant transmission of information,
everything that is not "here" is inaccessible and everything that is not
"now" has disappeared. Powerful infrastructure has been built to achieve
these effects: data centers, intercontinental networks of cables,
satellites, high-performance nodes, and much more. Through globalized
high-frequency trading, actors in the financial markets have realized
this []{#Page_90 type="pagebreak" title="90"}technical vision to its
broadest extent by creating a never-ending global present whose expanse
is confined to milliseconds. This process is far from coming to an end,
for massive amounts of investment are allocated to accomplish even the
smallest steps toward this goal. On November 3, 2015, a 4,600-kilometer,
300-million-dollar transatlantic telecommunications cable (Hibernia
Express) was put into operation between London and New York -- the first
in more than 10 years -- with the single goal of accelerating automated
trading between the two places by 5.2 milliseconds.

For social and biological processes, this technical horizon of space and
time is neither achievable nor desirable. Such processes, on the
contrary, are existentially dependent on other spatial and temporal
orders. Yet because of the existence of this non-geographical and
atemporal horizon, the need -- as well as the possibility -- has arisen
to redefine the parameters of space and time themselves in order to
counteract the mire of technically defined spacelessness and
timelessness. If space and time are not simply to vanish in this
spaceless, ongoing present, how then should they be defined? Communal
formations create spaces for action not least by determining their own
geographies and temporal rhythms. They negotiate what is near and far
and also which places are disregarded (that is, not even perceived). If
every place is communicatively (and physically) reachable, every person
must decide which place he or she would like to reach in practice. This,
however, is not an individual decision but rather a task that can only
be approached collectively. Those places which are important and thus
near are determined by communal formations. This takes place in the form
of a rough consensus through the blogs that "one" has to read, the
exhibits that "one" has to see, the events and conferences that "one"
has to attend, the places that "one" has to visit before they are
overrun by tourists, the crises in which "the West" has to intervene,
the targets that "lend themselves" to a terrorist attack, and so on. On
its own, however, selection is not enough. Communal formations are
especially powerful when they generate the material and organizational
resources that are necessary for their members to implement their shared
worldview through actions -- to visit, for instance, the places that
have been chosen as important. This can happen if they enable access
[]{#Page_91 type="pagebreak" title="91"}to stipends, donations, price
reductions, ride shares, places to stay, tips, links, insider knowledge,
public funds, airlifts, explosives, and so on. It is in this way that
each formation creates its respective spatial constructs, which define
distances in a great variety of ways. At the same time that war-torn
Syria is unreachably distant even for seasoned reporters and their
staff, veritable travel agencies are being set up in order to bring
Western jihadists there in large numbers.

Things are similar for the temporal dimensions of social and biological
processes. Permanent presence is a temporality that is inimical to life
but, under its influence, temporal rhythms have to be redefined as well.
What counts as fast? What counts as slow? In what order should things
proceed? On the everyday level, for instance, the matter can be as
simple as how quickly to respond to an email. Because the transmission
of information hardly takes any time, every delay is a purely social
creation. But how much is acceptable? There can be no uniform answer to
this. The members of each communal formation have to negotiate their own
rules with one another, even in areas of life that are otherwise highly
formalized. In an interview with the magazine *Zeit*, for instance, a
lawyer with expertise in labor law was asked whether a boss may require
employees to be reachable at all times. Instead of answering by
referring to any binding legal standards, the lawyer casually advised
that this was a matter of flexible negotiation: "Express your misgivings
openly and honestly about having to be reachable after hours and,
together with your boss, come up with an agreeable rule to
follow."[^56^](#c2-note-0056){#c2-note-0056a} If only it were that easy.

Temporalities that, in many areas, were once simply taken for granted by
everyone on account of the factuality of things now have to be
culturally determined -- that is, explicitly negotiated -- in a greater
number of contexts. Under the conditions of capitalism, which is always
creating new competitions and incentives, one consequence is the
often-lamented "acceleration of time." We are asked to produce, consume,
or accomplish more and more in less and less
time.[^57^](#c2-note-0057){#c2-note-0057a} This change in the
structuring of time is not limited to linear acceleration. It reaches
deep into the foundations of life and has even reconfigured biological
processes themselves. Today there is an entire industry that specializes
in freezing the stem []{#Page_92 type="pagebreak" title="92"}cells of
newborns in liquid nitrogen -- that is, in suspending cellular
biological time -- in case they might be needed later on in life for a
transplant or for the creation of artificial organs. Children can be
born even if their physical mothers are already dead. Or they can be
"produced" from ova that have been stored for many years at minus 196
degrees.[^58^](#c2-note-0058){#c2-note-0058a} At the same time,
questions now have to be addressed every day whose grand temporal
dimensions were once the matter of myth. In the case of atomic energy,
for instance, there is the issue of permanent disposal. Where can we
deposit nuclear waste for the next hundred thousand years without it
causing catastrophic damage? How can the radioactive material even be
transported there, wherever that is, within the framework of everday
traffic laws?[^59^](#c2-note-0059){#c2-note-0059a}

The construction of temporal dimensions and sequences has thus become an
everyday cultural question. Whereas throughout Europe, for example,
committees of experts and ethicists still meet to discuss reproductive
medicine and offer their various recommendations, many couples are
concerned with the specific question of whether or how they can fulfill
their wish to have children. Without a coherent set of rules, questions
such as these have to be answered by each individual with recourse to
his or her personally relevant communal formation. If there is no
cultural framework that at least claims to be binding for everyone, then
the individual must negotiate independently within each communal
formation with the goal of acquiring the resources necessary to act
according to communal values and objectives.
:::

::: {.section}
### Self-generating orders {#c2-sec-0014}

These three functions -- selection, interpretation, and the constitutive
ability to act -- make communal formations the true subject of the
digital condition. In principle, these functions are nothing new;
rather, they are typical of fields that are organized without reference
to external or irrefutable authorities. The state of scholarship, for
instance, is determined by what is circulated in refereed publications.
In this case, "refereed" means that scientists at the same professional
rank mutually evaluate each other\'s work. The scientific community (or
better: the sub-community of a specialized discourse) []{#Page_93
type="pagebreak" title="93"}evaluates the contributions of individual
scholars. They decide what should be considered valuable, and this
consensus can theoretically be revised at any time. It is based on a
particular catalog of criteria, on an interpretive framework that
provides lines of inquiry, methods, appraisals, and conventions of
presentation. With every article, this framework is confirmed and
reconstituted. If the framework changes, this can lead in the most
extreme case to a paradigm shift, which overturns fundamental
orientations, assumptions, and
certainties.[^60^](#c2-note-0060){#c2-note-0060a} The result of this is
not only a change in how scientific contributions are evaluated but also
a change in how the external world is perceived and what activities are
possible in it. Precisely because the sciences claim to define
themselves, they have the ability to revise their own foundations.

The sciences were the first large sphere of society to achieve
comprehensive cultural autonomy; that is, the ability to determine its
own binding meaning. Art was the second that began to organize itself on
the basis of internal feedback. It was during the era of Romanticism
that artists first laid claim to autonomy. They demanded "to absolve art
from all conditions, to represent it as a realm -- indeed as the only
realm -- in which truth and beauty are expressed in their pure form, a
realm in which everything truly human is
transcended."[^61^](#c2-note-0061){#c2-note-0061a} With the spread of
photography in the second half of the nineteenth century, art also
liberated itself from its final task, which was hoisted upon it from the
outside, namely the need to represent external reality. Instead of
having to represent the external world, artists could now focus on their
own subjectivity. This gave rise to a radical individualism, which found
its clearest summation in Marcel Duchamp\'s assertion that only the
artist could determine what is art. This he claimed in 1917 by way of
explaining how an industrially produced urinal, exhibited as a signed
piece with the title "Fountain," could be considered a work of art.

With the rise of the knowledge economy and the expansion of cultural
fields, including the field of art and the artists active within it,
this individualism quickly swelled to unmanageable levels. As a
consequence, the task of defining what should be regarded as art shifted
from the individual artist to the curator. It now fell upon the latter
to select a few works from the surplus of competing scenes and thus
bring temporary []{#Page_94 type="pagebreak" title="94"}order to the
constantly diversifying and changing world of contemporary art. This
order was then given expression in the form of exhibits, which were
intended to be more than the sum of their parts. The beginning of this
practice can be traced to the 1969 exhibition When Attitudes Become
Form, which was curated by Harald Szeemann for the Kunsthalle Bern (it
was also sponsored by Philip Morris). The works were not neatly
separated from one another and presented without reference to their
environment, but were connected with each other both spatially and in
terms of their content. The effect of the exhibition could be felt at
least as much through the collection of works as a whole as it could
through the individual pieces, many of which had been specially
commissioned for the exhibition itself. It not only cemented Szeemann\'s
reputation as one of the most significant curators of the twentieth
century; it also completely redefined the function of the curator as a
central figure within the art system.

This was more than 40 years ago and in a system that functioned
differently from that of today. The distance from this exhibition, but
also its ongoing relevance, was negotiated, significantly, in a
re-enactment at the 2013 Biennale in Venice. For this, the old rooms at
the Kunsthalle Bern were reconstructed in the space of the Fondazione
Prada in such a way that both could be seen simultaneously. As is
typical with such re-enactments, the curators of the project described
its goals in terms of appropriation and distancing: "This was the
challenge: how could we find and communicate a limit to a non-limit,
creating a place that would reflect exactly the architectural structures
of the Kunsthalle, but also an asymmetrical space with respect to our
time and imbued with an energy and tension equivalent to that felt at
Bern?"[^62^](#c2-note-0062){#c2-note-0062a}

Curation -- that is, selecting works and associating them with one
another -- has become an omnipresent practice in the art system. No
exhibition takes place any more without a curator. Nevertheless,
curators have lost their extraordinary
position,[^63^](#c2-note-0063){#c2-note-0063a} with artists taking on
more of this work themselves, not only because the boundaries between
artistic and curatorial activities have become fluid but also because
many artists explicitly co-produce the context of their work by
incorporating a multitude of references into their pieces. It is with
precisely this in mind that André Rottmann, in the []{#Page_95
type="pagebreak" title="95"}quotation cited at the beginning of this
chapter, can assert that referentiality has become the dominant
production-aesthetic model in contemporary art. This practice enables
artists to objectify themselves by explicitly placing themselves into a
historical and social context. At the same time, it also enables them to
subjectify the historical and social context by taking the liberty to
select and arrange the references
themselves.[^64^](#c2-note-0064){#c2-note-0064a}

Such strategies are no longer specific to art. Self-generated spaces of
reference and agency are now deeply embedded in everyday life. The
reason for this is that a growing number of questions can no longer be
answered in a generally binding way (such as those about what
constitutes fine art), while the enormous expansion of the cultural
requires explicit decisions to be made in more aspects of life. The
reaction to this dilemma has been radical subjectivation. This has not,
however, been taking place at the level of the individual but rather at
that of communal formations. There is now a patchwork of answers to
large questions and a multitude of reactions to large challenges, all of
which are limited in terms of their reliability and scope.
:::

::: {.section}
### Ambivalent voluntariness {#c2-sec-0015}

Even though participation in new formations is voluntary and serves the
interests of their members, it is not without preconditions. The most
important of these is acceptance, the willing adoption of the
interpretive framework that is generated by the communal formation. The
latter is formed from the social, cultural, legal, and technical
protocols that lend to each of these formations its concrete
constitution and specific character. Protocols are common sets of rules;
they establish, according to the network theorist Alexander Galloway,
"the essential points necessary to enact an agreed-upon standard of
action." They provide, he goes on, "etiquette for autonomous
agents."[^65^](#c2-note-0065){#c2-note-0065a} Protocols are
simul­taneously voluntary and binding; they allow actors to meet
eye-to-eye instead of entering into hierarchical relations with one
another. If everyone voluntarily complies with the protocols, then it is
not necessary for one actor to give instructions to another. Whoever
accepts the relevant protocols can interact with others who do the same;
whoever opts not to []{#Page_96 type="pagebreak" title="96"}accept them
will remain on the outside. Protocols establish, for example, common
languages, technical standards, or social conventions. The fundamental
protocol for the internet is the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet
Protocol (TCP/IP). This suite of protocols defines the common language
for exchanging data. Every device that exchanges information over the
internet -- be it a smartphone, a supercomputer in a data center, or a
networked thermostat -- has to use these protocols. In growing areas of
social contexts, the common language is English. Whoever wishes to
belong has to speak it increasingly often. In the natural sciences,
communication now takes place almost exclusively in English. Non-native
speakers who accept this norm may pay a high price: they have to learn a
new language and continually improve their command of it or else resign
themselves to being unable to articulate things as they would like --
not to mention losing the possibility of expressing something for which
another language would perhaps be more suitable, or forfeiting
trad­itions that cannot be expressed in English. But those who refuse to
go along with these norms pay an even higher price, risking
self-marginalization. Those who "voluntarily" accept conventions gain
access to a field of practice, even though within this field they may be
structurally disadvantaged. But unwillingness to accept such
conventions, with subsequent denial of access to this field, might have
even greater disadvantages.[^66^](#c2-note-0066){#c2-note-0066a}

In everyday life, the factors involved with this trade-off are often
presented in the form of subtle cultural codes. For instance, in order
to participate in a project devoted to the development of free software,
it is not enough for someone to possess the necessary technical
knowledge; he or she must also be able to fit into a wide-ranging
informal culture with a characteristic style of expression, humor, and
preferences. Ultimately, software developers do not form a professional
corps in the traditional sense -- in which functionaries meet one
another in the narrow and regulated domain of their profession -- but
rather a communal formation in which the engagement of the whole person,
both one\'s professional and social self, is scrutinized. The
abolishment of the separ­ation between different spheres of life,
requiring interaction of a more holistic nature, is in fact a key
attraction of []{#Page_97 type="pagebreak" title="97"}these communal
formations and is experienced by some as a genuine gain in freedom. In
this situation, one is no longer subjected to rules imposed from above
but rather one is allowed to -- and indeed ought to -- be authentically
pursuing his or her own interests.

But for others the experience can be quite the opposite because the
informality of the communal formation also allows forms of exclusion and
discrimination that are no longer acceptable in formally organized
realms of society. Discrimination is more difficult to identify when it
takes place within the framework of voluntary togetherness, for no one
is forced to participate. If you feel uncomfortable or unwelcome, you
are free to leave at any time. But this is a specious argument. The
areas of free software or Wikipedia are difficult places for women. In
these clubby atmospheres of informality, they are often faced with
blatant sexism, and this is one of the reasons why many women choose to
stay away from such projects.[^67^](#c2-note-0067){#c2-note-0067a} In
2007, according to estimates by the American National Center for Women &
Information Technology, whereas approximately 27 percent of all jobs
related to computer science were held by women, their representation at
the same time was far lower in the field of free software -- on average
less than 2 percent. And for years, the proportion of women who edit
texts on Wikipedia has hovered at around 10
percent.[^68^](#c2-note-0068){#c2-note-0068a}

The consequences of such widespread, informal, and elusive
discrimination are not limited to the fact that certain values and
prejudices of the shared culture are included in these products, while
different viewpoints and areas of knowledge are
excluded.[^69^](#c2-note-0069){#c2-note-0069a} What is more, those who
are excluded or do not wish to expose themselves to discrimination (and
thus do not even bother to participate in any communal formations) do
not receive access to the resources that circulate there (attention and
support, valuable and timely knowledge, or job offers). Many people are
thus faced with the choice of either enduring the discrimination within
a community or remaining on the outside and thus invisible. That this
decision is made on a voluntary basis and on one\'s own responsibility
hardly mitigates the coercive nature of the situation. There may be a
choice, but it would be misleading to call it a free one.[]{#Page_98
type="pagebreak" title="98"}
:::

::: {.section}
### The power of sociability {#c2-sec-0016}

In order to explain the peculiar coercive nature of the (nom­inally)
voluntary acceptance of protocols, rules, and norms, the political
scientist David Singh Grewal, drawing on the work of Max Weber and
Michel Foucault, has distinguished between the "power of sovereignty"
and the "power of sociabil­ity."[^70^](#c2-note-0070){#c2-note-0070a}
The former develops on the basis of dominance and subordination, as
imposed by authorities, police officers, judges, or other figures within
formal hierarchies. Their power is anchored in disciplinary
institutions, and the dictum of this sort of power is: "You must!" The
power of sociability, on the contrary, functions by prescribing the
conditions or protocols under which people are able to enter into an
exchange with one another. The dictum of this sort of power is: "You
can!" The more people accept certain protocols and standards, the more
powerful these become. Accordingly, the sociability that they structure
also becomes more comprehensive, and those not yet involved have to ask
themselves all the more urgently whether they can afford not to accept
these protocols and standards. Whereas the first type of power is
ultimately based on the monopoly of violence and on repression, the
second is founded on voluntary submission. When the entire internet
speaks TCP/IP, then an individual\'s decision to use it may be voluntary
in nominal terms, but at the same time it is an indispensable
precondition for existing within the network at all. Protocols exert
power without there having to be anyone present to possess the power in
question. Whereas the sovereign can be located, the effects of
sociability\'s power are diffuse and omnipresent. They are not
repressive but rather constitutive. No one forces a scientist to publish
in English or a woman editor to tolerate disparaging remarks on
Wikipedia. People accept these often implicit behavioral norms (sexist
comments are permitted, for instance) out of their own interests in
order to acquire access to the resources circulating within the networks
and to constitute themselves within it. In this regard, Singh
distinguishes between the "intrinsic" and "extrinsic" reasons for
abiding by certain protocols.[^71^](#c2-note-0071){#c2-note-0071a} In
the first case, the motivation is based on a new protocol being better
suited than existing protocols for carrying out []{#Page_99
type="pagebreak" title="99"}a specific objective. People thus submit
themselves to certain rules because they are especially efficient,
transparent, or easy to use. In the second case, a protocol is accepted
not because but in spite of its features. It is simply a precondition
for gaining access to a space of agency in which resources and
opportunities are available that cannot be found anywhere else. In the
first case, it is possible to speak subjectively of voluntariness,
whereas the second involves some experience of impersonal compunction.
One is forced to do something that might potentially entail grave
disadvantages in order to have access, at least, to another level of
opportunities or to create other advantages for oneself.
:::

::: {.section}
### Homogeneity, difference and authority {#c2-sec-0017}

Protocols are present on more than a technical level; as interpretive
frameworks, they structure viewpoints, rules, and patterns of behavior
on all levels. Thus, they provide a degree of cultural homogeneity, a
set of commonalities that lend these new formations their communal
nature. Viewed from the outside, these formations therefore seem
inclined toward consensus and uniformity, for their members have already
accepted and internalized certain aspects in common -- the protocols
that enable exchange itself -- whereas everyone on the outside has not
done so. When everyone is speaking in English, the conversation sounds
quite monotonous to someone who does not speak the language.

Viewed from the inside, the experience is something different: in order
to constitute oneself within a communal formation, not only does one
have to accept its rules voluntarily and in a self-motivated manner; one
also has to make contributions to the reproduction and development of
the field. Everyone is urged to contribute something; that is, to
produce, on the basis of commonalities, differences that simultaneously
affirm, modify, and enhance these commonalities. This leads to a
pronounced and occasionally highly competitive internal differentiation
that can only be understood, however, by someone who has accepted the
commonalities. To an outsider, this differentiation will seem
irrelevant. Whoever is not well versed in the universe of *Star Wars*
will not understand why the various character interpretations at
[]{#Page_100 type="pagebreak" title="100"}cosplay conventions, which I
discussed above, might be brilliant or even controversial. To such a
person, they will all seem equally boring and superficial.

These formations structure themselves internally through the production
of differences; that is, by constantly changing their common ground.
Those who are able to add many novel aspects to the common resources
gain a degree of authority. They assume central positions and they
influence, through their behavior, the development of the field more
than others do. However, their authority, influence, and de facto power
are not based on any means of coercion. As Niklas Luhmann noted, "In the
end, one participant\'s achievements in making selections \[...\] are
accepted by another participant \[...\] as a limitation of the latter\'s
potential experiences and activities without him having to make the
selection on his own."[^72^](#c2-note-0072){#c2-note-0072a} Even this is
a voluntary and self-interested act: the members of the formation
recognize that this person has contributed more to the common field and
to the resources within it. This, in turn, is to everyone\'s advantage,
for each member would ultimately like to make use of the field\'s
resources to achieve his or her own goals. This arrangement, which can
certainly take on hierarchical qualities, is experienced as something
meritocratically legitimized and voluntarily
accepted.[^73^](#c2-note-0073){#c2-note-0073a} In the context of free
software, there has therefore been some discussion of "benevolent
dictators."[^74^](#c2-note-0074){#c2-note-0074a} The matter of
"dictators" is raised because projects are often led by charismatic
figures without a formal mandate. They are "benevolent" because their
pos­ition of authority is based on the fact that a critical mass of
participating producers has voluntarily subordinated itself for its own
self-interest. If the consensus breaks over whose contributions have
been carrying the most weight, then the formation will be at risk of
losing its internal structure and splitting apart ("forking," in the
jargon of free software).
:::
:::

::: {.section}
Algorithmicity {#c2-sec-0018}
--------------

Through personal communication, referential processes in communal
formations create cultural zones of various sizes and scopes. They
expand into the empty spaces that have been created by the erosion of
established institutions and []{#Page_101 type="pagebreak"
title="101"}processes, and once these new processes have been
established the process of erosion intensifies. Multiple processes of
exchange take place alongside one another, creating a patchwork of
interconnected, competing, or entirely unrelated spheres of meaning,
each with specific goals and resources and its own preconditions and
potentials. The structures of knowledge, order, and activity that are
generated by this are holistic as well as partial and limited. The
participants in such structures are simultaneously addressed on many
levels that were once functionally separated; previously independent
spheres, such as work and leisure, are now mixed together, but usually
only with respect to the subdivisions of one\'s own life. And, at first,
the structures established in this way are binding only for active
participants.

::: {.section}
### Exiting the "Library of Babel" {#c2-sec-0019}

For one person alone, however, these new processes would not be able to
generate more than a local island of meaning from the enormous clamor of
chaotic spheres of information. In his 1941 story "The Library of
Babel," Jorge Luis Borges fashioned a fitting image for such a
situation. He depicts the world as a library of unfathomable and
possibly infinite magnitude. The characters in the story do not know
whether there is a world outside of the library. There are reasons to
believe that there is, and reasons that suggest otherwise. The library
houses the complete collection of all possible books that can be written
on exactly 410 pages. Contained in these volumes is the promise that
there is "no personal or universal problem whose eloquent solution
\[does\] not exist," for every possible combination of letters, and thus
also every possible pronouncement, is recorded in one book or another.
No catalog has yet been found for the library (though it must exist
somewhere), and it is impossible to identify any order in its
arrangement of books. The "men of the library," according to Borges,
wander round in search of the one book that explains everything, but
their actual discoveries are far more modest. Only once in a while are
books found that contain more than haphazard combinations of signs. Even
small regularities within excerpts of texts are heralded as sensational
discoveries, and it is around these discoveries that competing
[]{#Page_102 type="pagebreak" title="102"}schools of interpretation
develop. Despite much labor and effort, however, the knowledge gained is
minimal and fragmentary, so the prevailing attitude in the library is
bleak. By the time of the narrator\'s generation, "nobody expects to
discover anything."[^75^](#c2-note-0075){#c2-note-0075a}

Although this vision has now been achieved from a quantitative
perspective -- no one can survey the "library" of digital information,
which in practical terms is infinitely large, and all of the growth
curves continue to climb steeply -- today\'s cultural reality is
nevertheless entirely different from that described by Borges. Our
ability to deal with massive amounts of data has radically improved, and
thus our faith in the utility of information is not only unbroken but
rather gaining strength. What is new is precisely such large quantities
of data ("big data"), which, as we are promised or forewarned, will lead
to new knowledge, to a comprehensive understanding of the world, indeed
even to "omniscience."[^76^](#c2-note-0076){#c2-note-0076a} This faith
in data is based above all on the fact that the two processes described
above -- referentiality and communality -- are not the only new
mechanisms for filtering, sorting, aggregating, and evaluating things.
Beneath or ahead of the social mechanisms of decentralized and networked
cultural production, there are algorithmic processes that pre-sort the
immeasurably large volumes of data and convert them into a format that
can be apprehended by individuals, evaluated by communities, and
invested with meaning.

Strictly speaking, it is impossible to maintain a categorical
distinction between social processes that take place in and by means of
technological infrastructures and technical pro­cesses that are socially
constructed. In both cases, social actors attempt to realize their own
interests with the resources at their disposal. The methods of
(attempted) realization, the available resources, and the formulation of
interests mutually influence one another. The technological resources
are inscribed in the formulation of goals. These open up fields of
imagination and desire, which in turn inspire technical
development.[^77^](#c2-note-0077){#c2-note-0077a} Although it is
impossible to draw clear theoretical lines, the attempt to make such a
distinction can nevertheless be productive in practice, for in this way
it is possible to gain different perspectives about the same object of
investigation.[]{#Page_103 type="pagebreak" title="103"}
:::

::: {.section}
### The rise of algorithms {#c2-sec-0020}

An algorithm is a set of instructions for converting a given input into
a desired output by means of a finite number of steps: algorithms are
used to solve predefined problems. For a set of instructions to become
an algorithm, it has to be determined in three different respects.
First, the necessary steps -- individually and as a whole -- have to be
described unambiguously and completely. To do this, it is usually
neces­sary to use a formal language, such as mathematics, or a
programming language, in order to avoid the characteristic imprecision
and ambiguity of natural language and to ensure instructions can be
followed without interpretation. Second, it must be possible in practice
to execute the individual steps together. For this reason, every
algorithm is tied to the context of its realization. If the context
changes, so do the operating processes that can be formalized as
algorithms and thus also the ways in which algorithms can partake in the
constitution of the world. Third, it must be possible to execute an
operating instruction mechanically so that, under fixed conditions, it
always produces the same result.

Defined in such general terms, it would also be possible to understand
the instruction manual for a typical piece of Ikea furniture as an
algorithm. It is a set of instructions for creating, with a finite
number of steps, a specific and predefined piece of furniture (output)
from a box full of individual components (input). The instructions are
composed in a formal language, pictograms, which define each step as
unambiguously as possible, and they can be executed by a single person
with simple tools. The process can be repeated, for the final result is
always the same: a Billy box will always yield a Billy shelf. In this
case, a person takes over the role of a machine, which (unambiguous
pictograms aside) can lead to problems, be it that scratches and other
traces on the finished piece of furniture testify to the unique nature
of the (unsuccessful) execution, or that, inspired by the micro-trend of
"Ikea hacking," the official instructions are intentionally ignored.

Because such imprecision is supposed to be avoided, the most important
domain of algorithms in practice is mathematics and its implementation
on the computer. The term []{#Page_104 type="pagebreak"
title="104"}"algorithm" derives from the Persian mathematician,
astronomer, and geographer Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī. His book *On
the Calculation with Hindu Numerals*, which was written in Baghdad in
825, was known widely in the Western Middle Ages through a Latin
translation and made the essential contribution of introducing
Indo-Arabic nu­merals and the number zero to Europe. The work begins
with the formula *dixit algorizmi* ... ("Algorismi said ..."). During
the Middle Ages, *algorizmi* or *algorithmi* soon became a general term
for advanced methods of
calculation.[^78^](#c2-note-0078){#c2-note-0078a}

The modern effort to build machines that could mechanic­ally carry out
instructions achieved its first breakthrough with Gottfried Wilhelm
Leibniz. He has often been credited with making the following remark:
"It is unworthy of excellent men to lose hours like slaves in the labour
of calculation which could be done by any peasant with the aid of a
machine."[^79^](#c2-note-0079){#c2-note-0079a} This vision already
contains a distinction between higher cognitive and interpretive
activities, which are regarded as being truly human, and lower processes
that involve pure execution and can therefore be mechanized. To this
end, Leibniz himself developed the first calculating machine, which
could carry out all four of the basic types of arithmetic. He was not
motivated to do this by the practical necessities of production and
business (although conceptually groundbreaking, Leibniz\'s calculating
machine remained, on account of its mechanical complexity, a unique item
and was never used).[^80^](#c2-note-0080){#c2-note-0080a} In the
estimation of the philosopher Sybille Krämer, calculating machines "were
rather speculative masterpieces of a century that, like none before it,
was infatuated by the idea of mechanizing 'intellectual'
processes."[^81^](#c2-note-0081){#c2-note-0081a} Long before machines
were implemented on a large scale to increase the efficiency of material
production, Leibniz had already speculated about using them to enhance
intellectual labor. And this vision has never since disappeared. Around
a century and a half later, the English polymath Charles Babbage
formulated it anew, now in direct connection with industrial
mechanization and its imperative of time-saving
efficiency.[^82^](#c2-note-0082){#c2-note-0082a} Yet he, too, failed to
overcome the problem of practically realizing such a machine.

The decisive step that turned the vision of calculating machines into
reality was made by Alan Turing in 1937. With []{#Page_105
type="pagebreak" title="105"}a theoretical model, he demonstrated that
every algorithm could be executed by a machine as long as it could read
an incremental set of signs, manipulate them according to established
rules, and then write them out again. The validity of his model did not
depend on whether the machine would be analog or digital, mechanical or
electronic, for the rules of manipulation were not at first conceived as
being a fixed component of the machine itself (that is, as being
implemented in its hardware). The electronic and digital approach came
to be preferred because it was hoped that even the instructions could be
read by the machine itself, so that the machine would be able to execute
not only one but (theoretically) every written algorithm. The
Hungarian-born mathematician John von Neumann made it his goal to
implement this idea. In 1945, he published a model in which the program
(the algorithm) and the data (the input and output) were housed in a
common storage device. Thus, both could be manipulated simultaneously
without having to change the hardware. In this way, he converted the
"Turing machine" into the "universal Turing machine"; that is, the
modern computer.[^83^](#c2-note-0083){#c2-note-0083a}

Gordon Moore, the co-founder of the chip manufacturer Intel,
prognosticated 20 years later that the complexity of integrated circuits
and thus the processing power of computer chips would double every 18 to
24 months. Since the 1970s, his prediction has been known as Moore\'s
Law and has essentially been correct. This technical development has
indeed taken place exponentially, not least because the semi-conductor
industry has been oriented around
it.[^84^](#c2-note-0084){#c2-note-0084a} An IBM 360/40 mainframe
computer, which was one of the first of its kind to be produced on a
large scale, could make approximately 40,000 calculations per second and
its cost, when it was introduced to the market in 1965, was \$1.5
million per unit. Just 40 years later, a standard server (with a
quad-core Intel processor) could make more than 40 billion calculations
per second, and this at a price of little more than \$1,500. This
amounts to an increase in performance by a factor of a million and a
corresponding price reduction by a factor of a thousand; that is, an
improvement in the price-to-performance ratio by a factor of a billion.
With inflation taken into consideration, this factor would be even
higher. No less dramatic were the increases in performance -- or rather
[]{#Page_106 type="pagebreak" title="106"}the price reductions -- in the
area of data storage. In 1980, it cost more than \$400,000 to store a
gigabyte of data, whereas 30 years later it would cost just 10 cents to
do the same -- a price reduction by a factor of 4 million. And in both
areas, this development has continued without pause.

These increases in performance have formed the material basis for the
rapidly growing number of activities carried out by means of algorithms.
We have now reached a point where Leibniz\'s distinction between
creative mental functions and "simple calculations" is becoming
increasingly fuzzy. Recent discussions about the allegedly threatening
"domination of the computer" have been kindled less by the increased use
of algorithms as such than by the gradual blurring of this distinction
with new possibilities to formalize and mechanize increasing areas of
creative thinking.[^85^](#c2-note-0085){#c2-note-0085a} Activities that
not long ago were reserved for human intelligence, such as composing
texts or analyzing the content of images, are now frequently done by
machines. As early as 2010, a program called Stats Monkey was introduced
to produce short reports about baseball games. All that the program
needs for this is comprehensive data about the games, which can be
accumulated mechanically and which have since become more detailed due
to improved image recognition and sensors. From these data, the program
extracts the decisive moments and players of a game, recognizes
characteristic patterns throughout the course of play (such as
"extending an early lead," "a dramatic comeback," etc.), and on this
basis generates its own report. Regarding the reports themselves, a
number of variables can be determined in advance, for instance whether
the story should be written from the perspective of a neutral observer
or from the standpoint of one of the two teams. If writing about little
league games, the program can be instructed to ignore the errors made by
children -- because no parent wants to read about those -- and simply
focus on their heroics. The algorithm was soon patented, and a start-up
business was created from the original interdisciplinary research
project: Narrative Science. In addition to sport reports it now offers
texts of all sorts, but above all financial reports -- another field for
which there is a great deal of available data. These texts have been
published by reputable media outlets such as the business magazine
*Forbes*, in which their authorship []{#Page_107 type="pagebreak"
title="107"}is credited to "Narrative Science." Although these
contributions are still limited to relatively simple topics, this will
not remain the case for long. When asked about the percentage of news
that would be written by computers 15 years from now, Narrative
Science\'s chief technology officer and co-founder Kristian Hammond
confidently predicted "\[m\]ore than 90 percent." He added that, within
the next five years, an algorithm could even win a Pulitzer
Prize.[^86^](#c2-note-0086){#c2-note-0086a} This may be blatant hype and
self-promotion but, as a general estimation, Hammond\'s assertion is not
entirely beyond belief. It remains to be seen whether algorithms will
replace or simply supplement traditional journalism. Yet because media
companies are now under strong financial pressure, it is certainly
reasonable to predict that many journalistic texts will be automated in
the future. Entirely different applications, however, have also been
conceived. Alexander Pschera, for instance, foresees a new age in the
relationship between humans and nature, for, as soon as animals are
equipped with transmitters and sensors and are thus able to tell their
own stories through the appropriate software, they will be regarded as
individuals and not merely as generic members of a
species.[^87^](#c2-note-0087){#c2-note-0087a}

We have not yet reached this point. However, given that the CIA has also
expressed interest in Narrative Science and has invested in it through
its venture-capital firm In-Q-Tel, there are indications that
applications are being developed beyond the field of journalism. For the
purpose of spreading propaganda, for instance, algorithms can easily be
used to create a flood of entries on online forums and social mass
media.[^88^](#c2-note-0088){#c2-note-0088a} Narrative Science is only
one of many companies offering automated text analysis and production.
As implemented by IBM and other firms, so-called E-discovery software
promises to reduce dramatically the amount of time and effort required
to analyze the constantly growing numbers of files that are relevant to
complex legal cases. Without such software, it would be impossible in
practice for lawyers to deal with so many documents. Numerous bots
(automated editing programs) are active in the production of Wikipedia
as well. Whereas, in the German edition, bots are forbidden from writing
their own articles, this is not the case in the Swedish version.
Measured by the number of entries, the latter is now the second-largest
edition of the online encyclopedia in the []{#Page_108 type="pagebreak"
title="108"}world, for, in the summer of 2013, a single bot contributed
more than 200,000 articles to it.[^89^](#c2-note-0089){#c2-note-0089a}
Since 2013, moreover, the company Epagogix has offered software that
uses histor­ical data to evaluate the market potential of film scripts.
At least one major Hollywood studio uses this software behind the backs
of scriptwriters and directors, for, according to the company\'s CEO,
the latter would be "nervous" to learn that their creative work was
being analyzed in such a way.[^90^](#c2-note-0090){#c2-note-0090a}
Think, too, of the typical statement that is made at the beginning of a
call to a telephone hotline -- "This call may be recorded for training
purposes." Increasingly, this training is not intended for the employees
of the call center but rather for algorithms. The latter are expected to
learn how to recognize the personality type of the caller and, on that
basis, to produce an appropriate script to be read by its poorly
educated and part-time human
co-workers.[^91^](#c2-note-0091){#c2-note-0091a} Another example is the
use of algorithms to grade student
essays,[^92^](#c2-note-0092){#c2-note-0092a} or ... But there is no need
to expand this list any further. Even without additional references to
comparable developments in the fields of image, sound, language, and
film analysis, it is clear by now that, on many fronts, the borders
between the creative and the mechanical have
shifted.[^93^](#c2-note-0093){#c2-note-0093a}
:::

::: {.section}
### Dynamic algorithms {#c2-sec-0021}

The algorithms used for such tasks, however, are no longer simple
sequences of static instructions. They are no longer repeated unchanged,
over and over again, but are dynamic and adaptive to a high degree. The
computing power available today is used to write programs that modify
and improve themselves semi-automatically and in response to feedback.

What this means can be illustrated by the example of evolutionary and
self-learning algorithms. An evolutionary algorithm is developed in an
iterative process that continues to run until the desired result has
been achieved. In most cases, the values of the variables of the first
generation of algorithms are chosen at random in order to diminish the
influence of the programmer\'s presuppositions on the results. These
cannot be avoided entirely, however, because the type of variables
(independent of their value) has to be determined in the first place. I
will return to this problem later on. This is []{#Page_109
type="pagebreak" title="109"}followed by a phase of evaluation: the
output of every tested algorithm is evaluated according to how close it
is to the desired solution. The best are then chosen and combined with
one another. In addition, mutations (that is, random changes) are
introduced. These steps are then repeated as often as necessary until,
according to the specifications in question, the algorithm is
"sufficient" or cannot be improved any further. By means of intensive
computational processes, algorithms are thus "cultivated"; that is,
large numbers of these are tested instead of a single one being designed
analytically and then implemented. At the heart of this pursuit is a
functional solution that proves itself experimentally and in practice,
but about which it might no longer be possible to know why it functions
or whether it actually is the best possible solution. The fundamental
methods behind this process largely derive from the 1970s (the first
stage of artificial intelligence), the difference being that today they
can be carried out far more effectively. One of the best-known examples
of an evolutionary algorithm is that of Google Flu Trends. In order to
predict which regions will be especially struck by the flu in a given
year, it evaluates the geographic distribution of internet searches for
particular terms ("cold remedies," for instance). To develop the
program, Google tested 450 million different models until one emerged
that could reliably identify local flu epidemics one to two weeks ahead
of the national health authorities.[^94^](#c2-note-0094){#c2-note-0094a}

In pursuits of this magnitude, the necessary processes can only be
administered by computer programs. The series of tests are no longer
conducted by programmers but rather by algorithms. In short, algorithms
are implemented in order to write new algorithms or determine their
variables. If this reflexive process, in turn, is built into an
algorithm, then the latter becomes "self-learning": the programmers do
not set the rules for its execution but rather the rules according to
which the algorithm is supposed to know how to accomplish a particular
goal. In many cases, the solution strategies are so complex that they
are incomprehensible in retrospect. They can no longer be tested
logically, only experimentally. Such algorithms are essentially black
boxes -- objects that can only be understood by their outer behavior but
whose internal structure cannot be known.[]{#Page_110 type="pagebreak"
title="110"}

Automatic facial recognition, as used in surveillance technologies and
for authorizing access to certain things, is based on the fact that
computers can evaluate large numbers of facial images, first to produce
a general model for a face, then to identify the variables that make a
face unique and therefore recognizable. With so-called "unsupervised" or
"deep-learning" algorithms, some developers and companies have even
taken this a step further: computers are expected to extract faces from
unstructured images -- that is, from volumes of images that contain
images both with faces and without them -- and to do so without
possessing in advance any model of the face in question. So far, the
extraction and evaluation of unknown patterns from unstructured material
has only been achieved in the case of very simple patterns -- with edges
or surfaces in images, for instance -- for it is extremely complex and
computationally intensive to program such learning processes. In recent
years, however, there have been enormous leaps in available computing
power, and both the data inputs and the complexity of the learning
models have increased exponentially. Today, on the basis of simple
patterns, algorithms are developing improved recognition of the complex
content of images. They are refining themselves on their own. The term
"deep learning" is meant to denote this very complexity. In 2012, Google
was able to demonstrate the performance capacity of its new programs in
an impressive manner: from a collection of randomly chosen YouTube
videos, analyzed in a cluster by 1,000 computers with 16,000 processors,
it was possible to create a model in just three days that increased
facial recognition in unstructured images by 70
percent.[^95^](#c2-note-0095){#c2-note-0095a} Of course, the algorithm
does not "know" what a face is, but it reliably recognizes a class of
forms that humans refer to as a face. One advantage of a model that is
not created on the basis of prescribed parameters is that it can also
identify faces in non-standard situ­ations (for instance if a person is
in the background, if a face is half-concealed, or if it has been
recorded at a sharp angle). Thanks to this technique, it is possible to
search the content of images directly and not, as before, primarily by
searching their descriptions. Such algorithms are also being used to
identify people in images and to connect them in social networks with
the profiles of the people in question, and this []{#Page_111
type="pagebreak" title="111"}without any cooperation from the users
themselves. Such algorithms are also expected to assist in directly
controlling activity in "unstructured" reality, for instance in
self-driving cars or other autonomous mobile applications that are of
great interest to the military in particular.

Algorithms of this sort can react and adjust themselves directly to
changes in the environment. This feedback, however, also shortens the
timeframe within which they are able to generate repetitive and
therefore predictable results. Thus, algorithms and their predictive
powers can themselves become unpredictable. Stock markets have
frequently experi­enced so-called "sub-second extreme events"; that is,
price fluctuations that happen in less than a
second.[^96^](#c2-note-0096){#c2-note-0096a} Dramatic "flash crashes,"
however, such as that which occurred on May 6, 2010, when the Dow Jones
Index dropped almost a thousand points in a few minutes (and was thus
perceptible to humans), have not been terribly
uncommon.[^97^](#c2-note-0097){#c2-note-0097a} With the introduction of
voice commands on mobile phones (Apple\'s Siri, for example, which came
out in 2011), programs based on self-learning algorithms have now
reached the public at large and have infiltrated increased areas of
everyday life.
:::

::: {.section}
### Sorting, ordering, extracting {#c2-sec-0022}

Orders generated by algorithms are a constitutive element of the digital
condition. On the one hand, the mechanical pre-sorting of the
(informational) world is a precondition for managing immense and
unstructured amounts of data. On the other hand, these large amounts of
data and the computing centers in which they are stored and processed
provide the material precondition for developing increasingly complex
algorithms. Necessities and possibilities are mutually motivating one
another.[^98^](#c2-note-0098){#c2-note-0098a}

Perhaps the best-known algorithms that sort the digital infosphere and
make it usable in its present form are those of search engines, above
all Google\'s PageRank. Thanks to these, we can find our way around in a
world of unstructured information and transfer increasingly larger parts
of the (informational) world into the order of unstructuredness without
giving rise to the "Library of Babel." Here, "unstructured" means that
there is no prescribed order such as (to stick []{#Page_112
type="pagebreak" title="112"}with the image of the library) a cataloging
system that assigns to each book a specific place on a shelf. Rather,
the books are spread all over the place and are dynamically arranged,
each according to a search, so that the appropriate books for each
visitor are always standing ready at the entrance. Yet the metaphor of
books being strewn all about is problematic, for "unstructuredness" does
not simply mean the absence of any structure but rather the presence of
another type of order -- a meta-structure, a potential for order -- out
of which innumerable specific arrangements can be generated on an ad hoc
basis. This meta-structure is created by algorithms. They subsequently
derive from it an actual order, which the user encounters, for instance,
when he or she scrolls through a list of hits produced by a search
engine. What the user does not see are the complex preconditions for
assembling the search results. By the middle of 2014, according to the
company\'s own information, the Google index alone included more than a
hundred million gigabytes of data.

Originally (that is, in the second half of the 1990s), Page­Rank
functioned in such a way that the algorithm analyzed the structure of
links on the World Wide Web, first by noting the number of links that
referred to a given document, and second by evaluating the "relevance"
of the site that linked to the document in question. The relevance of a
site, in turn, was determined by the number of links that led to it.
From these two variables, every document registered by the search engine
was assigned a value, the PageRank. The latter served to present the
documents found with a given search term as a hierarchical list (search
results), whereby the document with the highest value was listed
first.[^99^](#c2-note-0099){#c2-note-0099a} This algorithm was extremely
successful because it reduced the unfathomable chaos of the World Wide
Web to a task that could be managed without difficulty by an individual
user: inputting a search term and selecting from one of the presented
"hits." The simplicity of the user\'s final choice, together with the
quality of the algorithmic pre-selection, quickly pushed Google past its
competition.

Underlying this process is the assumption that every link is an
indication of relevance, and that links from frequently linked (that is,
popular) sources are more important than those from less frequently
linked (that is, unpopular) sources. []{#Page_113 type="pagebreak"
title="113"}The advantage of this assumption is that it can be
understood in terms of purely quantitative variables and it is not
necessary to have any direct understanding of a document\'s content or
of the context in which it exists.

In the middle of the 1990s, when the first version of the PageRank
algorithm was developed, the problem of judging the relevance of
documents whose content could only partially be evaluated was not a new
one. Science administrators at universities and funding agencies had
been facing this difficulty since the 1950s. During the rise of the
knowledge economy, the number of scientific publications increased
rapidly. Scientific fields, perspectives, and methods also multiplied
and diversified during this time, so that even experts could not survey
all of the work being done in their own areas of
research.[^100^](#c2-note-0100){#c2-note-0100a} Thus, instead of reading
and evaluating the content of countless new publications, they shifted
their analysis to a higher level of abstraction. They began to count how
often an article or book was cited and applied this information to
assess the value of a given author or
publication.[^101^](#c2-note-0101){#c2-note-0101a} The underlying
assumption was (and remains) that only important things are referenced,
and therefore every citation and every reference can be regarded as an
indirect vote for something\'s relevance.

In both cases -- classifying a chaotic sphere of information and
administering an expanding industry of knowledge -- the challenge is to
develop dynamic orders for rapidly changing fields, enabling the
evaluation of the importance of individual documents without knowledge
of their content. Because the analysis of citations or links operates on
a purely quantitative basis, large amounts of data can be quickly
structured with them, and especially relevant positions can be
determined. The second advantage of this approach is that it does not
require any assumptions about the contours of different fields or their
relationships to one another. This enables the organ­ization of
disordered or dynamic content. In both cases, references made by the
actors themselves are used: citations in a scientific text, links on
websites. Their value for establishing the order of a field as a whole,
however, is only visible in the aggregate, for instance in the frequency
with which a given article is
cited.[^102^](#c2-note-0102){#c2-note-0102a} In both cases, the shift
from analyzing "data" (the content of documents in the traditional
sense) to []{#Page_114 type="pagebreak" title="114"}analyzing
"meta-data" (describing documents in light of their relationships to one
another) is a precondition for being able to make any use at all of
growing amounts of information.[^103^](#c2-note-0103){#c2-note-0103a}
This shift introduced a new level of abstraction. Information is no
longer understood as a representation of external reality; its
significance is not evaluated with regard to the relation between
"information" and "the world," for instance with a qualitative criterion
such as "true"/"false." Rather, the sphere of information is treated as
a self-referential, closed world, and documents are accordingly only
evaluated in terms of their position within this world, though with
quantitative criteria such as "central"/"peripheral."

Even though the PageRank algorithm was highly effective and assisted
Google\'s rapid ascent to a market-leading position, at the beginning it
was still relatively simple and its mode of operation was at least
partially transparent. It followed the classical statistical model of an
algorithm. A document or site referred to by many links was considered
more important than one to which fewer links
referred.[^104^](#c2-note-0104){#c2-note-0104a} The algorithm analyzed
the given structural order of information and determined the position of
every document therein, and this was largely done independently of the
context of the search and without making any assumptions about it. This
approach functioned relatively well as long as the volume of information
did not exceed a certain size, and as long as the users and their
searches were somewhat similar to one another. In both respects, this is
no longer the case. The amount of information to be pre-sorted is
increasing, and users are searching in all possible situations and
places for everything under the sun. At the time Google was founded, no
one would have thought to check the internet, quickly and while on
one\'s way, for today\'s menu at the restaurant round the corner. Now,
thanks to smartphones, this is an obvious thing to do.
:::

::: {.section}
### Algorithm clouds {#c2-sec-0023}

In order to react to such changes in user behavior -- and simultaneously
to advance it further -- Google\'s search algorithm is constantly being
modified. It has become increasingly complex and has assimilated a
greater amount of contextual []{#Page_115 type="pagebreak"
title="115"}information, which influences the value of a site within
Page­Rank and thus the order of search results. The algorithm is no
longer a fixed object or unchanging recipe but is transforming into a
dynamic process, an opaque cloud composed of multiple interacting
algorithms that are continuously refined (between 500 and 600 times a
year, according to some estimates). These ongoing developments are so
extensive that, since 2003, several new versions of the algorithm cloud
have appeared each year with their own names. In 2014 alone, Google
carried out 13 large updates, more than ever
before.[^105^](#c2-note-0105){#c2-note-0105a}

These changes continue to bring about new levels of abstraction, so that
the algorithm takes into account add­itional variables such as the time
and place of a search, alongside a person\'s previously recorded
behavior -- but also his or her involvement in social environments, and
much more. Personalization and contextualization were made part of
Google\'s search algorithm in 2005. At first it was possible to choose
whether or not to use these. Since 2009, however, they have been a fixed
and binding component for everyone who conducts a search through
Google.[^106^](#c2-note-0106){#c2-note-0106a} By the middle of 2013, the
search algorithm had grown to include at least 200
variables.[^107^](#c2-note-0107){#c2-note-0107a} What is relevant is
that the algorithm no longer determines the position of a document
within a dynamic informational world that exists for everyone
externally. Instead, it now assigns a rank to their content within a
dynamic and singular universe of information that is tailored to every
individual user. For every person, an entirely different order is
created instead of just an excerpt from a previously existing order. The
world is no longer being represented; it is generated uniquely for every
user and then presented. Google is not the only company that has gone
down this path. Orders produced by algorithms have become increasingly
oriented toward creating, for each user, his or her own singular world.
Facebook, dating services, and other social mass media have been
pursuing this approach even more radically than Google.
:::

::: {.section}
### From the data shadow to the synthetic profile {#c2-sec-0024}

This form of generating the world requires not only detailed information
about the external world (that is, the reality []{#Page_116
type="pagebreak" title="116"}shared by everyone) but also information
about every individual\'s own relation to the
latter.[^108^](#c2-note-0108){#c2-note-0108a} To this end, profiles are
established for every user, and the more extensive they are, the better
they are for the algorithms. A profile created by Google, for instance,
identifies the user on three levels: as a "knowledgeable person" who is
informed about the world (this is established, for example, by recording
a person\'s searches, browsing behavior, etc.), as a "physical person"
who is located and mobile in the world (a component established, for
example, by tracking someone\'s location through a smartphone, sensors
in a smart home, or body signals), and as a "social person" who
interacts with other people (a facet that can be determined, for
instance, by following someone\'s activity on social mass
media).[^109^](#c2-note-0109){#c2-note-0109a}

Unlike the situation in the 1990s, however, these profiles are no longer
simply representations of singular people -- they are not "digital
personas" or "data shadows." They no longer represent what is
conventionally referred to as "individuality," in the sense of a
spatially and temporally uniform identity. On the one hand, profiles
rather consist of sub-individual elements -- of fragments of recorded
behavior that can be evaluated on the basis of a particular search
without promising to represent a person as a whole -- and they consist,
on the other hand, of clusters of multiple people, so that the person
being modeled can simultaneously occupy different positions in time.
This temporal differentiation enables predictions of the following sort
to be made: a person who has already done *x* will, with a probability
of *y*, go on to engage in activity *z*. It is in this way that Amazon
assembles its book recommendations, for the company knows that, within
the cluster of people that constitutes part of every person\'s profile,
a certain percentage of them have already gone through this sequence of
activity. Or, as the data-mining company Science Rockstars (!) once
pointedly expressed on its website, "Your next activity is a function of
the behavior of others and your own past."

Google and other providers of algorithmically generated orders have been
devoting increased resources to the prognostic capabilities of their
programs in order to make the confusing and potentially time-consuming
step of the search obsolete. The goal is to minimize a rift that comes
to light []{#Page_117 type="pagebreak" title="117"}in the act of
searching, namely that between the world as everyone experiences it --
plagued by uncertainty, for searching implies "not knowing something" --
and the world of algorithmically generated order, in which certainty
prevails, for everything has been well arranged in advance. Ideally,
questions should be answered before they are asked. The first attempt by
Google to eliminate this rift is called Google Now, and its slogan is
"The right information at just the right time." The program, which was
originally developed as an app but has since been made available on
Chrome, Google\'s own web browser, attempts to anticipate, on the basis
of existing data, a user\'s next step, and to provide the necessary
information before it is searched for in order that such steps take
place efficiently. Thus, for instance, it draws upon information from a
user\'s calendar in order to figure out where he or she will have to go
next. On the basis of real-time traffic data, it will then suggest the
optimal way to get there. For those driving cars, the amount of traffic
on the road will be part of the equation. This is ascertained by
analyzing the motion profiles of other drivers, which will allow the
program to determine whether the traffic is flowing or stuck in a jam.
If enough historical data is taken into account, the hope is that it
will be possible to redirect cars in such a way that traffic jams should
no longer occur.[^110^](#c2-note-0110){#c2-note-0110a} For those who use
public transport, Google Now evaluates real-time data about the
locations of various transport services. With this information, it will
suggest the optimal route and, depending on the calculated travel time,
it will send a reminder (sometimes earlier, sometimes later) when it is
time to go. That which Google is just experimenting with and testing in
a limited and unambiguous context is already part of Facebook\'s
everyday operations. With its EdgeRank algorithm, Facebook already
organizes everyone\'s newsfeed, entirely in the background and without
any explicit user interaction. On the basis of three variables -- user
affinity (previous interactions between two users), content weight (the
rate of interaction between all users and a specific piece of content),
and currency (the age of a post) -- the algorithm selects content from
the status updates made by one\'s friends to be displayed on one\'s own
page.[^111^](#c2-note-0111){#c2-note-0111a} In this way, Facebook
ensures that the stream of updates remains easy to scroll through, while
also -- it is safe []{#Page_118 type="pagebreak" title="118"}to assume
-- leaving enough room for advertising. This potential for manipulation,
which algorithms possess as they work away in the background, will be
the topic of my next section.
:::

::: {.section}
### Variables and correlations {#c2-sec-0025}

Every complex algorithm contains a multitude of variables and usually an
even greater number of ways to make connections between them. Every
variable and every relation, even if they are expressed in technical or
mathematical terms, codifies assumptions that express a specific
position in the world. There can be no purely descriptive variables,
just as there can be no such thing as "raw
data."[^112^](#c2-note-0112){#c2-note-0112a} Both -- data and variables
-- are always already "cooked"; that is, they are engendered through
cultural operations and formed within cultural
categories.[^113^](#c2-note-0113){#c2-note-0113a} With every use of
produced data and with every execution of an algorithm, the assumptions
embedded in them are activated, and the positions contained within them
have effects on the world that the algorithm generates and presents.

As already mentioned, the early version of the PageRank algorithm was
essentially based on the rather simple assumption that frequently linked
content is more relevant than content that is only seldom linked to, and
that links to sites that are themselves frequently linked to should be
given more weight than those found on sites with fewer links to them.
Replacing the qualitative criterion of "relevance" with the quantitative
criterion of "popularity" not only proved to be tremendously practical
but also extremely consequential, for search engines not only describe
the world; they create it as well. That which search engines put at the
top of this list is not just already popular but will remain so. A third
of all users click on the first search result, and around 95 percent do
not look past the first 10.[^114^](#c2-note-0114){#c2-note-0114a} Even
the earliest version of the PageRank algorithm did not represent
existing reality but rather (co-)constituted it.

Popularity, however, is not the only element with which algorithms
actively give shape to the user\'s world. A search engine can only sort,
weigh, and make available that portion of information which has already
been incorporated into its index. Everything else remains invisible. The
relation between []{#Page_119 type="pagebreak" title="119"}the recorded
part of the internet (the "surface web") and the unrecorded part (the
"deep web") is difficult to determine. Estimates have varied between
ratios of 1:5 and 1:500.[^115^](#c2-note-0115){#c2-note-0115a} There are
many reasons why content might be inaccessible to search engines.
Perhaps the information has been saved in formats that search engines
cannot read or can only poorly read, or perhaps it has been hidden
behind proprietary barriers such as paywalls. In order to expand the
realm of things that can be exploited by their algorithms, the operators
of search engines offer extensive guidance about how providers should
design their sites so that search tools can find them in an optimal
manner. It is not necessary to follow this guidance, but given the
central role of search engines in sorting and filtering information, it
is clear that they exercise a great deal of power by setting the
standards.[^116^](#c2-note-0116){#c2-note-0116a}

That the individual must "voluntarily" submit to this authority is
typical of the power of networks, which do not give instructions but
rather constitute preconditions. Yet it is in the interest of (almost)
every producer of information to optimize its position in a search
engine\'s index, and thus there is a strong incentive to accept the
preconditions in question. Considering, moreover, the nearly
monopolistic character of many providers of algorithmically generated
orders and the high price that one would have to pay if one\'s own site
were barely (or not at all) visible to others, the term "voluntary"
begins to take on a rather foul taste. This is a more or less subtle way
of pre-formatting the world so that it can be optimally recorded by
algorithms.[^117^](#c2-note-0117){#c2-note-0117a}

The providers of search engines usually justify such methods in the name
of offering "more efficient" services and "more relevant" results.
Ostensibly technical and neutral terms such as "efficiency" and
"relevance" do little, however, to conceal the political nature of
defining variables. Efficient with respect to what? Relevant for whom?
These are issues that are decided without much discussion by the
developers and institutions that regard the algorithms as their own
property. Every now and again such questions incite public debates,
mostly when the interests of one provider happen to collide with those
of its competition. Thus, for instance, the initiative known as
FairSearch has argued that Google abuses its market power as a search
engine to privilege its []{#Page_120 type="pagebreak" title="120"}own
content and thus to showcase it prominently in search
results.[^118^](#c2-note-0118){#c2-note-0118a} FairSearch\'s
representatives alleged, for example, that Google favors its own map
service in the case of address searches and its own price comparison
service in the case of product searches. The argument had an effect. In
November of 2010, the European Commission initiated an antitrust
investigation against Google. In 2014, a settlement was proposed that
would have required the American internet giant to pay certain
concessions, but the members of the Commission, the EU Parliament, and
consumer protection agencies were not satisfied with the agreement. In
April 2015, the anti-trust proceedings were recommenced by a newly
appointed Commission, its reasoning being that "Google does not apply to
its own comparison shopping service the system of penalties which it
applies to other comparison shopping services on the basis of defined
parameters, and which can lead to the lowering of the rank in which they
appear in Google\'s general search results
pages."[^119^](#c2-note-0119){#c2-note-0119a} In other words, the
Commission accused the company of manipulating search results to its own
advantage and the disadvantage of users.

This is not the only instance in which the political side of search
algorithms has come under public scrutiny. In the summer of 2012, Google
announced that sites with higher numbers of copyright removal notices
would henceforth appear lower in its
rankings.[^120^](#c2-note-0120){#c2-note-0120a} The company thus
introduced explicitly political and economic criteria in order to
influence what, according to the standards of certain powerful players
(such as film studios), users were able to
view.[^121^](#c2-note-0121){#c2-note-0121a} In this case, too, it would
be possible to speak of the personalization of searching, except that
the heart of the situation was not the natural person of the user but
rather the juridical person of the copyright holder. It was according to
the latter\'s interests and preferences that searching was being
reoriented. Amazon has employed similar tactics. In 2014, the online
merchant changed its celebrated recommendation algorithm with the goal
of reducing the presence of books released by irritating publishers that
dared to enter into price negotiations with the
company.[^122^](#c2-note-0122){#c2-note-0122a}

Controversies over the methods of Amazon or Google, however, are the
exception rather than the rule. Necessary (but never neutral) decisions
about recording and evaluating data []{#Page_121 type="pagebreak"
title="121"}with algorithms are being made almost all the time without
any discussion whatsoever. The logic of the original Page­Rank algorithm
was criticized as early as the year 2000 for essentially representing
the commercial logic of mass media, systematically disadvantaging
less-popular though perhaps otherwise relevant information, and thus
undermining the "substantive vision of the web as an inclusive
democratic space."[^123^](#c2-note-0123){#c2-note-0123a} The changes to
the search algorithm that have been adopted since then may have modified
this tendency, but they have certainly not weakened it. In addition to
concentrating on what is popular, the new variables privilege recently
uploaded and constantly updated content. The selection of search results
is now contingent upon the location of the user, and it takes into
account his or her social networking. It is oriented toward the average
of a dynamically modeled group. In other words, Google\'s new algorithm
favors that which is gaining popularity within a user\'s social network.
The global village is thus becoming more and more
provincial.[^124^](#c2-note-0124){#c2-note-0124a}
:::

::: {.section}
### Data behaviorism {#c2-sec-0026}

Algorithms such as Google\'s thus reiterate and reinforce a tendency
that has already been apparent on both the level of individual users and
that of communal formations: in order to deal with the vast amounts and
complexity of information, they direct their gaze inward, which is not
to say toward the inner being of individual people. As a level of
reference, the individual person -- with an interior world and with
ideas, dreams, and wishes -- is irrelevant. For algorithms, people are
black boxes that can only be understood in terms of their reactions to
stimuli. Consciousness, perception, and intention do not play any role
for them. In this regard, the legal philosopher Antoinette Rouvroy has
written about "data behaviorism."[^125^](#c2-note-0125){#c2-note-0125a}
With this, she is referring to the gradual return of a long-discredited
approach to behavioral psychology that postulated that human behavior
could be explained, predicted, and controlled purely by our outwardly
observable and measurable actions.[^126^](#c2-note-0126){#c2-note-0126a}
Psychological dimensions were ignored (and are ignored in this new
version of behaviorism) because it is difficult to observe them
empiric­ally. Accordingly, this approach also did away with the need
[]{#Page_122 type="pagebreak" title="122"}to question people directly or
take into account their subjective experiences, thoughts, and feelings.
People were regarded (and are so again today) as unreliable, as poor
judges of themselves, and as only partly honest when disclosing
information. Any strictly empirical science, or so the thinking went,
required its practitioners to disregard everything that did not result
in physical and observable action. From this perspective, it was
possible to break down even complex behavior into units of stimulus and
reaction. This led to the conviction that someone observing another\'s
activity always knows more than the latter does about himself or herself
for, unlike the person being observed, whose impressions can be
inaccurate, the observer is in command of objective and complete
information. Even early on, this approach faced a wave of critique. It
was held to be mechanistic, reductionist, and authoritarian because it
privileged the observing scientist over the subject. In practice, it
quickly ran into its own limitations: it was simply too expensive and
complicated to gather data about human behavior.

Yet that has changed radically in recent years. It is now possible to
measure ever more activities, conditions, and contexts empirically.
Algorithms like Google\'s or Amazon\'s form the technical backdrop for
the revival of a mechanistic, reductionist, and authoritarian approach
that has resurrected the long-lost dream of an objective view -- the
view from nowhere.[^127^](#c2-note-0127){#c2-note-0127a} Every critique
of this positivistic perspective -- that every measurement result, for
instance, reflects not only the measured but also the measurer -- is
brushed aside with reference to the sheer amounts of data that are now
at our disposal.[^128^](#c2-note-0128){#c2-note-0128a} This attitude
substantiates the claim of those in possession of these new and
comprehensive powers of observation (which, in addition to Google and
Facebook, also includes the intelligence services of Western nations),
namely that they know more about individuals than individuals know about
themselves, and are thus able to answer our questions before we ask
them. As mentioned above, this is a goal that Google expressly hopes to
achieve.

At issue with this "inward turn" is thus the space of communal
formations, which is constituted by the sum of all of the activities of
their interacting participants. In this case, however, a communal
formation is not consciously created []{#Page_123 type="pagebreak"
title="123"}and maintained in a horizontal process, but rather
synthetic­ally constructed as a computational function. Depending on the
context and the need, individuals can either be assigned to this
function or removed from it. All of this happens behind the user\'s back
and in accordance with the goals and pos­itions that are relevant to the
developers of a given algorithm, be it to optimize profit or
surveillance, create social norms, improve services, or whatever else.
The results generated in this way are sold to users as a personalized
and efficient service that provides a quasi-magical product. Out of the
enormous haystack of searchable information, results are generated that
are made to seem like the very needle that we have been looking for. At
best, it is only partially transparent how these results came about and
which positions in the world are strengthened or weakened by them. Yet,
as long as the needle is somewhat functional, most users are content,
and the algorithm registers this contentedness to validate itself. In
this dynamic world of unmanageable complexity, users are guided by a
sort of radical, short-term pragmatism. They are happy to have the world
pre-sorted for them in order to improve their activity in it. Regarding
the matter of whether the information being provided represents the
world accurately or not, they are unable to formulate an adequate
assessment for themselves, for it is ultimately impossible to answer
this question without certain resources. Outside of rapidly shrinking
domains of specialized or everyday know­ledge, it is becoming
increasingly difficult to gain an overview of the world without
mechanisms that pre-sort it. Users are only able to evaluate search
results pragmatically; that is, in light of whether or not they are
helpful in solving a concrete problem. In this regard, it is not
paramount that they find the best solution or the correct answer but
rather one that is available and sufficient. This reality lends an
enormous amount of influence to the institutions and processes that
provide the solutions and answers.[]{#Page_124 type="pagebreak"
title="124"}
:::
:::

::: {.section .notesSet type="rearnotes"}
[]{#notesSet}Notes {#c2-ntgp-9999}
------------------

::: {.section .notesList}
[1](#c2-note-0001a){#c2-note-0001}  André Rottmann, "Reflexive Systems
of Reference: Approximations to 'Referentialism' in Contemporary Art,"
trans. Gerrit Jackson, in Dirk Snauwaert et al. (eds), *Rehabilitation:
The Legacy of the Modern Movement* (Ghent: MER, 2010), pp. 97--106, at
99.

[2](#c2-note-0002a){#c2-note-0002}  The recognizability of the sources
distinguishes these processes from plagiarism. The latter operates with
the complete opposite aim, namely that of borrowing sources without
acknow­ledging them.

[3](#c2-note-0003a){#c2-note-0003}  Ulf Poschardt, *DJ Culture* (London:
Quartet Books, 1998), p. 34.

[4](#c2-note-0004a){#c2-note-0004}  Theodor W. Adorno, *Aesthetic
Theory*, trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor (Minneapolis, MN: University of
Minnesota Press, 1997), p. 151.

[5](#c2-note-0005a){#c2-note-0005}  Peter Bürger, *Theory of the
Avant-Garde*, trans. Michael Shaw (Minneapolis, MN: University of
Minnesota Press, 1984).

[6](#c2-note-0006a){#c2-note-0006}  Felix Stalder, "Neun Thesen zur
Remix-Kultur," *i-rights.info* (May 25, 2009), online.

[7](#c2-note-0007a){#c2-note-0007}  Florian Cramer, *Exe.cut(up)able
Statements: Poetische Kalküle und Phantasmen des selbstausführenden
Texts* (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2011), pp. 9--10 \[--trans.\]

[8](#c2-note-0008a){#c2-note-0008}  McLuhan stressed that, despite using
the alphabet, every manuscript is unique because it not only depended on
the sequence of letters but also on the individual ability of a given
scribe to []{#Page_185 type="pagebreak" title="185"}lend these letters a
particular shape. With the rise of the printing press, the alphabet shed
these last elements of calligraphy and became typography.

[9](#c2-note-0009a){#c2-note-0009}  Elisabeth L. Eisenstein, *The
Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe* (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1983), p. 15.

[10](#c2-note-0010a){#c2-note-0010}  Eisenstein, *The Printing
Revolution in Early Modern Europe*, p. 204.

[11](#c2-note-0011a){#c2-note-0011}  The fundamental aspects of these
conventions were formulated as early as the beginning of the sixteenth
century; see Michael Giesecke, *Der Buchdruck in der frühen Neuzeit:
Eine historische Fallstudie über die Durchsetzung neuer Informations-
und Kommunikationstechnologien* (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1991), pp.
420--40.

[12](#c2-note-0012a){#c2-note-0012}  Eisenstein, *The Printing
Revolution in Early Modern Europe*, p. 49.

[13](#c2-note-0013a){#c2-note-0013}  In April 2014, the Authors Guild --
the association of American writers that had sued Google -- filed an
appeal to overturn the decision and made a public statement demanding
that a new organization be established to license the digital rights of
out-of-print books. See "Authors Guild: Amazon was Google's Target,"
*The Authors Guild: Industry & Advocacy News* (April 11, 2014), online.
In October 2015, however, the next-highest authority -- the United
States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit -- likewise decided in
Google\'s favor. The Authors Guild promptly announced its intention to
take the case to the Supreme Court.

[14](#c2-note-0014a){#c2-note-0014}  Jean-Noël Jeanneney, *Google and
the Myth of Universal Knowledge: A View from Europe*, trans. Teresa
Lavender Fagan (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2007).

[15](#c2-note-0015a){#c2-note-0015}  Within the framework of the Images
for the Future project (2007--14), the Netherlands alone invested more
than €170 million to digitize the collections of the most important
audiovisual archives. Over 10 years, the cost of digitizing the entire
cultural heritage of Europe has been estimated to be around €100
billion. See Nick Poole, *The Cost of Digitising Europe\'s Cultural
Heritage: A Report for the Comité des Sages of the European Commission*
(November 2010), online.

[16](#c2-note-0016a){#c2-note-0016}  Richard Darnton, "The National
Digital Public Library Is Launched!", *New York Review of Books* (April
25, 2013), online.

[17](#c2-note-0017a){#c2-note-0017}  According to estimates by the
British Library, so-called "orphan works" alone -- that is, works still
legally protected but whose right holders are unknown -- make up around
40 percent of the books in its collection that still fall under
copyright law. In an effort to alleviate this problem, the European
Parliament and the European Commission issued a directive []{#Page_186
type="pagebreak" title="186"}in 2012 concerned with "certain permitted
uses of orphan works." This has allowed libraries and archives to make
works available online without permission if, "after carrying out
diligent searches," the copyright holders cannot be found. What
qualifies as a "diligent search," however, is so strictly formulated
that the German Library Association has called the directive
"impracticable." Deutscher Bibliotheksverband, "Rechtlinie über
bestimmte zulässige Formen der Nutzung verwaister Werke" (February 27,
2012), online.

[18](#c2-note-0018a){#c2-note-0018}  UbuWeb, "Frequently Asked
Questions," online.

[19](#c2-note-0019a){#c2-note-0019}  The numbers in this area of
activity are notoriously unreliable, and therefore only rough estimates
are possible. It seems credible, however, that the Pirate Bay was
attracting around a billion page views per month by the end of 2013.
That would make it the seventy-fourth most popular internet destination.
See Ernesto, "Top 10 Most Popular Torrent Sites of 2014" (January 4,
2014), online.

[20](#c2-note-0020a){#c2-note-0020}  See the documentary film *TPB AFK:
The Pirate Bay Away from Keyboard* (2013), directed by Simon Klose.

[21](#c2-note-0021a){#c2-note-0021}  In technical terms, there is hardly
any difference between a "stream" and a "download." In both cases, a
complete file is transferred to the user\'s computer and played.

[22](#c2-note-0022a){#c2-note-0022}  The practice is legal in Germany
but illegal in Austria, though digitized texts are routinely made
available there in seminars. See Seyavash Amini Khanimani and Nikolaus
Forgó, "Rechtsgutachten über die Erforderlichkeit einer freien
Werknutzung im österreichischen Urheberrecht zur Privilegierung
elektronisch unterstützter Lehre," *Forum Neue Medien Austria* (January
2011), online.

[23](#c2-note-0023a){#c2-note-0023}  Deutscher Bibliotheksverband,
"Digitalisierung" (2015), online \[--trans\].

[24](#c2-note-0024a){#c2-note-0024}  David Weinberger, *Everything Is
Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder* (New York: Times
Books, 2007).

[25](#c2-note-0025a){#c2-note-0025}  This is not a question of material
wealth. Those who are economically or socially marginalized are
confronted with the same phenomenon. Their primary experience of this
excess is with cheap goods and junk.

[26](#c2-note-0026a){#c2-note-0026}  See Gregory Bateson, "Form,
Substance and Difference," in Bateson, *Steps to an Ecology of Mind:
Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution and
Epistemology* (London: Jason Aronson, 1972), pp. 455--71, at 460:
"\[I\]n fact, what we mean by information -- the elementary unit of
information -- is *a difference which makes a difference*" (the emphasis
is original).

[27](#c2-note-0027a){#c2-note-0027}  Inke Arns and Gabriele Horn,
*History Will Repeat Itself* (Frankfurt am Main: Revolver, 2007), p.
42.[]{#Page_187 type="pagebreak" title="187"}

[28](#c2-note-0028a){#c2-note-0028}  See the film *The Battle of
Orgreave* (2001), directed by Mike Figgis.

[29](#c2-note-0029a){#c2-note-0029}  Theresa Winge, "Costuming the
Imagination: Origins of Anime and Manga Cosplay," *Mechademia* 1 (2006),
pp. 65--76.

[30](#c2-note-0030a){#c2-note-0030}  Nicolle Lamerichs, "Stranger than
Fiction: Fan Identity in Cosplay," *Transformative Works and Cultures* 7
(2011), online.

[31](#c2-note-0031a){#c2-note-0031}  The *Oxford English Dictionary*
defines "selfie" as a "photographic self-portrait; *esp*. one taken with
a smartphone or webcam and shared via social media."

[32](#c2-note-0032a){#c2-note-0032}  Odin Kroeger et al. (eds),
*Geistiges Eigentum und Originalität: Zur Politik der Wissens- und
Kulturproduktion* (Vienna: Turia + Kant, 2011).

[33](#c2-note-0033a){#c2-note-0033}  Roland Barthes, "The Death of the
Author," in Barthes, *Image -- Music -- Text*, trans. Stephen Heath
(London: Fontana Press, 1977), pp. 142--8.

[34](#c2-note-0034a){#c2-note-0034}  Heinz Rölleke and Albert
Schindehütte, *Es war einmal: Die wahren Märchen der Brüder Grimm und
wer sie ihnen erzählte* (Frankfurt am Main: Eichborn, 2011); and Heiner
Boehncke, *Marie Hassenpflug: Eine Märchenerzählerin der Brüder Grimm*
(Darmstadt: Von Zabern, 2013).

[35](#c2-note-0035a){#c2-note-0035}  Hansjörg Ewert, "Alles nur
geklaut?", *Zeit Online* (February 26, 2013), online. This is not a new
realization but has long been a special area of research for
musicologists. What is new, however, is that it is no longer
controversial outside of this narrow disciplinary discourse. See Peter
J. Burkholder, "The Uses of Existing Music: Musical Borrowing as a
Field," *Notes* 50 (1994), pp. 851--70.

[36](#c2-note-0036a){#c2-note-0036}  Zygmunt Bauman, *Liquid Modernity*
(Cambridge: Polity, 2000), p. 56.

[37](#c2-note-0037a){#c2-note-0037}  Quoted from Eran Schaerf\'s audio
installation *FM-Scenario: Reality Race* (2013), online.

[38](#c2-note-0038a){#c2-note-0038}  The number of members, for
instance, of the two large polit­ical parties in Germany, the Social
Democratic Party and the Christian Democratic Union, reached its peak at
the end of the 1970s or the beginning of the 1980s. Both were able to
increase their absolute numbers for a brief time at the beginning of the
1990s, when the Christian Democratic Party even reached its absolute
high point, but this can be explained by a surge in new members after
reunification. By 2010, both parties already had fewer members than
Greenpeace, whose 580,000 members make it Germany's largest NGO.
Parallel to this, between 1970 and 2010, the proportion of people
without any religious affiliations shrank to approximately 37 percent.
That there are more churches and political parties today is indicative
of how difficult []{#Page_188 type="pagebreak" title="188"}it has become
for any single organization to attract broad strata of society.

[39](#c2-note-0039a){#c2-note-0039}  Ulrich Beck, *Risk Society: Towards
a New Modernity*, trans. Mark Ritter (London: SAGE, 1992), p. 135.

[40](#c2-note-0040a){#c2-note-0040}  Ferdinand Tönnies, *Community and
Society*, trans. Charles P. Loomis (East Lansing: Michigan State
University Press, 1957).

[41](#c2-note-0041a){#c2-note-0041}  Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels,
"The Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848)," trans. Terrell Carver, in
*The Cambridge Companion to the Communist Manifesto*, ed. Carver and
James Farr (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 237--60,
at 239. For Marx and Engels, this was -- like everything pertaining to
the dynamics of capitalism -- a thoroughly ambivalent development. For,
in this case, it finally forced people "to take a down-to-earth view of
their circumstances, their multifarious relationships" (ibid.).

[42](#c2-note-0042a){#c2-note-0042}  As early as the 1940s, Karl Polanyi
demonstrated in *The Great Transformation* (New York: Farrar & Rinehart,
1944) that the idea of strictly separated spheres, which are supposed to
be so typical of society, is in fact highly ideological. He argued above
all that the attempt to implement this separation fully and consistently
in the form of the free market would destroy the foundations of society
because both the life of workers and the environment of the market
itself would be regarded as externalities. For a recent adaptation of
this argument, see David Graeber, *Debt: The First 5000 Years* (New
York: Melville House, 2011).

[43](#c2-note-0043a){#c2-note-0043}  Tönnies's persistent influence can
be felt, for instance, in Zygmunt Bauman's negative assessment of the
compunction to strive for community in his *Community: Seeking Safety in
an Insecure World* (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001).

[44](#c2-note-0044a){#c2-note-0044}  See, for example, Amitai Etzioni,
*The Third Way to a Good Society* (London: Demos, 2000).

[45](#c2-note-0045a){#c2-note-0045}  Jean Lave and Étienne Wenger,
*Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation* (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 98.

[46](#c2-note-0046a){#c2-note-0046}  Étienne Wenger, *Cultivating
Communities of Practice: A Guide to Managing Knowledge* (Boston, MA:
Harvard Business School Press, 2000).

[47](#c2-note-0047a){#c2-note-0047}  The institutions of the
disciplinary society -- schools, factories, prisons and hospitals, for
instance -- were closed. Whoever was inside could not get out.
Participation was obligatory, and instructions had to be followed. See
Michel Foucault, *Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison*,
trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977).[]{#Page_189
type="pagebreak" title="189"}

[48](#c2-note-0048a){#c2-note-0048}  Weber famously defined power as
follows: "Power is the probability that one actor within a social
relationship will be in a position to carry out his own will despite
resistance, regardless of the basis on which this probability rests."
Max Weber, *Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology*,
trans. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press, 1978), p. 53.

[49](#c2-note-0049a){#c2-note-0049}  For those in complete despair, the
following tip is provided: "To get more likes, start liking the photos
of random people." Such a strategy, it seems, is more likely to increase
than decrease one's hopelessness. The quotations are from "How to Get
More Likes on Your Instagram Photos," *WikiHow* (2016), online.

[50](#c2-note-0050a){#c2-note-0050}  Jeremy Gilbert, *Democracy and
Collectivity in an Age of Individualism* (London: Pluto Books, 2013).

[51](#c2-note-0051a){#c2-note-0051}  Diedrich Diederichsen,
*Eigenblutdoping: Selbstverwertung, Künstlerromantik, Partizipation*
(Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2008).

[52](#c2-note-0052a){#c2-note-0052}  Harrison Rainie and Barry Wellman,
*Networked: The New Social Operating System* (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
2012). The term is practical because it is easy to understand, but it is
also conceptually contradictory. An individual (an indivisible entity)
cannot be defined in terms of a distributed network. With a nod toward
Gilles Deleuze, the cumbersome but theoretically more precise term
"dividual" (the divisible) has also been used. See Gerald Raunig,
"Dividuen des Facebook: Das neue Begehren nach Selbstzerteilung," in
Oliver Leistert and Theo Röhle (eds), *Generation Facebook: Über das
Leben im Social Net* (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2011), pp. 145--59.

[53](#c2-note-0053a){#c2-note-0053}  Jariu Saramäki et al., "Persistence
of Social Signatures in Human Communication," *Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America* 111
(2014): 942--7.

[54](#c2-note-0054a){#c2-note-0054}  The term "weak ties" derives from a
study of where people find out information about new jobs. As the study
shows, this information does not usually come from close friends, whose
level of knowledge often does not differ much from that of the person
looking for a job, but rather from loose acquaintances, whose living
environments do not overlap much with one\'s own and who can therefore
make information available from outside of one\'s own network. See Mark
Granovetter, "The Strength of Weak Ties," *American Journal of
Sociology* 78 (1973): 1360--80.

[55](#c2-note-0055a){#c2-note-0055}  Castells, *The Power of Identity*,
420.

[56](#c2-note-0056a){#c2-note-0056}  Ulf Weigelt, "Darf der Chef
ständige Erreichbarkeit ver­langen?" *Zeit Online* (June 13, 2012),
online \[--trans.\].[]{#Page_190 type="pagebreak" title="190"}

[57](#c2-note-0057a){#c2-note-0057}  Hartmut Rosa, *Social Acceleration:
A New Theory of Modernity*, trans. Jonathan Trejo-Mathys (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2013).

[58](#c2-note-0058a){#c2-note-0058}  This technique -- "social freezing"
-- has already become so standard that it is now regarded as way to help
women achieve a better balance between work and family life. See Kolja
Rudzio "Social Freezing: Ein Kind von Apple," *Zeit Online* (November 6,
2014), online.

[59](#c2-note-0059a){#c2-note-0059}  See the film *Into Eternity*
(2009), directed by Michael Madsen.

[60](#c2-note-0060a){#c2-note-0060}  Thomas S. Kuhn, *The Structure of
Scientific Revolutions*, 3rd edn (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
Press, 1996).

[61](#c2-note-0061a){#c2-note-0061}  Werner Busch and Peter Schmoock,
*Kunst: Die Geschichte ihrer Funktionen* (Weinheim: Quadriga/Beltz,
1987), p. 179 \[--trans.\].

[62](#c2-note-0062a){#c2-note-0062}  "'When Attitude Becomes Form' at
the Fondazione Prada," *Contemporary Art Daily* (September 18, 2013),
online.

[63](#c2-note-0063a){#c2-note-0063}  Owing to the hyper-capitalization
of the art market, which has been going on since the 1990s, this role
has shifted somewhat from curators to collectors, who, though validating
their choices more on financial than on argumentative grounds, are
essentially engaged in the same activity. Today, leading cur­ators
usually work closely together with collectors and thus deal with more
money than the first generation of curators ever could have imagined.

[64](#c2-note-0064a){#c2-note-0064}  Diedrich Diederichsen, "Showfreaks
und Monster," *Texte zur Kunst* 71 (2008): 69--77.

[65](#c2-note-0065a){#c2-note-0065}  Alexander R. Galloway, *Protocol:
How Control Exists after Decentralization* (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
2004), pp. 7, 75.

[66](#c2-note-0066a){#c2-note-0066}  Even the *Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung* -- at least in its online edition -- has begun to publish more
and more articles in English. The newspaper has accepted the
disadvantage of higher editorial costs in order to remain relevant in
the increasingly globalized debate.

[67](#c2-note-0067a){#c2-note-0067}  Joseph Reagle, "'Free as in
Sexist?' Free Culture and the Gender Gap," *First Monday* 18 (2013),
online.

[68](#c2-note-0068a){#c2-note-0068}  Wikipedia\'s own "Editor Survey"
from 2011 reports a women\'s quota of 9 percent. Other studies have come
to a slightly higher number. See Benjamin Mako Hill and Aaron Shaw, "The
Wikipedia Gender Gap Revisited: Characterizing Survey Response Bias with
Propensity Score Estimation," *PLOS ONE* 8 (July 26, 2013), online. The
problem is well known, and the Wikipedia Foundation has been making
efforts to correct matters. In 2011, its goal was to increase the
participation of women to 25 percent by 2015. This has not been
achieved.[]{#Page_191 type="pagebreak" title="191"}

[69](#c2-note-0069a){#c2-note-0069}  Shyong (Tony) K. Lam et al. (2011),
"WP: Clubhouse? An Exploration of Wikipedia's Gender Imbalance,"
*WikiSym* 11 (2011), online.

[70](#c2-note-0070a){#c2-note-0070}  David Singh Grewal, *Network Power:
The Social Dynamics of Globalization* (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 2008).

[71](#c2-note-0071a){#c2-note-0071}  Ibid., p. 29.

[72](#c2-note-0072a){#c2-note-0072}  Niklas Luhmann, *Macht im System*
(Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2013), p. 52 \[--trans.\].

[73](#c2-note-0073a){#c2-note-0073}  Mathieu O\'Neil, *Cyberchiefs:
Autonomy and Authority in Online Tribes* (London: Pluto Press, 2009).

[74](#c2-note-0074a){#c2-note-0074}  Eric Steven Raymond, "The Cathedral
and the Bazaar," *First Monday* 3 (1998), online.

[75](#c2-note-0075a){#c2-note-0075}  Jorge Luis Borges, "The Library of
Babel," trans. Anthony Kerrigan, in Borges, *Ficciones* (New York: Grove
Weidenfeld, 1962), pp. 79--88.

[76](#c2-note-0076a){#c2-note-0076}  Heinrich Geiselberger and Tobias
Moorstedt (eds), *Big Data: Das neue Versprechen der Allwissenheit*
(Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2013).

[77](#c2-note-0077a){#c2-note-0077}  This is one of the central tenets
of science and technology studies. See, for instance, Geoffrey C. Bowker
and Susan Leigh Star, *Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its
Consequences* (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999).

[78](#c2-note-0078a){#c2-note-0078}  Sybille Krämer, *Symbolische
Maschinen: Die Idee der Formalisierung in geschichtlichem Abriß*
(Darmstadt: Wissenschaft­liche Buchgesellschaft, 1988), 50--69.

[79](#c2-note-0079a){#c2-note-0079}  Quoted from Doron Swade, "The
'Unerring Certainty of Mechanical Agency': Machines and Table Making in
the Nineteenth Century," in Martin Campbell-Kelly et al. (eds), *The
History of Mathematical Tables: From Sumer to Spreadsheets* (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 145--76, at 150.

[80](#c2-note-0080a){#c2-note-0080}  The mechanical construction
suggested by Leibniz was not to be realized as a practically usable (and
therefore patentable) calculating machine until 1820, by which point it
was referred to as an "arithmometer."

[81](#c2-note-0081a){#c2-note-0081}  Krämer, *Symbolische Maschinen*, 98
\[--trans.\].

[82](#c2-note-0082a){#c2-note-0082}  Charles Babbage, *On the Economy of
Machinery and Manufactures* (London: Charles Knight, 1832), p. 153: "We
have already mentioned what may, perhaps, appear paradoxical to some of
our readers -- that the division of labour can be applied with equal
success to mental operations, and that it ensures, by its adoption, the
same economy of time."

[83](#c2-note-0083a){#c2-note-0083}  This structure, which is known as
"Von Neumann architecture," continues to form the basis of almost all
computers.

[84](#c2-note-0084a){#c2-note-0084}  "Gordon Moore Says Aloha to
Moore\'s Law," *The Inquirer* (April 13, 2005), online.[]{#Page_192
type="pagebreak" title="192"}

[85](#c2-note-0085a){#c2-note-0085}  Miriam Meckel, *Next: Erinnerungen
an eine Zukunft ohne uns* (Reinbeck bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 2011). One
could also say that this anxiety has been caused by the fact that the
automation of labor has begun to affect middle-class jobs as well.

[86](#c2-note-0086a){#c2-note-0086}  Steven Levy, "Can an Algorithm
Write a Better News Story than a Human Reporter?" *Wired* (April 24,
2012), online.

[87](#c2-note-0087a){#c2-note-0087}  Alexander Pschera, *Animal
Internet: Nature and the Digital Revolution*, trans. Elisabeth Laufer
(New York: New Vessel Press, 2016).

[88](#c2-note-0088a){#c2-note-0088}  The American intelligence services
are not unique in this regard. *Spiegel* has reported that, in Russia,
entire "bot armies" have been mobilized for the "propaganda battle."
Benjamin Bidder, "Nemzow-Mord: Die Propaganda der russischen Hardliner,"
*Spiegel Online* (February 28, 2015), online.

[89](#c2-note-0089a){#c2-note-0089}  Lennart Guldbrandsson, "Swedish
Wikipedia Surpasses 1 Million Articles with Aid of Article Creation
Bot," [blog.wikimedia.org](http://blog.wikimedia.org) (June 17, 2013),
online.

[90](#c2-note-0090a){#c2-note-0090}  Thomas Bunnell, "The Mathematics of
Film," *Boom Magazine* (November 2007): 48--51.

[91](#c2-note-0091a){#c2-note-0091}  Christopher Steiner, "Automatons
Get Creative," *Wall Street Journal* (August 17, 2012), online.

[92](#c2-note-0092a){#c2-note-0092}  "The Hewlett Foundation: Automated
Essay Scoring," [kaggle.com](http://kaggle.com) (February 10, 2012),
online.

[93](#c2-note-0093a){#c2-note-0093}  Ian Ayres, *Super Crunchers: How
Anything Can Be Predicted* (London: Bookpoint, 2007).

[94](#c2-note-0094a){#c2-note-0094}  Each of these models was tested on
the basis of the 50 million most common search terms from the years
2003--8 and classified according to the time and place of the search.
The results were compared with data from the health authorities. See
Jeremy Ginsberg et al., "Detecting Influenza Epidemics Using Search
Engine Query Data," *Nature* 457 (2009): 1012--4.

[95](#c2-note-0095a){#c2-note-0095}  In absolute terms, the rate of
correct hits, at 15.8 percent, was still relatively low. With the same
dataset, however, random guessing would only have an accuracy of 0.005
percent. See V. Le Quoc et al., "Building High-Level Features Using
Large-Scale Unsupervised Learning,"
[research.google.com](http://research.google.com) (2012), online.

[96](#c2-note-0096a){#c2-note-0096}  Neil Johnson et al., "Abrupt Rise
of New Machine Ecology beyond Human Response Time," *Nature: Scientific
Reports* 3 (2013), online. The authors counted 18,520 of these events
between January 2006 and February 2011; that is, about 15 per day on
average.

[97](#c2-note-0097a){#c2-note-0097}  Gerald Nestler, "Mayhem in Mahwah:
The Case of the Flash Crash; or, Forensic Re-performance in Deep Time,"
in Anselm []{#Page_193 type="pagebreak" title="193"}Franke et al. (eds),
*Forensis: The Architecture of Public Truth* (Berlin: Sternberg Press,
2014), pp. 125--46.

[98](#c2-note-0098a){#c2-note-0098}  Another facial recognition
algorithm by Google provides a good impression of the rate of progress.
As early as 2011, the latter was able to identify dogs in images with 80
percent accuracy. Three years later, this rate had not only increased to
93.5 percent (which corresponds to human capabilities), but the
algorithm could also identify more than 200 different types of dog,
something that hardly any person can do. See Robert McMillan, "This Guy
Beat Google\'s Super-Smart AI -- But It Wasn\'t Easy," *Wired* (January
15, 2015), online.

[99](#c2-note-0099a){#c2-note-0099}  Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, "The
Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine," *Computer
Networks and ISDN Systems* 30 (1998): 107--17.

[100](#c2-note-0100a){#c2-note-0100}  Eugene Garfield, "Citation Indexes
for Science: A New Dimension in Documentation through Association of
Ideas," *Science* 122 (1955): 108--11.

[101](#c2-note-0101a){#c2-note-0101}  Since 1964, the data necessary for
this has been published as the Science Citation Index (SCI).

[102](#c2-note-0102a){#c2-note-0102}  The assumption that the subjects
produce these structures indirectly and without any strategic intention
has proven to be problematic in both contexts. In the world of science,
there are so-called citation cartels -- groups of scientists who
frequently refer to one another\'s work in order to improve their
respective position in the SCI. Search engines have likewise given rise
to search engine optimizers, which attempt by various means to optimize
a website\'s evaluation by search engines.

[103](#c2-note-0103a){#c2-note-0103}  Regarding the history of the SCI
and its influence on the early version of Google\'s PageRank, see Katja
Mayer, "Zur Soziometrik der Suchmaschinen: Ein historischer Überblick
der Methodik," in Konrad Becker and Felix Stalder (eds), *Deep Search:
Die Politik des Suchens jenseits von Google* (Innsbruck: Studienverlag,
2009), pp. 64--83.

[104](#c2-note-0104a){#c2-note-0104}  A site with zero links to it could
not be registered by the algorithm at all, for the search engine indexed
the web by having its "crawler" follow the links itself.

[105](#c2-note-0105a){#c2-note-0105}  "Google Algorithm Change History,"
[moz.com](http://moz.com) (2016), online.

[106](#c2-note-0106a){#c2-note-0106}  Martin Feuz et al., "Personal Web
Searching in the Age of Semantic Capitalism: Diagnosing the Mechanisms
of Personalisation," *First Monday* 17 (2011), online.

[107](#c2-note-0107a){#c2-note-0107}  Brian Dean, "Google\'s 200 Ranking
Factors," *Search Engine Journal* (May 31, 2013), online.

[108](#c2-note-0108a){#c2-note-0108}  Thus, it is not only the world of
advertising that motivates the collection of personal information. Such
information is also needed for the development of personalized
algorithms that []{#Page_194 type="pagebreak" title="194"}give order to
the flood of data. It can therefore be assumed that the rampant
collection of personal information will not cease or slow down even if
commercial demands happen to change, for instance to a business model
that is not based on advertising.

[109](#c2-note-0109a){#c2-note-0109}  For a detailed discussion of how
these three levels are recorded, see Felix Stalder and Christine Mayer,
"Der zweite Index: Suchmaschinen, Personalisierung und Überwachung," in
Konrad Becker and Felix Stalder (eds), *Deep Search: Die Politik des
Suchens jenseits von Google* (Innsbruck: Studienverlag, 2009), pp.
112--31.

[110](#c2-note-0110a){#c2-note-0110}  This raises the question of which
drivers should be sent on a detour, so that no traffic jam comes about,
and which should be shown the most direct route, which would now be
traffic-free.

[111](#c2-note-0111a){#c2-note-0111}  Pamela Vaughan, "Demystifying How
Facebook\'s EdgeRank Algorithm Works," *HubSpot* (April 23, 2013),
online.

[112](#c2-note-0112a){#c2-note-0112}  Lisa Gitelman (ed.), *"Raw Data"
Is an Oxymoron* (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013).

[113](#c2-note-0113a){#c2-note-0113}  The terms "raw," in the sense of
unprocessed, and "cooked," in the sense of processed, derive from the
anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, who introduced them to clarify the
difference between nature and culture. See Claude Lévi-Strauss, *The Raw
and the Cooked*, trans. John Weightman and Doreen Weightman (Chicago,
IL: University of Chicago Press, 1983).

[114](#c2-note-0114a){#c2-note-0114}  Jessica Lee, "No. 1 Position in
Google Gets 33% of Search Traffic," *Search Engine Watch* (June 20,
2013), online.

[115](#c2-note-0115a){#c2-note-0115}  One estimate that continues to be
cited quite often is already obsolete: Michael K. Bergman, "White Paper
-- The Deep Web: Surfacing Hidden Value," *Journal of Electronic
Publishing* 7 (2001), online. The more content is dynamically generated
by databases, the more questionable such estimates become. It is
uncontested, however, that only a small portion of online information is
registered by search engines.

[116](#c2-note-0116a){#c2-note-0116}  Theo Röhle, "Die Demontage der
Gatekeeper: Relationale Perspektiven zur Macht der Suchmaschinen," in
Konrad Becker and Felix Stalder (eds), *Deep Search: Die Politik des
Suchens jenseits von Google* (Innsbruck: Studienverlag, 2009), pp.
133--48.

[117](#c2-note-0117a){#c2-note-0117}  The phenomenon of preparing the
world to be recorded by algorithms is not restricted to digital
networks. As early as 1994 in Germany, for instance, a new sort of
typeface was introduced (the *Fälschungserschwerende Schrift*,
"forgery-impeding typeface") on license plates for the sake of machine
readability and facilitating automatic traffic control. To the human
eye, however, it appears somewhat misshapen and
disproportionate.[]{#Page_195 type="pagebreak" title="195"}

[118](#c2-note-0118a){#c2-note-0118}  [Fairsearch.org](http://Fairsearch.org)
was officially supported by several of Google\'s competitors, including
Microsoft, TripAdvisor, and Oracle.

[119](#c2-note-0119a){#c2-note-0119}  "Antitrust: Commission Sends
Statement of Objections to Google on Comparison Shopping Service,"
*European Commission: Press Release Database* (April 15, 2015), online.

[120](#c2-note-0120a){#c2-note-0120}  Amit Singhal, "An Update to Our
Search Algorithms," *Google Inside Search* (August 10, 2012), online. By
the middle of 2014, according to some sources, Google had received
around 20 million requests to remove links from its index on account of
copyright violations.

[121](#c2-note-0121a){#c2-note-0121}  Alexander Wragge, "Google-Ranking:
Herabstufung ist 'Zensur light'," *iRights.info* (August 23, 2012),
online.

[122](#c2-note-0122a){#c2-note-0122}  Farhad Manjoo,"Amazon\'s Tactics
Confirm Its Critics\' Worst Suspicions," *New York Times: Bits Blog*
(May 23, 2014), online.

[123](#c2-note-0123a){#c2-note-0123}  Lucas D. Introna and Helen
Nissenbaum, "Shaping the Web: Why the Politics of Search Engines
Matters," *Information Society* 16 (2000): 169--85, at 181.

[124](#c2-note-0124a){#c2-note-0124}  Eli Pariser, *The Filter Bubble:
How the New Personalized Web Is Changing What We Read and How We Think*
(New York: Penguin, 2012).

[125](#c2-note-0125a){#c2-note-0125}  Antoinette Rouvroy, "The End(s) of
Critique: Data-Behaviourism vs. Due-Process," in Katja de Vries and
Mireille Hilde­brandt (eds), *Privacy, Due Process and the Computational
Turn: The Philosophy of Law Meets the Philosophy of Technology* (New
York: Routledge, 2013), pp. 143--65.

[126](#c2-note-0126a){#c2-note-0126}  See B. F. Skinner, *Science and
Human Behavior* (New York: The Free Press, 1953), p. 35: "We undertake
to predict and control the behavior of the individual organism. This is
our 'dependent variable' -- the effect for which we are to find the
cause. Our 'independent variables' -- the causes of behavior -- are the
external conditions of which behavior is a function."

[127](#c2-note-0127a){#c2-note-0127}  Nathan Jurgenson, "View from
Nowhere: On the Cultural Ideology of Big Data," *New Inquiry* (October
9, 2014), online.

[128](#c2-note-0128a){#c2-note-0128}  danah boyd and Kate Crawford,
"Critical Questions for Big Data: Provocations for a Cultural,
Technological and Scholarly Phenomenon," *Information, Communication &
Society* 15 (2012): 662--79.
:::
:::

[III]{.chapterNumber} [Politics]{.chapterTitle} {#c3}

::: {.section}
Referentiality, communality, and algorithmicity have become the
characteristic forms of the digital condition because more and more
people -- in more and more segments of life and by means of increasingly
complex technologies -- are actively (or compulsorily) participating in
the negotiation of social meaning. They are thus reacting to the demands
of a chaotic, overwhelming sphere of information and thereby
contributing to its greater expansion. It is the ubiquity of these forms
that makes it possible to speak of the digital condition in the
singular. The goals pursued in these cultural forms, however, are as
diverse, contradictory, and conflicted as society itself. It would
therefore be equally false to assume uniformity or an absence of
alternatives in the unfolding of social and political developments. On
the contrary, the idea of a lack of alternatives is an ideological
assertion that is itself part of a specific political agenda.

In order to resolve this ostensible contradiction between developments
that take place in a manner that is uniform and beyond influence and
those that are characterized by the variable and open-ended
implementation of diverse interests, it is necessary to differentiate
between two levels. One possibility for doing so is presented by Marxist
political economy. It distinguishes between *productive forces*, which
are defined as the technical infrastructure, the state of knowledge, and
the []{#Page_125 type="pagebreak" title="125"}organization of labor, and
the *relations of production*, which are defined as the institutions,
laws, and practices in which people are able to realize the
techno-cultural possibilities of their time. Both are related to one
another, though each develops with a certain degree of autonomy. The
relation between them is essential for the development of society. The
closer they correspond to one another, the more smoothly this
development will run its course; the more contradictions happen to exist
between them, the more this course will suffer from unrest and
conflicts. One of many examples of a current contradiction between these
two levels is the development that has occurred in the area of cultural
works. Whereas radical changes have taken place in their production,
processing, and reproduction (that is, on the level of productive
forces), copyright law (that is, the level of the relations of
production) has remained almost unchanged. In Marxist theory, such
contradictions are interpreted as a starting point for political
upheavals, indeed as a precondition for revolution. As Marx wrote:

::: {.extract}
At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of
society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or
-- this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms -- with the
property relations within the framework of which they have operated
hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these
relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social
revolution.[^1^](#c3-note-0001){#c3-note-0001a}
:::

Many theories aiming to overcome capitalism proceed on the basis of this
dynamic.[^2^](#c3-note-0002){#c3-note-0002a} The distinction between
productive forces and the relations of production, however, is not
unproblematic. On the one hand, no one has managed to formulate an
entirely convincing theory concerning the reciprocal relation between
the two. What does it mean, exactly, that they are related to one
another and yet are simultaneously autonomous? When does the moment
arrive in which they come into conflict with one another? And what,
exactly, happens then? For the most part, these are unsolved questions.
On the other hand, because of the blending of work and leisure already
mentioned, as well as the general economization of social activity (as
is happening on social []{#Page_126 type="pagebreak" title="126"}mass
media and in the creative economy, for instance), it is hardly possible
now to draw a line between production and reproduction. Thus, this set
of concepts, which is strictly oriented toward economic production
alone, is more problematic than ever. My decision to use these concepts
is therefore limited to clarifying the conceptual transition from the
previous chapter to the chapter at hand. The concern of the last chapter
was to explain the forms that cultural processes have adopted under the
present conditions -- ubiquitous telecommunication, general expressivity
(referentiality), flexible cooperation (communality), and informational
automation (algorithmicity). In what follows, on the contrary, my focus
will turn to the political dynamics that have emerged from the
realization of "productive forces" as concrete "relations of production"
or, in more general terms, as social relations. Without claiming to be
comprehensive, I have assigned the confusing and conflicting
multiplicity of actors, projects, and institutions to two large
political developments: post-democracy and commons. The former is moving
toward an essentially authoritarian society, while the latter is moving
toward a radical renewal of democracy by broadening the scope of
collective decision-making. Both cases involve more than just a few
minor changes to the existing order. Rather, both are ultimately leading
to a new political constellation beyond liberal representative
democracy.
:::

::: {.section}
Post-democracy {#c3-sec-0002}
--------------

The current dominant political development is the spread and
entrenchment of post-democracy. The term was coined in the middle of the
1990s by Jacques Rancière. "Post-democracy," as he defined it, "is the
government practice and conceptual legitimization of a democracy *after*
the demos, a democracy that has eliminated the appearance, miscount and
dispute of the people."[^3^](#c3-note-0003){#c3-note-0003a} Rancière
argued that the immediate presence of the people (the demos) has been
abolished and replaced by processes of simulation and modeling such as
opinion polls, focus groups, and plans for various scenarios -- all
guided by technocrats. Thus, he believed that the character of political
processes has changed, namely from disputes about how we []{#Page_127
type="pagebreak" title="127"}ought to face a principally open future to
the administration of predefined necessities and fixed constellations.
As early as the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher justified her radical reforms
with the expression "There is no alternative!" Today, this form of
argumentation remains part of the core vocabulary of post-democratic
politics. Even Angela Merkel is happy to call her political program
*alternativlos* ("without alternatives"). According to Rancière, this
attitude is representative of a government practice that operates
without the unpredictable presence of the people and their dissent
concerning fundamental questions. All that remains is "police logic," in
which everything is already determined, counted, and managed.

Ten years after Rancière\'s ruminations, Colin Crouch revisited the
concept and defined it anew. His notion of post-democracy is as follows:

::: {.extract}
Under this model, while elections certainly exist and can change
governments, public electoral debate is a tightly controlled spectacle,
managed by rival teams of professionals expert in the technique of
persuasion, and considering a small range of issues selected by those
teams. The mass of citizens plays a passive, quiescent, even apathetic
part, responding only to the signals given them. Behind this spectacle
of the electoral game, politics is really shaped in private by
interaction between elected governments and elites that overwhelmingly
represent business interests.[^4^](#c3-note-0004){#c3-note-0004a}
:::

He goes on:

::: {.extract}
My central contentions are that, while the forms of democracy remain
fully in place and today in some respects are actually strengthened --
politics and government are increasingly slipping back into the control
of privileged elites in the manner characteristic of predemocratic
times; and that one major consequence of this process is the growing
impotence of egalitarian causes.[^5^](#c3-note-0005){#c3-note-0005a}
:::

In his analysis, Crouch focused on the Western political system in the
strict sense -- parties, parliaments, governments, eligible voters --
and in particular on the British system under Tony Blair. He described
the development of representative democracy as a rising and declining
curve, and he diagnosed []{#Page_128 type="pagebreak" title="128"}not
only an erosion of democratic institutions but also a shift in the
legitimation of public activity. In this regard, according to Crouch,
the participation of citizens in political decision-making (input
legitimation) has become far less important than the quality of the
achievements that are produced for the citizens (output legitimation).
Out of democracy -- the "dispute of the people," in Rancière\'s sense --
emerges governance. As Crouch maintains, however, this shift was
accompanied by a sustained weakening of public institutions, because it
was simultaneously postulated that private actors are fundamentally more
efficient than the state. This argument was used (and continues to be
used) to justify taking an increasing number of services away from
public actors and entrusting them instead to the private sphere, which
has accordingly become more influential and powerful. One consequence of
this has been, according to Crouch, "the collapse of self-confidence on
the part of the state and the meaning of public authority and public
service."[^6^](#c3-note-0006){#c3-note-0006a} Ultimately, the threat at
hand is the abolishment of democratic institutions in the name of
efficiency. These institutions are then replaced by technocratic
governments without a democratic mandate, as has already happened in
Greece, Portugal, or Ireland, where external overseers have been
directly or indirectly determining the political situation.

::: {.section}
### Social mass media as an everyday aspect of post-democratic life {#c3-sec-0003}

For my purposes, it is of little interest whether the concept of "public
authority" really ought to be revived or whether and in what
circumstances the parable of rising and declining will help us to
understand the development of liberal
democracy.[^7^](#c3-note-0007){#c3-note-0007a} Rather, it is necessary
to supplement Crouch\'s approach in order to make it fruitful for our
understanding of the digital condition, which extends greatly beyond
democratic processes in the classical sense -- that is, with
far-reaching decisions about issues concerning society in a formalized
and binding manner that is legitimized by citizen participation. I will
therefore designate as "post-democratic" all of those developments --
wherever they are taking place -- that, although admittedly preserving
or even providing new []{#Page_129 type="pagebreak"
title="129"}possibilities for participation, simultaneously also
strengthen the capacity for decision-making on levels that preclude
co-determination. This has brought about a lasting separation between
social participation and the institutional exertion of power. These
developments, the everyday instances of which may often be harmless and
banal, create as a whole the cultural preconditions and experiences that
make post-democracy -- both in Crouch\'s strict sense and the broader
sense of Rancière -- seem normal and acceptable.

In an almost ideal-typical form, the developments in question can be
traced alongside the rise of commercially driven social mass media.
Their shape, however, is not a matter of destiny (it is not the result
of any technological imperative) but rather the consequence of a
specific political, economic, and technical constellation that realized
the possibilities of the present (productive forces) in particular
institutional forms (relations of production) and was driven to do so in
the interest of maximizing profit and control. A brief look at the
history of digital communication will be enough to clarify this. In the
middle of the 1990s, the architecture of the internet was largely
decentralized and based on open protocols. The attempts of America
Online (AOL) and CompuServe to run a closed network (an intranet, as we
would call it today) to compete with the open internet were
unsuccessful. The large providers never really managed to address the
need or desire of users to become active producers of meaning. Even the
most popular elements of these closed worlds -- the forums in which
users could interact relatively directly with one another -- lacked the
diversity and multiplicity of participatory options that made the open
internet so attractive.

One of the most popular and radical services on the open internet was
email. The special thing about it was that electronic messages could be
used both for private (one-to-one) and for communal (many-to-many)
communication of all sorts, and thus it helped to merge the previously
distinct domains of the private and the communal. By the middle of the
1980s, and with the help of specialized software, it was possible to
create email lists with which one could send messages efficiently and
reliably to small and large groups. Users could join these groups
without much effort. From the beginning, email has played a significant
role in the creation []{#Page_130 type="pagebreak" title="130"}of
communal formations. Email was one of the first technologies that
enabled the horizontal coordination of large and dispersed groups, and
it was often used to that end. Linus Torvalds\'s famous call for people
to collaborate with him on his operating system -- which was then "just
a hobby" but today, as Linux, makes up part of the infrastructure of the
internet -- was issued on August 25, 1991, via email (and news groups).

One of the most important features of email was due to the service being
integrated into an infrastructure that was decentralized by means of
open protocols. And so it has remained. The fundamental Simple Mail
Transfer Protocol (SMTP), which is still being used, is based on a
so-called Request for Comments (RFC) from 1982. In this document, which
sketched out the new protocol and made it open to discussion, it was
established from the outset that communication should be enabled between
independent networks.[^8^](#c3-note-0008){#c3-note-0008a} On the basis
of this standard, it is thus possible today for different providers to
create an integrated space for communication. Even though they are in
competition with one another, they nevertheless cooperate on the level
of the technical protocol and allow users to send information back and
forth regardless of which providers are used. A choice to switch
providers would not cause the forfeiting of individuals\' address books
or any data. Those who put convenience first can use one of the large
commercial providers, or they can choose one of the many small
commercial or non-commercial services that specialize in certain niches.
It is even possible to set up one\'s own server in order to control this
piece of infrastructure independently. In short, thanks to the
competition between providers or because they themselves command the
necessary technical know-how, users continue to have the opportunity to
influence the infrastructure directly and thus to co-determine the
essential (technical) parameters that allow for specific courses of
action. Admittedly, modern email services are set up in such a way that
most of their users remain on the surface, while the essential decisions
about how they are able to act are made on the "back side"; that is, in
the program code, in databases, and in configuration files. Yet these
two levels are not structurally (that is, organizationally and
technically) separated from one another. Whoever is willing and ready to
[]{#Page_131 type="pagebreak" title="131"}appropriate the corresponding
and freely available technical knowledge can shift back and forth
between them. Before the internet was made suitable for the masses, it
had been necessary to possess such knowledge in order to use the often
complicated and error-prone infrastructure at all.

Over the last 10 to 15 years, these structures have been radically
changed by commercially driven social mass media, which have been
dominated by investors. They began to offer a variety of services in a
user-friendly form and thus enabled the great majority of the population
to make use of complex applications on an everyday basis. This, however,
has gone hand in hand with the centralization of applications and user
information. In the case of email, this happened through the
introduction of Webmail, which always stores every individual message on
the provider\'s computer, where they can be read and composed via web
browsers.[^9^](#c3-note-0009){#c3-note-0009a} From that point on,
providers have been able to follow everything that users write in their
emails. Thanks to nearly comprehensive internet connectivity, Webmail is
very widespread today, and the large providers -- above all Google,
whose Gmail service had more than 500 million users in 2014 -- dominate
the market. The gap has thus widened between user interfaces and the
processes that take place behind them on servers and in data centers,
and this has expanded what Crouch referred to as "the influence of the
privileged elite." In this case, the elite are the engineers and
managers employed by the large providers, and everyone else with access
to the underbelly of the infrastructure, including the British
Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) and the US National
Security Agency (NSA), both of which employ programs such as a MUSCULAR
to record data transfers between the computer centers operated by large
American providers.[^10^](#c3-note-0010){#c3-note-0010a}

Nevertheless, email essentially remains an open application, for the
SMTP protocol forces even the largest providers to cooperate. Small
providers are able to collaborate with the latter and establish new
services with them. And this creates options. Since Edward Snowden\'s
revelations, most people are aware that all of their online activities
are being monitored, and this has spurred new interest in secure email
services. In the meantime, there has been a whole series of projects
aimed at combining simple usability with complex []{#Page_132
type="pagebreak" title="132"}encryption in order to strengthen the
privacy of normal users. This same goal has led to a number of
successful crowd-funding campaigns, which indicates that both the
interest and the resources are available to accomplish
it.[^11^](#c3-note-0011){#c3-note-0011a} For users, however, these
offers are only attractive if they are able to switch providers without
great effort. Moreover, such new competition has motivated established
providers to modify their own
infrastructure.[^12^](#c3-note-0012){#c3-note-0012a} In the case of
email, the level on which new user options are created is still
relatively closely linked to that on which generally binding decisions
are made and implemented. In this sense, email is not a post-democratic
technology.
:::

::: {.section}
### Centralization and the power of networks {#c3-sec-0004}

Things are entirely different in the case of new social mass media such
as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, or most of the other
commercial services that were developed after the year 2000. Almost all
of them are based on standards that are closed and controlled by the
network oper­ators, and these standards prevent users from communicating
beyond the boundaries defined by the providers. Through Facebook, it is
only possible to be in touch with other users of the platform, and
whoever leaves the platform will have to give up all of his or her
Facebook friends.

As with email, these services also rely on people producing their own
content. By now, Facebook has more than a billion users, and each of
them has produced at least a rudimentary personal profile and a few
likes. Thanks to networking opportunities, which make up the most
important service offered by all of these providers, communal formations
can be created with ease. Every day, groups are formed that organize
information, knowledge, and resources in order to establish self-defined
practices (both online and offline). The immense amounts of data,
information, and cultural references generated by this are pre-sorted by
algorithms that operate in the background to ensure that users never
lose their orientation.[^13^](#c3-note-0013){#c3-note-0013a} Viewed from
the perspective of output legitimation -- that is, in terms of what
opportunities these services provide and at what cost -- such offers are
extremely attractive. Examined from the perspective of input
legitimation -- that is, in terms []{#Page_133 type="pagebreak"
title="133"}of how essential decisions are made -- things look rather
different. By means of technical, organizational, and legal standards,
Facebook and other operators of commercially driven social mass media
have created structures in which the level of user interaction is
completely separated from the level on which essential decisions are
made that concern the community of users. Users have no way to influence
the design or development of the conditions under which they (have to)
act. At best, it remains possible to choose one aspect or another from a
predetermined offer; that is, to use certain options or not. Take it or
leave it. As to which options and features are available, users can
neither determine this nor have any direct influence over the matter. In
short, commercial social networks have institutionalized a power
imbalance between those engaged with the user interface and those who
operate the services behind the scenes. The possibility of users to
organize themselves and exert influence -- over the way their data are
treated, for instance -- is severely limited.

One (nominal) exception to this happened to be Facebook itself. From
2009 to 2012, the company allowed users to vote about any proposed
changes to its terms and conditions, which attracted more than 7,000
comments. If 30 percent of all registered members participated, then the
result would be binding. In practice, however, this rule did not have
any consequences, for the quorum was never achieved. This is no
surprise, because Facebook did not make any effort to increase
participation. In fact, the opposite was true. As the privacy activist
Max Schrems has noted, without mincing words, "After grand promises of
user participation, the ballot box was then hidden away for
safekeeping."[^14^](#c3-note-0014){#c3-note-0014a} With reference to the
apparent lack of interest on the part of its users, Facebook did away
with the possibility to vote and replaced it with the option of
directing questions to management.[^15^](#c3-note-0015){#c3-note-0015a}
Since then, and even in the case of fundamental decisions that concern
everyone involved, there has been no way for users to participate in the
discussion. This new procedure, which was used to implement a
comprehensive change in Facebook\'s privacy policy, was described by the
company\'s founder Mark Zuckerberg as follows: "We decided that these
would be the social norms now, and we just went for
it."[^16^](#c3-note-0016){#c3-note-0016a} It is not exactly clear whom
he meant by "we." What is clear, []{#Page_134 type="pagebreak"
title="134"}however, is that the number of people involved with
decision-making is minute in comparison with the number of people
affected by the decisions to be made.

It should come as no surprise that, with the introduction of every new
feature, providers such as Facebook have further tilted the balance of
power between users and operators. With every new version and with every
new update, the possibilities of interaction are changed in such a way
that, within closed networks, more data can be produced in a more
uniform format. Thus, it becomes easier to make connections between
them, which is their only real source of value. Facebook\'s compulsory
"real-name" policy, for instance, which no longer permits users to
register under a pseudonym, makes it easier for the company to create
comprehensive user profiles. Another standard allows the companies to
assemble, in the background, a uniform profile out of the activities of
users on sites or applications that seem at first to have nothing to do
with one another.[^17^](#c3-note-0017){#c3-note-0017a} Google, for
instance, connects user data from its search function with information
from YouTube and other online services, but also with data from Nest, a
networked thermostat. Facebook connects data from its social network
with those from WhatsApp, Instagram, and the virtual-reality service
Oculus.[^18^](#c3-note-0018){#c3-note-0018a} This trend is far from
over. Many services are offering more and more new functions for
generating data, and entire new areas of recording data are being
developed (think, for instance, of Google\'s self-driving car). Yet
users have access to just a minuscule portion of the data that they
themselves have generated and with which they are being described. This
information is fully available to the programmers and analysts alone.
All of this is done -- as the sanctimonious argument goes -- in the name
of data protection.
:::

::: {.section}
### Selling, predicting, modifying {#c3-sec-0005}

Unequal access to information has resulted in an imbalance of power, for
the evaluation of data opens up new possibilities for action. Such data
can be used, first, to earn revenue from personalized advertisements;
second, to predict user behavior with greater accuracy; and third, to
adjust the parameters of interaction in such a way that preferred
patterns of []{#Page_135 type="pagebreak" title="135"}behavior become
more likely. Almost all commercially driven social mass media are
financed by advertising. In 2014, Facebook, Google, and Twitter earned
90 percent of their revenue through such means. It is thus important for
these companies to learn as much as possible about their users in order
to optimize access to them and sell this access to
advertisers.[^19^](#c3-note-0019){#c3-note-0019a} Google and Facebook
justify the price for advertising on their sites by claiming that they
are able to direct the messages of advertisers precisely to those people
who would be most susceptible to them.

Detailed knowledge about users, moreover, also provides new
possibilities for predicting human
behavior.[^20^](#c3-note-0020){#c3-note-0020a} In 2014, Facebook made
headlines by claiming that it could predict a future romantic
relationship between two of its members, and even that it could do so
about a hundred days before the new couple changed their profile status
to "in a relationship." The basis of this sort of prognosis is the
changing frequency with which two people exchange messages over the
social network. In this regard, it does not matter whether these
messages are private (that is, only for the two of them), semi-public
(only for friends), or public (visible to
everyone).[^21^](#c3-note-0021){#c3-note-0021a} Facebook and other
social mass media are set up in such a way that those who control the
servers are always able to see everything. All of this information,
moreover, is formatted in such a way as to optimize its statistical
analysis. As the amounts of data increase, even the smallest changes in
frequencies and correlations begin to gain significance. In its study of
romantic relationships, for instance, Facebook discovered that the
number of online interactions reaches its peak 12 days before a
relationship begins and hits its low point 85 days after the status
update (probably because of an increasing number of offline
interactions).[^22^](#c3-note-0022){#c3-note-0022a} The difference in
the frequency of online interactions between the high point and the low
point was just 0.14 updates per day. In other words, Facebook\'s
statisticians could recognize and evaluate when users would post, over
the course of seven days, one more message than they might usually
exchange. With trad­itional methods of surveillance, which focus on
individual people, such a small deviation would not have been detected.
To do so, it is necessary to have immense numbers of users generating
immense volumes of data. Accordingly, these new []{#Page_136
type="pagebreak" title="136"}analytic possibilities do not mean that
Facebook can accur­ately predict the behavior of a single user. The
unique person remains difficult to calculate, for all that could be
ascertained from this information would be a minimally different
probability of future behavior. As regards a single person, this gain in
knowledge would not be especially useful, for a slight change in
probability has no predictive power on a case-by-case basis. If, in the
case of a unique person, the probability of a particular future action
climbs from, say, 30 to 31 percent, then not much is gained with respect
to predicting this one person\'s behavior. If vast numbers of similar
people are taken into account, however, then the power of prediction
increases enormously. If, in the case of 1 million people, the
probability of a future action increases by 1 percent, this means that,
in the future, around 10,000 more people will act in a certain way.
Although it may be impossible to say for sure which member of a "group"
this might be, this is not relevant to the value of the prediction (to
an advertising agency, for instance).

It is also possible to influence large groups by changing the parameters
of their informational environment. Many online news portals, for
instance, simultaneously test multiple headlines during the first
minutes after the publication of an article (that is, different groups
are shown different titles for the same article). These so-called A/B
tests are used to measure which headlines attract the most clicks. The
most successful headline is then adopted and shown to larger
groups.[^23^](#c3-note-0023){#c3-note-0023a} This, however, is just the
beginning. All services are constantly changing their features for
select focus groups without any notification, and this is happening both
on the level of the user interface and on that of their hidden
infrastructure. In this way, reactions can be tested in order to
determine whether a given change should be implemented more broadly or
rejected. If these experiments and interventions are undertaken with
commercial intentions -- to improve the placement of advertisements, for
instance -- then they hardly trigger any special reactions. Users will
grumble when their customary pro­cedures are changed, but this is
usually a matter of short-term irritation, for users know that they can
hardly do anything about it beyond expressing their discontent. A
greater stir was caused by an experiment conducted in the middle of
2014, []{#Page_137 type="pagebreak" title="137"}for which Facebook
manipulated the timelines of 689,003 of its users, approximately 0.04
percent of all members. The selected members were divided into two
groups, one of which received more "positive" messages from their circle
of friends while the other received more "negative" messages. For a
control group, the filter settings were left unchanged. The goal was to
investigate whether, without any direct interaction and non-verbal cues
(mimicry, for example), the mood of a user could be influenced by the
mood that he or she perceives in others -- that is, whether so-called
"emotional contagion," which had hitherto only been demonstrated in the
case of small and physically present groups, also took place online. The
answer, according to the results of the study, was a resounding
"yes."[^24^](#c3-note-0024){#c3-note-0024a} Another conclusion, though
one that the researchers left unexpressed, is that Facebook can
influence this process in a controlled manner. Here, it is of little
interest whether it is genuinely possible to manipulate the emotional
condition of someone posting on Facebook by increasing the presence of
certain key words, or whether the presence of these words simply
increases the social pressure for someone to appear in a better or worse
mood.[^25^](#c3-note-0025){#c3-note-0025a} What is striking is rather
the complete disregard of one of the basic ethical principles of
scientific research, namely that human subjects must be informed about
and agree to any experiments performed on or with them ("informed
consent"). This disregard was not a mere oversight; the authors of the
study were alerted to the issue before publication, and the methods were
subjected to an internal review. The result: Facebook\'s terms of use
allow such methods, no legal claims could be made, and the modulation of
the newsfeed by changing filter settings is so common that no one at
Facebook could see anything especially wrong with the
experiment.[^26^](#c3-note-0026){#c3-note-0026a}

Why would they? All commercially driven social mass media conduct
manipulative experiments. From the perspective of "data behaviorism,"
this is the best way to acquire feedback from users -- far better than
direct surveys.[^27^](#c3-note-0027){#c3-note-0027a} Facebook had also
already conducted experiments in order to intervene directly in
political processes. On November 2, 2010, the social mass medium tested,
by manipulating timelines, whether it might be possible to increase
voter turnout for the American midterm elections that were taking place
[]{#Page_138 type="pagebreak" title="138"}on that day. An application
was surreptitiously loaded into the timelines of more than 10 million
people that contained polling information and a list of friends who had
already voted. It was possible to collect this data because the
application had a built-in function that enabled people to indicate
whether they had already cast a vote. A control group received a message
that encouraged them to vote but lacked any personalization or the
possibility of social interaction. This experiment, too, relied on the
principle of "contagion." By the end of the day, those who saw that
their friends had already voted were 0.39 percent more likely to go to
the polls than those in the control group. In relation to a single
person, the extent of this influence was thus extremely weak and barely
relevant. Indeed, it would be laughable even to speak of influence at
all if only 250 people had altered their behavior. Personal experience
suggests that one cannot be manipulated by such things. It would be
false to conclude, however, that such interventions are irrelevant, for
matters are entirely different where large groups are concerned. On
account of Facebook\'s small experiment, approximately 60,000 people
voted who otherwise would have stayed at home, and around 340,000 extra
votes were cast (because most people do not go to vote alone but rather
bring along friends and family members, who vote at the same
time).[^28^](#c3-note-0028){#c3-note-0028a} These are relevant numbers
if the margins are narrow between the competing parties or candidates,
especially if the people who receive the extra information and incentive
are not -- as they were for this study -- chosen at
random.[^29^](#c3-note-0029){#c3-note-0029a} Facebook already possesses,
in excess, the knowledge necessary to focus on a particular target
group, for instance on people whose sympathies lie with one party or
another.[^30^](#c3-note-0030){#c3-note-0030a}
:::

::: {.section}
### The dark shadow of cybernetics {#c3-sec-0006}

Far from being unusual, the manipulation of information behind the backs
of users is rather something that is done every day by commercially
driven social mass media, which are not primarily channels for
transmitting content but rather -- and above all -- environments in
which we live. Both of the examples discussed above illustrate what is
possible when these environments, which do not represent the world but
[]{#Page_139 type="pagebreak" title="139"}rather generate it, are
centrally controlled, as is presently the case. Power is being exercised
not by directly stipulating what each individual ought to do, but rather
by altering the environment in which everyone is responsible for finding
his or her way. The baseline of facts can be slightly skewed in order to
increase the probability that this modified fac­ticity will, as a sort
of social gravity, guide things in a certain direction. At work here is
the fundamental insight of cybernetics, namely that the "target" to be
met -- be it an enemy bomber,[^31^](#c3-note-0031){#c3-note-0031a} a
citizen, or a customer -- orients its behavior to its environment, to
which it is linked via feedback. From this observation, cybernetically
oriented social planners soon drew the conclusion that the best (because
indirect and hardly perceptible) method for influencing the "target"
would be to alter its environment. As early as the beginning of the
1940s, the anthropologist and cyberneticist Gregory Bateson posed the
following question: "How would we rig the maze or problem-box so that
the anthropomorphic rat shall obtain a repeated and reinforced
impression of his own free will?"[^32^](#c3-note-0032){#c3-note-0032a}
Though Bateson\'s formulation is somewhat flippant, there was a serious
backdrop to this problem. The electoral success of the Nazis during the
1930s seemed to have indicated that the free expression of will can have
catastrophic political consequences. In response to this, the American
planners of the post-war order made it their objective to steer the
population toward (or keep it on) the path of liberal, market-oriented
democracy without obviously undermining the legitimacy of liberal
democracy itself, namely its basis in the individual\'s free will and
freedom of choice. According to the French author collective Tiqqun,
this paradox was resolved by the introduction of "a new fable that,
after the Second World War, definitively \[...\] supplanted the liberal
hypothesis. Contrary to the latter, it proposes to conceive biological,
physical and social behaviors as something integrally programmed and
re-programmable."[^33^](#c3-note-0033){#c3-note-0033a} By the term
"liberal hypothesis," Tiqqun meant the assumption, stemming from the
time of the Enlightenment, that people could improve themselves by
applying their own reason and exercising their own moral faculties, and
could free themselves from ignorance through education and reflection.
Thus, they could become autonomous individuals and operate as free
actors (both as market []{#Page_140 type="pagebreak"
title="140"}participants and as citizens). The liberal hypothesis is
based on human understanding. The cybernetic hypothesis is not. Its
conception of humans is analogous to its conception of animals, plants,
and machines; like the latter, people are organisms that react to
stimuli from their environment. The hypothesis is thus associated with
the theories of "instrumental conditioning," which had been formulated
by behaviorists during the 1940s. In the case of both humans and other
animals, as it was argued, learning is not a process of understanding
but rather one of executing a pattern of stimulus and response. To learn
is thus to adopt a pattern of behavior with which one\'s own activity
elicits the desired reaction. In this model, understanding does not play
any role; all that matters is
behavior.[^34^](#c3-note-0034){#c3-note-0034a}

And this behavior, according the cybernetic hypothesis, can be
programmed not by directly accessing people (who are conceived as
impenetrable black boxes) but rather by indirectly altering the
environment, with which organisms and machines are linked via feedback.
These interventions are usually so subtle as to not be perceived by the
individual, and this is because there is no baseline against which it is
possible to measure the extent to which the "baseline of facts" has been
tilted. Search results and timelines are always being filtered and,
owing to personalization, a search will hardly ever generate the same
results twice. On a case-by-case basis, the effects of this are often
minimal for the individual. In aggregate and over long periods of time,
however, the effects can be substantial without the individual even
being able to detect them. Yet the practice of controlling behavior by
manipulating the environment is not limited to the environment of
information. In their enormously influential book from 2008, *Nudge*,
Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein even recommended this as a general
method for "nudging" people, almost without their notice, in the
direction desired by central planners. To accomplish this, it is
necessary for the environment to be redesigned by the "choice architect"
-- by someone, for instance, who can organize the groceries in a store
in such a way as to increase the probability that shoppers will reach
for healthier options. They refer to this system of control as
"libertarian paternalism" because it combines freedom of choice
(libertarianism) with obedience []{#Page_141 type="pagebreak"
title="141"}to an -- albeit invisible -- authority figure
(paternalism).[^35^](#c3-note-0035){#c3-note-0035a} The ideal sought by
the authors is a sort of unintrusive caretaking. In the spirit of
cybernetics and in line with the structures of post-democracy, the
expectation is for people to be moved in the experts\' chosen direction
by means of a change to their environment, while simultaneously
maintaining the impression that they are behaving in a free and
autonomous manner. The compatibility of this approach with agendas on
both sides of the political spectrum is evident in the fact that the
Democratic president Barack Obama regularly sought Cass Sunstein\'s
advice and, in 2009, made him the director of the Office of Information
and Regulatory Affairs, while Richard Thaler, in 2010, was appointed to
the advisory board of the so-called Behavioural Insights Team, which,
known as the "nudge unit," had been founded by the Conservative prime
minister David Cameron.

In the case of social mass media, the ability to manipulate the
environment is highly one-sided. It is reserved exclusively for those on
the inside, and the latter are concerned with maximizing the profit of a
small group and expanding their power. It is possible to regard this
group as the inner core of the post-democratic system, consisting of
leading figures from business, politics, and the intelligence agencies.
Users typically experience this power, which determines the sphere of
possibility within which their everyday activity can take place, in its
soft form, for instance when new features are introduced that change the
information environment. The hard form of this power only becomes
apparent in extreme cases, for instance when a profile is suddenly
deleted or a group is removed. This can happen on account of a rule
whose existence does not necessarily have to be public or
transparent,[^36^](#c3-note-0036){#c3-note-0036a} or because of an
external intervention that will only be communicated if it is in the
providers\' interest to do so. Such cases make it clear that, at any
time, service providers can take away the possibilities for action that
they offer. This results in a paradoxical experience on the part of
users: the very environments that open up new opportunities for them in
their personal lives prove to be entirely beyond influence when it comes
to fundamental decisions that affect everyone. And, as the majority of
people gradually lose the ability to co-determine how the "big
questions" are answered, a very []{#Page_142 type="pagebreak"
title="142"}small number of actors is becoming stronger than ever. This
paradox of new opportunities for action and simultaneous powerlessness
has been reflected in public debate, where there has also been much
(one-sided) talk about empowerment and the loss of
control.[^37^](#c3-note-0037){#c3-note-0037a} It would be better to
discuss a shift in power that has benefited the elite at the expense of
the vast majority of people.
:::

::: {.section}
### Networks as monopolies {#c3-sec-0007}

Whereas the dominance of output legitimation is new in the realm of
politics, it is normal and seldom regarded as problematic in the world
of business.[^38^](#c3-note-0038){#c3-note-0038a} For, at least in
theory (that is, under the conditions of a functioning market),
customers are able to deny the legitimacy of providers and ultimately
choose between competing products. In the case of social mass media,
however, there is hardly any competition, despite all of the innovation
that is allegedly taking place. Facebook, Twitter, and many other
platforms use closed protocols that greatly hinder the ability of their
members to communicate with the users of competing providers. This has
led to a situation in which the so-called *network effect* -- the fact
that the more a network connects people with one another, the more
useful and attractive it becomes -- has given rise to a *monopoly
effect*: the entire network can only consist of a single provider. This
connection between the network effect and the monopoly effect, however,
is not inevitable, but rather fabricated. It is the closed standards
that make it impossible to switch providers without losing access to the
entire network and thus also to the communal formations that were
created on its foundation. From the perspective of the user, this
represents an extremely high barrier against leaving the network -- for,
as discussed above, these formations now play an essential role in the
creation of both identity and opportunities for action. From the user\'s
standpoint, this is an all-or-nothing decision with severe consequences.
Formally, this is still a matter of individual and free choice, for no
one is being forced, in the classical sense, to use a particular
provider.[^39^](#c3-note-0039){#c3-note-0039a} Yet the options for
action are already pre-structured in such a way that free choice is no
longer free. The majority of American teens, for example, despite
[]{#Page_143 type="pagebreak" title="143"}no longer being very
enthusiastic about Facebook, continue using the network for fear of
missing out on something.[^40^](#c3-note-0040){#c3-note-0040a} This
contradiction -- voluntarily doing something that one does not really
want to do -- and the resulting experience of failing to shape one\'s
own activity in a coherent manner are ideal-typical manifestations of
the power of networks.

The problem experienced by the unwilling-willing users of Facebook has
not been caused by the transformation of communication into data as
such. This is necessary to provide input for algorithms, which turn the
flood of information into something usable. To this extent, the general
complaint about the domination of algorithms is off the mark. The
problem is not the algorithms themselves but rather the specific
capitalist and post-democratic setting in which they are implemented.
They only become an instrument of domin­ation when open and
decentralized activities are transferred into closed and centralized
structures in which far-reaching, fundamental decision-making powers and
possibilities for action are embedded that legitimize themselves purely
on the basis of their output. Or, to adapt the title of Rosa von
Praunheim\'s film, which I discussed in my first chapter: it is not the
algorithm that is perverse, but the situation in which it lives.
:::

::: {.section}
### Political surveillance {#c3-sec-0008}

In June 2013, Edward Snowden exposed an additional and especially
problematic aspect of the expansion of post-democratic structures: the
comprehensive surveillance of the internet by government intelligence
agencies. The latter do not use collected data primarily for commercial
ends (although they do engage in commercial espionage) but rather for
political repression and the protection of central power interests --
or, to put it in more neutral terms, in the service of general security.
Yet the NSA and other intelligence agencies also record decentralized
communication and transform it into (meta-)data, which are centrally
stored and analyzed.[^41^](#c3-note-0041){#c3-note-0041a} This process
is used to generate possible courses of action, from intensifying the
surveillance of individuals and manipulating their informational
environment[^42^](#c3-note-0042){#c3-note-0042a} to launching military
drones for the purpose of
assassination.[^43^](#c3-note-0043){#c3-note-0043a} The []{#Page_144
type="pagebreak" title="144"}great advantage of meta-data is that they
can be standardized and thus easily evaluated by machines. This is
especially important for intelligence agencies because, unlike social
mass media, they do not analyze uniformly formatted and easily
processable streams of communication. That said, the boundaries between
post-democratic social mass media and government intelligence services
are fluid. As is well known by now, the two realms share a number of
continuities in personnel and commonalities with respect to their
content.[^44^](#c3-note-0044){#c3-note-0044a} In 2010, for instance,
Facebook\'s chief security officer left his job for a new position at
the NSA. Personnel swapping of this sort takes place at all levels and
is facilitated by the fact that the two sectors are engaged in nearly
the same activity: analyzing social interactions in real time by means
of their exclusive access to immense volumes of data. The lines of
inquiry and the applied methods are so similar that universities,
companies, and security organizations are able to cooperate closely with
one another. In many cases, certain programs or analytic methods are
just as suitable for commercial purposes as they are for intelligence
agencies and branches of the military. This is especially apparent in
the research that is being conducted. Scientists, businesses, and
militaries share a common interest in discovering collective social
dynamics as early as possible, isolating the relevant nodes (machines,
individual people, or groups) through which these dynamics can be
influenced, and developing strategies for specific interventions to
achieve one goal or another. Aspects of this cooperation are publicly
documented. Since 2011, for instance, the Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency (DARPA) -- the American agency that, in the 1960s,
initiated and financed the development of the internet -- has been
running its own research program on social mass media with the name
Social Media in Strategic Communication. Within the framework of this
program, more than 160 scientific studies have already been published,
with titles such as "Automated Leadership Analysis" or "Interplay
between Social and Topical
Structure."[^45^](#c3-note-0045){#c3-note-0045a} Since 2009, the US
military has been coordinating research in this field through a program
called the Minerva Initiative, which oversees more than 70 individual
projects.[^46^](#c3-note-0046){#c3-note-0046a} Since 2009, too, the
European Union has been working together []{#Page_145 type="pagebreak"
title="145"}with universities and security agencies within the framework
of the so-called INDECT program, the goal of which is "to involve
European scientists and researchers in the development of solutions to
and tools for automatic threat
detection."[^47^](#c3-note-0047){#c3-note-0047a} Research, however, is
just one area of activity. As regards the collection of data and the
surveillance of communication, there is also a high degree of
cooperation between private and government actors, though it is not
always without tension. Snowden\'s revelations have done little to
change this. The public outcry of large internet companies over the fact
that the NSA has been monitoring their services might be an act of
showmanship more than anything else. Such bickering, according to the
security expert Bruce Schneier, is "mostly role-playing designed to keep
us blasé about what\'s really going
on."[^48^](#c3-note-0048){#c3-note-0048a}

Like the operators of social mass media, intelligence agencies also
argue that their methods should be judged according to their output;
that is, the extent to which they ensure state security. Outsiders,
however, are hardly able to make such a judgment. Input legitimation --
that is, the question of whether government security agencies are
operating within the bounds of the democratically legitimized order of
law -- seems to be playing a less significant role in the public
discussion. In somewhat exaggerated terms, one could say that the
disregard for fundamental rights is justified by the quality of the
"security" that these agencies have created. Perhaps the similarity of
the general methods and self-justifications with which service providers
of social production, consumption, and security are constantly
"optimized" is one reason why there has yet to be widespread public
protest against comprehensive surveillance programs. We have been warned
of the establishment of a "police state in reserve," which can be
deployed at any time, but these warnings seem to have fallen on deaf
ears.[^49^](#c3-note-0049){#c3-note-0049a}
:::

::: {.section}
### The normalization of post-democracy {#c3-sec-0009}

At best, it seems as though the reflex of many people is to respond to
even fundamental political issues by considering only what might be
useful or pleasant for themselves in the short term. Apparently, many
people consider it normal to []{#Page_146 type="pagebreak"
title="146"}be excluded from decisions that affect broad and significant
areas of their life. The post-democracy of social mass media, which has
deeply permeated the constitution of everyday life and the constitution
of subjects, is underpinned by the ever advancing post-democracy of
politics. It changes the expectations that citizens have for democratic
institutions, and it makes their increasing erosion seem expected and
normal to broad strata of society. The violation of fundamental and
constitutional civil rights, such as those concerning the protection of
data, is increasingly regarded as unavoidable and -- from the pragmatic
perspective of the individual -- not so bad. This has of course
benefited political decision-makers, who have shown little desire to
change the situation, safeguard basic rights, and establish democratic
control over all areas of executive
authority.[^50^](#c3-note-0050){#c3-note-0050a}

The spread of "smart" technologies is enabling such post-democratic
processes and structures to permeate all areas of life. Within one\'s
private living space, this happens through smart homes, which are still
limited to the high end of the market, and smart meters, which have been
implemented across all social
strata.[^51^](#c3-note-0051){#c3-note-0051a} The latter provide
electricity companies with detailed real-time data about a household\'s
usage behavior and are supposed to enhance energy efficiency, but it
remains unclear exactly how this new efficiency will be
achieved.[^52^](#c3-note-0052){#c3-note-0052a} The concept of the "smart
city" extends this process to entire municipalities. Over the course of
the next few decades, for instance, Siemens predicts that "cities will
have countless autonomous, intelligently functioning IT systems that
will have perfect knowledge of users\' habits and energy consumption,
and provide optimum service. \[...\] The goal of such a city is to
optimally regulate and control resources by means of autonomous IT
systems."[^53^](#c3-note-0053){#c3-note-0053a} According to this vision,
the city will become a cybernetic machine, but if everything is
"optimally" regulated and controlled, who will be left to ask in whose
interests these autonomous systems are operating?

Such dynamics, however, not only reorganize physical space on a small
and a large scale; they also infiltrate human beings. Adherents of the
Quantified Self movement work diligently to record digital information
about their own bodies. The number of platforms that incite users to
stay fit (and []{#Page_147 type="pagebreak" title="147"}share their data
with companies) with competitions, point systems, and similar incentives
has been growing steadily. It is just a small step from this hobby
movement to a disciplinary regime that is targeted at the
body.[^54^](#c3-note-0054){#c3-note-0054a} Imagine the possibilities of
surveillance and sanctioning that will come about when data from
self-optimizing applications are combined with the data available to
insurance companies, hospitals, authorities, or employers. It does not
take too much imagination to do so, because this is already happening in
part today. At the end of 2014, for instance, the Generali Insurance
Company announced a new set of services that is marketed under the name
Vitality. People insured in Germany, France, and Austria are supposed to
send their health information to the company and, as a reward for
leading a "proper" lifestyle, receive a rebate on their premium. The
long-term goal of the program is to develop "behavior-dependent tariff
models," which would undermine the solidarity model of health
insurance.[^55^](#c3-note-0055){#c3-note-0055a}

According to the legal scholar Frank Pasquale, the sum of all these
developments has led to a black-box society: More social processes are
being controlled by algorithms whose operations are not transparent
because they are shielded from the outside world and thus from
democratic control.[^56^](#c3-note-0056){#c3-note-0056a} This
ever-expanding "post-democracy" is not simply liberal democracy with a
few problems that can be eliminated through well-intentioned reforms.
Rather, a new social system has emerged in which allegedly relaxed
control over social activity is compensated for by a heightened level of
control over the data and structural conditions pertaining to the
activity itself. In this system, both the virtual and the physical world
are altered to achieve particular goals -- goals determined by just a
few powerful actors -- without the inclusion of those affected by these
changes and often without them being able to notice the changes at all.
Whoever refuses to share his or her data freely comes to look suspicious
and, regardless of the motivations behind this anonymity, might even be
regarded as a potential enemy. In July 2014, for instance, the following
remarks were included in Facebook\'s terms of use: "On Facebook people
connect using their real names and identities. \[...\] Claiming to be
another person \[...\] or creating multiple accounts undermines
community []{#Page_148 type="pagebreak" title="148"}and violates
Facebook\'s terms."[^57^](#c3-note-0057){#c3-note-0057a} For the police
and the intelligence agencies in particular, all activities that attempt
to evade comprehensive surveillance are generally suspicious. Even in
Germany, people are labeled "extremists" by the NSA for the sole reason
that they have supported the Tor Project\'s anonymity
software.[^58^](#c3-note-0058){#c3-note-0058a} In a 2014 trial in
Vienna, the use of a foreign pre-paid telephone was introduced as
evidence that the defendant had attempted to conceal a crime, even
though this is a harmless and common method for avoiding roaming charges
while abroad.[^59^](#c3-note-0059){#c3-note-0059a} This is a sort of
anti-mask law 2.0, and every additional terrorist attack is used to
justify extending its reach.

It is clear that Zygmunt Bauman\'s bleak assessment of freedom in what
he calls "liquid modernity" -- "freedom comes when it no longer
matters"[^60^](#c3-note-0060){#c3-note-0060a} -- can easily be modified
to suit the digital condition: everyone can participate in cultural
processes, because culture itself has become irrelevant. Disputes about
shared meaning, in which negotiations are made about what is important
to people and what ought to be achieved, have less and less influence
over the way power is exercised. Politics has been abandoned for an
administrative management that oscillates between paternalism and
authoritarianism. Issues that concern the common good have been
delegated to "autonomous IT systems" and removed from public debate. By
now, the exercise of power, which shapes society, is based less on basic
consensus and cultural hegemony than it is on the technocratic argument
that "there is no alternative" and that the (informational) environment
in which people have to orient themselves should be optimized through
comprehensive control and manipulation -- whether they agree with this
or not.
:::

::: {.section}
### Forms of resistance {#c3-sec-0010}

As far as the circumstances outlined above are concerned, Bauman\'s
conclusion may seem justified. But as an overarching assessment of
things, it falls somewhat short, for every form of power provokes its
own forms of resistance.[^61^](#c3-note-0061){#c3-note-0061a} In the
context of post-democracy under the digital condition, these forms have
likewise shifted to the level of data, and an especially innovative and
effective means of resistance []{#Page_149 type="pagebreak"
title="149"}has been the "leak"; that is, the unauthorized publication
of classified documents, usually in the form of large datasets. The most
famous platform for this is WikiLeaks, which since 2006 has attracted
international attention to this method with dozens of spectacular
publications -- on corruption scandals, abuses of authority, corporate
malfeasance, environmental damage, and war crimes. As a form of
resistance, however, leaking entire databases is not limited to just one
platform. In recent years and through a variety of channels, large
amounts of data (from banks and accounting firms, for instance) have
been made public or have been handed over to tax investigators by
insiders. Thus, in 2014, for instance, the *Süddeutsche Zeitung*
(operating as part of the International Consortium of Investigative
Journalists based in Washington, DC), was not only able to analyze the
so-called "Offshore Leaks" -- a database concerning approximately
122,000 shell companies registered in tax
havens[^62^](#c3-note-0062){#c3-note-0062a} -- but also the "Luxembourg
Leaks," which consisted of 28,000 pages of documents demonstrating the
existence of secret and extensive tax deals between national authorities
and multinational corporations and which caused a great deal of
difficulty for Jean-Claude Juncker, the newly elected president of the
European Commission and former prime minister of
Luxembourg.[^63^](#c3-note-0063){#c3-note-0063a}

The reasons why employees or government workers have become increasingly
willing to hand over large amounts of information to journalists or
whistle-blowing platforms are to be sought in the contradictions of the
current post-democratic regime. Over the past few years, the discrepancy
in Western countries between the self-representation of democratic
institutions and their frequently post-democratic practices has become
even more obvious. For some people, including the former CIA employee
Edward Snowden, this discrepancy created a moral conflict. He claimed
that his work consisted in the large-scale investigation and monitoring
of respectable citizens, thus systematically violating the Constitution,
which he was supposed to be protecting. He resolved this inner conflict
by gathering material about his own activity, then releasing it, with
the help of journalists, to the public, so that the latter could
understand and judge what was taking
place.[^64^](#c3-note-0064){#c3-note-0064a} His leaks benefited from
technical []{#Page_150 type="pagebreak" title="150"}advances, including
the new forms of cooperation which have resulted from such advances.
Even institutions that depend on keeping secrets, such as banks and
intelligence agencies, have to "share" their information internally and
rely on a large pool of technical personnel to record and process the
massive amounts of data. To accomplish these tasks, employees need the
fullest possible access to this information, for even the most secret
databases have to be maintained by someone, and this also involves
copying data. Thus, it is far easier today than it was just a few
decades ago to smuggle large volumes of data out of an
institution.[^65^](#c3-note-0065){#c3-note-0065a}

This new form of leaking, however, did not become an important method of
resistance on account of technical developments alone. In the era of big
data, databases are the central resource not only for analyzing how the
world is described by digital communication, but also for generating
that communication. The power of networks in particular is organized
through the construction of environmental conditions that operate
simultaneously in many places. On their own, the individual commands and
instructions are often banal and harmless, but as a whole they
contribute to a dynamic field that is meant to produce the results
desired by the planners who issue them. In order to reconstruct this
process, it is necessary to have access to these large amounts of data.
With such information at hand, it is possible to relocate the
surreptitious operations of post-democracy into the sphere of political
debate -- the public sphere in its emphatic, liberal sense -- and this
needs to be done in order to strengthen democratic forces against their
post-democratic counterparts. Ten years after WikiLeaks and three years
after Edward Snowden\'s revelations, it remains highly questionable
whether democratic actors are strong enough or able to muster the
political will to use this information to tip the balance in their favor
for the long term. Despite the forms of resistance that have arisen in
response to these new challenges, one could be tempted to concur with
Bauman\'s pessimistic conclusion about the irrelevance of freedom,
especially if post-democracy were the only concrete political tendency
of the digital condition. But it is not. There is a second political
trend taking place, though it is not quite as well
developed.[]{#Page_151 type="pagebreak" title="151"}
:::
:::

::: {.section}
Commons {#c3-sec-0011}
-------

The digital condition includes not only post-democratic structures in
more areas of life; it is also characterized by the development of a new
manner of production. As early as 2002, the legal scholar Yochai Benkler
coined the term "commons-based peer production" to describe the
development in question.[^66^](#c3-note-0066){#c3-note-0066a} Together,
Benkler\'s peers form what I have referred to as "communal formations":
people joining forces voluntarily and on a fundamentally even playing
field in order to pursue common goals. Benkler enhances this idea with
reference to the constitutive role of the commons for many of these
communal formations.

As such, commons are neither new nor specifically Western. They exist in
many cultural traditions, and thus the term is used in a wide variety of
ways.[^67^](#c3-note-0067){#c3-note-0067a} In what follows, I will
distinguish between three different dimensions. The first of these
involves "common pool resources"; that is, *goods* that can be used
communally. The second dimension is that these goods are administered by
the "commoners"; that is, by members of *communities* who produce, use,
and cultivate the resources. Third, this activity gives rise to forms of
"commoning"; that is, to *practices*, *norms*, and *institutions* that
are developed by the communities
themselves.[^68^](#c3-note-0068){#c3-note-0068a}

In the commons, efforts are focused on the long-term utility of goods.
This does not mean that commons cannot also be used for the production
of commercial products -- cheese from the milk of cows that graze on a
common pasture, for instance, or books based on the content of Wikipedia
articles. The relationships between the people who use a certain
resource communally, however, are not structured through money but
rather through direct social cooper­ation. Commons are thus
fundamentally different from classical market-oriented institutions,
which orient their activity primarily in response to price signals.
Commons are also fundamentally distinct from bureaucracies -- whether in
the form of public administration or private industry -- which are
organized according to hierarchical chains of command. And they differ,
too, from public institutions. Whereas the latter are concerned with
society as a whole -- or at least that is []{#Page_152 type="pagebreak"
title="152"}their democratic mandate -- commons are inwardly oriented
forms that primarily exist by means and for the sake of their members.

::: {.section}
### The organization of the commons {#c3-sec-0012}

Commoners create institutions when they join together for the sake of
using a resource in a long-term and communal manner. In this, the
separation of producers and consumers, which is otherwise ubiquitous,
does not play a significant role: to different and variable extents, all
commoners are producers and consumers of the common resources. It is an
everyday occurrence for someone to take something from the common pool
of resources for his or her own use, but it is understood that something
will be created from this that, in one form or another, will flow back
into the common pool. This process -- the reciprocal relationship
between singular appropriation and communal provisions -- is one of the
central dynamics within commons.

Because commoners orient their activity neither according to price
signals (markets) nor according to instructions or commands
(hierarchies), social communication among the members is the most
important means of self-organization. This communication is intended to
achieve consensus and the voluntary acceptance of negotiated rules, for
only in such a way is it possible to maintain the voluntary nature of
the arrangement and to keep internal controls at a minimum. Voting,
which is meant to legitimize the preferences of a majority, is thus
somewhat rare, and when it does happen, it is only of subordinate
significance. The main issue is to build consensus, and this is usually
a complex process requiring intensive communication. One of the reasons
why the very old practice of the commons is now being readopted and
widely discussed is because communication-intensive and horizontal
processes can be organized far more effectively with digital
technologies. Thus, the idea of collective participation and
organization beyond small groups is no longer just a utopian vision.

The absence of price signals and chains of command causes the social
institutions of the commons to develop complex structures for
comprehensively integrating their members. []{#Page_153 type="pagebreak"
title="153"}This typically involves weaving together a variety of
economic, social, cultural, and technical dimensions. Commons realize an
alternative to the classical separation of spheres that is so typical of
our modern economy and society. The economy is not understood here as an
independent realm that functions according to a different set of rules
and with externalities, but rather as one facet of a complex and
comprehensive phenomenon with intertwining commercial, social, ethical,
ecological, and cultural dimensions.

It is impossible to determine how the interplay between these three
dimensions generally solidifies into concrete institutions.
Historically, many different commons-based institutions were developed,
and their number and variety have only increased under the digital
condition. Elinor Ostrom, who was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in
Economics for her work on the commons, has thus refrained from
formulating a general model for
them.[^69^](#c3-note-0069){#c3-note-0069a} Instead, she has identified a
series of fundamental challenges for which all commoners have to devise
their own solutions.[^70^](#c3-note-0070){#c3-note-0070a} For example,
the membership of a group that communally uses a particular resource
must be defined and, if necessary, limited. Especially in the case of
material resources, such as pastures on which several people keep their
animals, it is important to limit the number of members for the simple
reason that the resource in question might otherwise be over-utilized
(this is allegedly the "tragedy of the
commons").[^71^](#c3-note-0071){#c3-note-0071a} Things are different
with so-called non-rival goods, which can be consumed by one person
without excluding its use by another. When I download and use a freely
available word-processing program, for instance, I do not take away
another person\'s chance to do the same. But even in the case of digital
common goods, access is often tied to certain conditions. Whoever uses
free software has to accept its licensing agreement.

Internally, commons are often meritocratically oriented. Those who
contribute more are also able to make greater use of the common good (in
the case of material goods) or more strongly influence its development
(in the case of informational goods). In the latter case, the
meritocratic element takes into account the fact that the challenge does
not lie in avoiding the over-utilization of a good, but rather in
generating new contributions to its further development. Those who
[]{#Page_154 type="pagebreak" title="154"}contribute most to the
provision of resources should also be able to determine their further
course of development, and this represents an important incentive for
these members to remain in the group. This is in the interest of all
participants, and thus the authority of the most active members is
seldom called into question. This does not mean, however, that there are
no differences of opinion within commons. Here, too, reaching consensus
can be a time-consuming process. Among the most important
characteristics of all commons are thus mechanisms for decision-making
that involve members in a variety of ways. The rules that govern the
commons are established by the members themselves. This goes far beyond
choosing between two options presented by a third party. Commons are not
simply markets without money. All rele­vant decisions are made
collectively within the commons, and they do not simply aggregate as the
sum of individual decisions. Here, unlike the case of post-democratic
structures, the levels of participation and decision-making are not
separ­ated from one another. On the contrary, they are directly and
explicitly connected.

The implementation of rules and norms, even if they are the result of
consensus, is never an entirely smooth process. It is therefore
necessary, as Ostrom has stressed, to monitor rule compliance within
commons and to develop a system of graded sanctions. Minor infractions
are punished with social disapproval or small penalties, while graver
infractions warrant stiffer penalties that can lead to a person\'s
exclusion from the group. In order for conflicts or rule violations not
to escalate in the commons to the extent that expulsion is the only
option, mechanisms for conflict resolution have to be put in place. In
the case of Wikipedia, for instance, conflicts are usually resolved
through discussions. This is not always productive, however, for
occasionally the "solution" turns out to be that one side or the other
has simply given up out of exhaustion.

A final important point is that commons do not exist in isolation from
society. They are always part of larger social systems, which are
normally governed by the principles of the market or subject to state
control, and are thus in many cases oppositional to the practice of
commoning. Political resistance is often incited by the very claim that
a particular []{#Page_155 type="pagebreak" title="155"}good can be
communally administered and does not belong to a single owner, but
rather to a group that governs its own affairs. Yet without the
recognition of the right to self-organization and without the
corresponding legal conditions allowing this right to be perceived as
such, commons are barely able to form at all, and existing commons are
always at risk of being expropriated and privatized by a third party.
This is the true "tragedy of the commons," and it happens all the
time.[^72^](#c3-note-0072){#c3-note-0072a}
:::

::: {.section}
### Informational common goods: free software and free culture {#c3-sec-0013}

The term "commons" was first applied to informational goods during the
second half of the 1990s.[^73^](#c3-note-0073){#c3-note-0073a} The
practice of creating digital common goods, however, goes back to the
origins of free software around the middle of the 1980s. Since then, a
complex landscape has developed, with software codes being cooperatively
and sustainably managed as common resources available to everyone (who
accepts their licensing agreements). This can best be explained with an
example. One of the oldest projects in the area of free software -- and
one that continues to be of relevance today -- is Debian, a so-called
"distribution" (that is, a compilation of software components) that has
existed since 1993. According to its own website:

::: {.extract}
The Debian Project is an association of individuals who have made common
cause to create a free operating system. \[...\] An operating system is
the set of basic programs and utilities that make your computer run.
\[...\] Debian comes with over 43000 packages (precompiled software that
is bundled up in a nice format for easy installation on your machine).
\[...\] All of it free.[^74^](#c3-note-0074){#c3-note-0074a}
:::

The special thing about Unix-like operating systems is that they are
composed of a very large number of independent yet interacting programs.
The task of a distribution -- and this task is hardly trivial -- is to
combine this modular variety into a whole that provides, in an
integrated manner, all of the functions of a contemporary computer.
Debian is particularly []{#Page_156 type="pagebreak"
title="156"}important because the community sets extremely high
standards for itself, and it is for this reason that the distribution is
not only used by many server administrators but is also the foundation
of numerous end-user-oriented services, including Ubuntu and Linux Mint.

The Debian Project has developed a complex form of organization that is
based on a set of fundamental principles defined by the members
themselves. These are delineated in the Debian Social Contract, which
was first formulated in 1997 and subsequently revised in
2004.[^75^](#c3-note-0075){#c3-note-0075a} It stipulates that the
software has to remain "100% free" at all times, in the sense that the
software license guarantees the freedom of unlimited use, modification,
and distribution. The developers understand this primarily as an ethical
obligation. They explicitly regard the project as a contribution "to the
free software community." The social contract demands transparency on
the level of the program code: "We will keep our entire bug report
database open for public view at all times. Reports that people file
online will promptly become visible to others." There are both technical
and ethical considerations behind this. The contract makes no mention at
all of a classical production goal; there is no mention, for instance,
of competitive products or a schedule for future developments. To put it
in Colin Crouch\'s terms, input legitimation comes before output
legitimation. The initiators silently assume that the project\'s basic
ethical, technical, and social orientations will result in high quality,
but they do not place this goal above any other.

The Debian Social Contract is the basis for cooperation and the central
reference point for dealing with conflicts. It forms the normative core
of a community that is distinguished by its equal treatment of ethical,
political, technical, and economic issues. The longer the members have
been cooperating together on this basis, the more binding this attitude
has become for each of them, and the more sustainable the community has
become as a whole. In other words, it has taken on a concrete form that
is relevant to the activities of everyday
life.[^76^](#c3-note-0076){#c3-note-0076a} Today, Debian is a global
project with a stable core of about a thousand developers, most of whom
live in Europe, the United States, and Latin
America.[^77^](#c3-note-0077){#c3-note-0077a} The Debian commons is a
high-grade collaborative organization, []{#Page_157 type="pagebreak"
title="157"}the necessary cooperation for which is enabled by a complex
infrastructure that automates many routine tasks. This is the only
efficient way to manage the program code, which has grown to more than a
hundred million lines. Yet not everything takes place online.
International and local meetings and conferences have long played an
important role. These have not only been venues for exchanging
information and planning the coordination of the project; they have also
helped to create a sense of mutual trust, without which this form of
voluntary collaboration would not be possible.

Despite the considerable size of the Debian Project, it is just one part
of a much larger institutional ecology that includes other communities,
universities, and businesses. Most of the 43,000 software packets of the
Debian distribution are programmed by groups of developers that do not
belong to the Debian Project. Debian is "just" a compilation of these
many individual programs. One of these programs written by outsiders is
the Linux kernel, which in many respects is the central and most complex
program within a GNU/Linux operating system. Governing the organization
of processes and data, it thus forms the interface between hardware and
software. An entire institutional subsystem has been built up around
this complex program, upon which everything else depends. The community
of developers was initiated by Linus Torvalds, who wrote the first
rudimentary kernel in 1991. Even though most of the kernel developers
since then have been paid for their work, their cooperation then and now
has been voluntary and, for the vast majority of contributors, has
functioned without monetary exchange. In order to improve collaboration,
a specialized technological infrastructure has been used -- above all
Torvalds\'s self-developed system Git, which automates many steps for
managing the distributed revisions of code. In all of this, an important
role is played by the Linux Foundation, a non-profit organization that
takes over administrative, legal, and financial tasks for the community.
The foundation is financed by its members, which include large software
companies that contribute as much as \$500,000 a year. This money is
used, for instance, to pay the most important programmers and to
organize working groups, thus ensuring that the development and
distribution of Linux will continue on a long-term basis. The
[]{#Page_158 type="pagebreak" title="158"}businesses that finance the
Linux Foundation may be profit-oriented institutions, but the main work
of the developers -- the program code -- flows back into the common pool
of resources, which the explicitly non-profit Debian Project can then
use to compile its distribution. The freedoms guaranteed by the free
license render this transfer from commercial to non-commercial use not
only legally unproblematic but even desirable to the for-profit service
providers, as they themselves also need entire operating systems and not
just the kernel.

The Debian Project draws from this pool of resources and is at the same
time a part of it. Therefore others can use Debian\'s software code,
which happens to a large extent, for instance through other Linux
distributions. This is not understood as competition for market share
but rather as an expression of the community\'s vitality, which for
Debian represents a central and normative point of pride. As the Debian
Social Contract explicitly states, "We will allow others to create
distributions containing both the Debian system and other works, without
any fee."

Thus, over the years, a multifaceted institutional landscape has been
created in which collaboration can take place between for-profit and
non-profit entities -- between formal organizations and informal
communal formations. Together, they form the software commons.
Communally, they strive to ensure that high-quality free software will
continue to exist for the long term. The coordination necessary for this
is not tension-free. Within individual communities, on the contrary,
there are many conflicts and competitive disputes about people, methods,
and strategic goals. Tensions can also run high between the communities,
foundations, and com­panies that cooperate and compete with one another
(sometimes more directly, sometimes less directly). To cite one example,
the relationship between the Debian Project and Canonical, the company
that produces the Ubuntu operating system, was strained for several
years. At the heart of the conflict was the issue of whether Ubuntu\'s
developers were giving enough back to the Debian Project or whether they
were simply exploiting it. Although the Debian Social Contract expressly
allows the commercial use of its operating system, Canonical was and
remains dependent on the software commons functioning as []{#Page_159
type="pagebreak" title="159"}a whole, because, after all, the company
needs to be able to make use of the latest developments in the Debian
system. It took years to defuse the conflict, and this was only achieved
when forums were set up to guarantee that information and codes could
flow in both directions. The Debian community, for example, introduced
something called a "derivatives front desk" to improve its communication
with programmers of distributions that, like Ubuntu, derive from Debian.
For its part, Canonical improved its internal processes so that code
could flow back into the Debian Project, and their systems for
bug-tracking were partially integrated to avoid duplicates. After
several years of strife, Raphaël Hertzog, a prominent member of the
Debian community, was able to summarize matters as follows:

::: {.extract}
The Debian--Ubuntu relationship used to be a hot topic, but that\'s no
longer the case thanks to regular efforts made on both sides. Conflicts
between individuals still happen, but there are multiple places where
they can be reported and discussed \[...\]. Documentation and
infrastructure are in place to make it easier for volunteers to do the
right thing. Despite all those process improvements, the best results
still come out when people build personal relationships by discussing
what they are doing. It often leads to tight cooperation, up to commit
rights to the source repositories. Regular contacts help build a real
sense of cooperation that no automated process can ever hope to
achieve.[^78^](#c3-note-0078){#c3-note-0078a}
:::

In all successful commons, diverse social relations, mutual trust, and a
common culture play an important role as preconditions for the
consensual resolution of conflicts. This is not a matter of achieving an
ideal -- as Hertzog stressed, not every conflict can be set aside -- but
rather of reaching pragmatic solutions that allow actors to pursue, on
equal terms, their own divergent goals within the common project.

The immense commons of the Debian Project encompasses a nearly
unfathomable number of variations. The distribution is available in over
70 languages (in comparison, Apple\'s operating system is sold in 22
languages), and diverse versions exist to suit different application
contexts, aesthetic preferences, hardware needs, and stability
requirements. Within each of these versions, in turn, there are
innumerable []{#Page_160 type="pagebreak" title="160"}variations that
have been created by individual users with different sets of technical
or creative skills. The final result is a continuously changing service
that can be adapted for countless special requirements, desires, and
other features. To outsiders, this internal differentiation is often
difficult to comprehend, and it can soon leave the impression that there
is little more to it than a tedious variety of essentially the same
thing. What user would ever need 60 different text
editors?[^79^](#c3-note-0079){#c3-note-0079a} For those who would like
to use free software without having to join a group, a greater number of
simple and standardized products have been made available. For
commoners, however, this diversity is enormously important, for it is an
expression of their fundamental freedom to work precisely on those
problems that are closest to their hearts -- even if that means creating
another text editor.

With the success of free software toward the end of the 1990s, producers
in other areas of culture, who were just starting to use the internet,
also began to take an interest in this new manner of production. It
seemed to be a good fit with the vibrant do-it-yourself culture that was
blooming online, and all the more so because there were hardly any
attractive commercial alternatives at the time. This movement was
sustained by the growing tier of professional and non-professional
makers of culture that had emerged over the course of the aforementioned
transformations of the labor market. At first, many online sources were
treated as "quasi-common goods." It was considered normal and desirable
to appropriate them and pass them on to others without first having to
develop a proper commons for such activity. This necessarily led to
conflicts. Unlike free software, which on account of its licensing was
on secure legal ground from the beginning, copyright violations were
rampant in the new do-it-yourself culture. For the sake of engaging in
the referential processes discussed in the previous chapter,
copyright-protected content was (and continues to be) used, reproduced,
and modified without permission. Around the turn of the millennium, the
previously latent conflict between "quasi-commoners" and the holders of
traditional copyrights became an open dispute, which in many cases was
resolved in court. Founded in June 1999, the file-sharing service
Napster gained, over the course of just 18 months, 25 million users
[]{#Page_161 type="pagebreak" title="161"}worldwide who simply took the
distribution of music into their own hands without the authorization of
copyright owners. This incited a flood of litigation that managed to
shut the service down in July 2001. This did not, however, put an end to
the large-scale practice of unauthorized data sharing. New services and
technologies, many of which used (the file-sharing protocol) BitTorrent,
quickly filled in the gap. The number of court cases skyrocketed, not
least because new legal standards expanded the jurisdiction of copyright
law and enabled it to be applied more
aggressively.[^80^](#c3-note-0080){#c3-note-0080a} These conflicts
forced a critical mass of cultural producers to deal with copyright law
and to reconsider how the practices of sharing and modifying could be
perpetuated in the long term. One of the first results of these
considerations was to develop, following the model of free software,
numerous licenses that were tailored to cultural
production.[^81^](#c3-note-0081){#c3-note-0081a} In the cultural
context, free licenses achieved widespread distribution after 2001 with
the arrival of Creative Commons (CC), a California-based foundation that
began to provide easily understandable and adaptable licensing kits and
to promote its services internationally through a network of partner
organizations. This set of licenses made it possible to transfer user
rights to the community (defined by the acceptance of the license\'s
terms and conditions) and thus to create a freely accessible pool of
cultural resources. Works published under a CC license can always be
consumed and distributed free of charge (though not necessarily freely).
Some versions of the license allow works to be altered; others permit
their commercial use; while some, in turn, only allow non-commercial use
and distribution. In comparison with free software licenses, this
greater emphasis on the rights of individual producers over those of the
community, whose freedoms of use can be twice as restricted (in terms of
the right to alter works or use them for commercial ends), gave rise to
the long-standing critique that, with respect to freedom and
communality, CC licenses in fact represent a
regression.[^82^](#c3-note-0082){#c3-note-0082a} A combination of good
timing, user-friendly implementations, and powerful support from leading
American universities, however, resulted in CC licenses becoming the de
facto legal standard of free culture.

Based on a solid legal foundation and thus protected from rampant
copyright conflicts, large and well-structured []{#Page_162
type="pagebreak" title="162"}cultural commons were established, for
instance around the online reference work Wikipedia (which was then,
however, using a different license). As much as the latter is now taken
for granted as an everyday component of informational
life,[^83^](#c3-note-0083){#c3-note-0083a} the prospect of a
commons-generated encyclopedia hardly seemed realistic at the beginning.
Even the founders themselves had little faith in it, and thus Wikipedia
began as a side project. Their primary goal was to develop an
encyclopedia called Nupedia, for which only experts would be allowed to
write entries, which would then have to undergo a seven-stage
peer-review process before being published for free use. From its
beginning, on the contrary, Wikipedia was open for anyone to edit, and
any changes made to it were published without review or delay. By the
time that Nupedia was abandoned in September 2003 (with only 25
published articles), the English-language version of Wikipedia already
consisted of more than 160,000 entries, and the German version, which
came online in May 2001, already had 30,000. The former version reached
1 million entries by January 2003, the latter by December 2009, and by
the beginning of 2015 they had 4.7 million and 1.8 million entries,
respectively. In the meantime (by August 2015), versions have been made
available in 289 other languages, 48 of which have at least 100,000
entries. Both its successes -- its enormous breadth of up-to-date
content, along with its high level of acceptance and quality -- and its
failures, with its low percentage of women editors (around 10 percent),
exhausting discussions, complex rules, lack of young personnel, and
systematic attempts at manipulation, have been well documented because
Wikipedia also guarantees free access to the data generated by the
activities of users, and thus makes the development of the commons
fairly transparent for outsiders.[^84^](#c3-note-0084){#c3-note-0084a}

One of the most fundamental and complex decisions in the history of
Wikipedia was to change its license. The process behind this is
indicative of how thoroughly the community of a commons can be involved
in its decision-making. When Wikipedia was founded in 2001, there was no
established license for free cultural works. The best option available
was the GNU license for free documentation (GLFD), which had been
developed, however, for software documentation. In the following years,
the CC license became the standard, and this []{#Page_163
type="pagebreak" title="163"}gave rise to the legal problem that content
from Wikipedia could not be combined with CC-licensed works, even though
this would have aligned with the intentions of those who had published
content under either of these licenses. To alleviate this problem and
thus facilitate exchange between Wikipedia and other cultural commons,
the Wikimedia Foundation (which holds the rights to Wikipedia) proposed
to place older content retroactively under both licenses, the GLFD and
the equivalent CC license. In strictly legal terms, the foundation would
have been able to make this decision without consulting the community.
However, it would have lacked legitimacy and might have even caused
upheavals within it. In order to avoid this, an elaborate discussion
process was initiated that led to a membership-wide vote. This process
lasted from December 2007 (when the Wikipedia Foundation resolved to
change the license) to the end of May 2009, when the voting period
concluded. All told, 17,462 votes were cast, of which only 10.5 percent
rejected the proposed changes. More important than the result, however,
was the way it had come about: through a long, consensus-building
process of discussion, for which the final vote served above all to make
the achieved consensus unambiguously
clear.[^85^](#c3-note-0085){#c3-note-0085a} All other decisions that
concern the project as a whole were and continue to be reached in a
similar way. Here, too, input legitimation is at least on an equal
footing with output legitimation.

With Wikipedia, a great deal happens voluntarily and without cost, but
that does not mean that no financial resources are needed to organize
and maintain such a commons on a long-term basis. In particular, it is
necessary to raise funds for infrastructure (hardware, administration,
bandwidth), the employees of the Wikipedia Foundation, conferences, and
its own project initiatives -- networking with schools, uni­versities,
and cultural institutions, for example, or increasing the diversity of
the Wikipedia community. In light of the number of people who use the
encyclopedia, it would be possible to finance the project, which accrued
costs of around 45 million dollars during the 2013--14 fiscal year,
through advertising (in the same manner, that is, as commercial mass
media). Yet there has always been a consensus against this. Instead,
Wikipedia is financed through donations. In 2013--14, the website was
able to raise \$51 million, 37 million of []{#Page_164 type="pagebreak"
title="164"}which came from approximately 2.5 million contributors, each
of whom donated just a small sum.[^86^](#c3-note-0086){#c3-note-0086a}
These small contributions are especially interesting because, to a large
extent, they come from people who consider themselves part of the
community but do not do much editing. This suggests that donating is
understood as an opportunity to make a contribution without having to
invest much time in the project. In this case, donating money is thus
not an expression of charity but rather of communal spirit; it is just
one of a diverse number of ways to remain active in a commons. Precisely
because its economy is not understood as an independent sphere with its
own logic (maximizing individual resources), but rather as an integrated
aspect of cultivating a common resource, non-financial and financial
contributions can be treated equally. Both types of contribution
ultimately derive from the same motivation: they are expressions of
appre­ciation for the meaning that the common resource possesses for
one\'s own activity.
:::

::: {.section}
### At the interface with physical space: open data {#c3-sec-0014}

Wikipedia, however, is an exception. None of the other new commons have
managed to attract such large financial contributions. The project known
as OpenStreetMap (OSM), which was founded in 2004 by Steve Coast,
happens to be the most important commons for
geodata.[^87^](#c3-note-0087){#c3-note-0087a} By the beginning of 2016,
it had collected and identified around 5 billion GPS coordinates and
linked them to more than 273 million routes. This work was accomplished
by about half a million people, who surveyed their neighborhoods with
hand-held GPS devices or, where that was not a possibility, extracted
data from satellite images or from public land registries. The project,
which is organized through specialized infrastructure and by local and
international communities, also utilizes a number of automated
processes. These are so important that not only was a "mechanical edit
policy" developed to govern the use of algorithms for editing; the
latter policy was also supplemented by an "automated edits code of
conduct," which defines further rules of behavior. Regarding the
implementation of a new algorithm, for instance, the code states: "We do
not require or recommend a formal vote, but if there []{#Page_165
type="pagebreak" title="165"}is significant objection to your plan --
and even minorities may be significant! -- then change it or drop it
altogether."[^88^](#c3-note-0088){#c3-note-0088a} Here, again, there is
the typical objection to voting and a focus on building a consensus that
does not have to be perfect but simply good enough for the overwhelming
majority of the community to acknowledge it (a "rough consensus").
Today, the coverage and quality of the maps that can be generated from
these data are so good for so many areas that they now represent serious
competition to commercial digital alternatives. OSM data are used not
only by Wikipedia and other non-commercial projects but also
increasingly by large commercial services that need geographical
information and suitable maps but do not want to rely on a commercial
provider whose terms and conditions can change at any time. To the
extent that these commercial applications provide their users with the
opportunity to improve the maps, their input flows back through the
commercial level and into the common pool.

Despite its immense community and its regular requests for donations,
the financial resources of the OSM Foundation, which functions as the
legal entity and supporting organ­ization behind the project, cannot be
compared to those of the Wikipedia Foundation. The OSM Foundation has no
employees, and in 2014 it generated just £88,000 in revenue, half of
which was obtained from donations and half from holding
conferences.[^89^](#c3-note-0089){#c3-note-0089a} That said, OSM is
nevertheless a socially, technologically, and financially robust
commons, though one with a model entirely different from Wikipedia\'s.
Because data are at the heart of the project, its needs for hardware and
bandwidth are negligible compared to Wikipedia\'s, and its servers can
be housed at universities or independently operated by individual
groups. Around this common resource, a global network of companies has
formed that offer services on the basis of complex geodata. In doing so,
they allow improvements to go back into the pool or, if financed by
external sources, they can work directly on the common
infrastructure.[^90^](#c3-note-0090){#c3-note-0090a} Here, too, we find
the characteristic juxtaposition of paid and unpaid work, of commercial
and non-commercial orientations that depend on the same common resource
to pursue their divergent goals. If this goes on for a long time, then
there will be an especially strong (self-)interest among everyone
involved for their own work, []{#Page_166 type="pagebreak"
title="166"}or at least part of it, to benefit the long-term development
of the resource in question. Functioning commons, especially the new
informational ones, are distinguished by the heterogeneity of their
motivations and actors. Just as the Wikipedia project successfully and
transformatively extended the experience of working with free software
to the generation of large bases of knowledge, the community responsible
for OpenStreetMaps succeeded in making the experiences of the Wikipedia
project useful for the creation of a commons based on large datasets,
and managed to adapt these experiences according to the specific needs
of such a project.[^91^](#c3-note-0091){#c3-note-0091a}

It is of great political significance that informational commons have
expanded into the areas of data recording and data use. Control over
data, which specify and describe the world in real time, is an essential
element of the contempor­ary constitution of power. From large volumes
of data, new types of insight can be gained and new strategies for
action can be derived. The more one-sided access to data becomes, the
more it yields imbalances of power.

In this regard, the commons model offers an alternative, for it allows
various groups equal and unobstructed access to this potential resource
of power. This, at least, is how the Open Data movement sees things.
Data are considered "open" if they are available to everyone without
restriction to be used, distributed, and developed freely. For this to
occur, it is necessary to provide data in a standard-compatible format
that is machine-readable. Only in such a way can they be browsed by
algorithms and further processed. Open data are an important
precondition for implementing the power of algorithms in a democratic
manner. They ensure that there can be an effective diversity of
algorithms, for anyone can write his or her own algorithm or commission
others to process data in various ways and in light of various
interests. Because algorithms cannot be neutral, their diversity -- and
the resulting ability to compare the results of different methods -- is
an important precondition for them not becoming an uncontrollable
instrument of power. This can be achieved most dependably through free
access to data, which are maintained and cultivated as a commons.

Motivated by the conviction that free access to data represents a
necessary condition for autonomous activity in the []{#Page_167
type="pagebreak" title="167"}digital condition, many new initiatives
have formed that are devoted to the decentralized collection,
networking, and communal organization of data. For several years, for
instance, there has been a global community of people who observe
airplanes in their field of vision, share this information with one
another, and make it generally accessible. Outside of the tight
community, these data are typically of little interest. Yet it was
through his targeted analysis of this information that the geographer
and artist Trevor Paglen succeeded in mapping out the secret arrests
made by American intelligence services. Ultimately, even the CIA\'s
clandestine airplanes have to take off and land like any others, and
thus they can be observed.[^92^](#c3-note-0092){#c3-note-0092a} Around
the collection of environmental data, a movement has formed whose
adherents enter measurements themselves. To cite just one example:
thanks to a successful crowdfunding campaign that raised more than
\$144,000 (just 39,000 were needed), it was possible to finance the
development of a simple set of sensors called the Air Quality Egg. This
device can measure the concentration of carbon dioxide or nitrogen
dioxide in the air and send its findings to a public database. It
involves the use of relatively simple technologies that are likewise
freely licensed (open hardware). How to build and use it is documented
in such a detailed and user-friendly manner -- in instructional videos
on YouTube, for instance -- that anyone so inclined can put one together
on his or her own, and it would also be easy to have them made on a
large scale as a commercial product. Over time, this has brought about a
network of stations that is able to measure the quality of the air
exactly, locally, and in places that are relevant to users. All of this
information is stored in a global and freely accessible database, from
which it is possible to look up and analyze hyper-local data in real
time and without restrictions.[^93^](#c3-note-0093){#c3-note-0093a}

A list of examples of data commons, both the successful and the
unsuccessful, could go on and on. It will suffice, however, to point out
that many new commons have come about that are redefining the interface
between physical and informational space and creating new strategies for
actions in both directions. The Air Quality Egg, which is typical in
this regard, also demonstrates that commons can develop cumulatively.
Free software and free hardware are preconditions for []{#Page_168
type="pagebreak" title="168"}producing and networking such an object. No
less import­ant are commercial and non-commercial infrastructures for
communal learning, compiling documentation, making infor­mation
available, and thus facilitating access for those interested and
building up the community. All of this depends on free knowledge, from
Wikipedia to scientific databases. This enables a great variety of
actors -- in this case en­vironmental scientists, programmers,
engineers, and interested citizens -- to come together and create a
common frame of reference in which everyone can pursue his or her own
goals and yet do so on the basis of communal resources. This, in turn,
has given rise to a new commons, namely that of environmental data.

Not all data can or must be collected by individuals, for a great deal
of data already exists. That said, many scientific and state
institutions face the problem of having data that, though nominally
public (or at least publicly funded), are in fact extremely difficult
for third parties to use. Such information may exist, but it is kept in
institutions to which there is no or little public access, or it exists
only in analog or non-machine-readable formats (as PDFs of scanned
documents, for instance), or its use is tied to high license fees. One
of the central demands of the Open Data and Open Access movements is
thus to have free access to these collections. Yet there has been a
considerable amount of resistance. Whether for political or economic
reasons, many public and scientific institutions do not want their data
to be freely accessible. In many cases, moreover, they also lack the
competence, guidelines, budgets, and internal processes that would be
necessary to make their data available to begin with. But public
pressure has been mounting, not least through initiatives such as the
global Open Data Index, which compares countries according to the
accessibility of their information.[^94^](#c3-note-0094){#c3-note-0094a}
In Germany, the Digital Openness Index evaluates states and communities
in terms of open data, the use of open-source software, the availability
of open infrastructures (such as free internet access in public places),
open policies (the licensing of public information,
freedom-of-information laws, the transparency of budget planning, etc.),
and open education (freely accessible educational resources, for
instance).[^95^](#c3-note-0095){#c3-note-0095a} The results are rather
sobering. The Open Data Index has identified 10 []{#Page_169
type="pagebreak" title="169"}different datasets that ought to be open,
including election results, company registries, maps, and national
statistics. A study of 97 countries revealed that, by the middle of
2015, only 11 percent of these datasets were entirely freely accessible
and usable.

Although public institutions are generally slow and resistant in making
their data freely available, important progress has nevertheless been
made. Such progress indicates not only that the new commons have
developed their own structures in parallel with traditional
institutions, but also that the commoners have begun to make new demands
on established institutions. These are intended to change their internal
processes and their interaction with citizens in such a way that they
support the creation and growth of commons. This is not something that
can be achieved overnight, for the institutions in question need to
change at a fundamental level with respect to their procedures,
self-perception, and relation to citizens. This is easier said than
done.
:::

::: {.section}
### Municipal infrastructures as commons: citizen networks {#c3-sec-0015}

The demands for open access to data, however, are not exhausted by
attempts to redefine public institutions and civic participation. In
fact, they go far beyond that. In Germany, for instance, there has been
a recent movement toward (re-)communalizing the basic provision of water
and energy. Its goal is not merely to shift the ownership structure from
private to public. Rather, its intention is to reorient the present
institutions so that, instead of operating entirely on the basis of
economic criteria, they also take into account democratic, ecological,
and social factors. These efforts reached a high point in November 2013,
when the population of Berlin was called upon to vote over the
communalization of the power supply. Formed in 2011, a non-partisan
coalition of NGOs and citizens known as the Berlin Energy Roundtable had
mobilized to take over the local energy grid, whose license was due to
become available in 2014. The proposal was for the network to be
administered neither entirely privately nor entirely by the public.
Instead, the license was to be held by a newly formed municipal utility
that would not only []{#Page_170 type="pagebreak" title="170"}organize
the efficient operation of the grid but also pursue social causes, such
as the struggles against energy poverty and power cuts, and support
ecological causes, including renewable energy sources and energy
conservation. It was intended, moreover, for the utility to be
democratically organized; that is, for it to offer expanded
opportunities for civic participation on the basis of the complete
transparency of its internal processes in order to increase -- and
ensure for the long term -- the acceptance and identification of
citizens.

Yet it did not get that far. Even though it was conceivably close, the
referendum failed to go through. While 83 percent voted in favor of the
new utility, the necessary quorum of 25 percent of all eligible voters
was not quite achieved (the voter turnout was 24.71 percent).
Nevertheless, the vote represented a milestone. For the first time ever
in a large European metropolis, a specific model "beyond the market and
the state" had been proposed for an essential aspect of everyday life
and put before the people. A central component of infrastructure, the
reliability of which is absolutely indispensable for life in any modern
city, was close to being treated as a common good, supported by a new
institution, and governed according to a statute that explicitly
formulated economic, social, ecological, and democratic goals on equal
terms. This would not have resulted in a commons in the strict sense,
but rather in a new public institution that would have adopted and
embodied the values and orientations that, because of the activity of
commons, have increasingly become everyday phenomena in the digital
condition.

In its effort to develop institutional forms beyond the market and the
state, the Berlin Energy Roundtable is hardly unique. It is rather part
of a movement that is striving for fundamental change and is in many
respects already quite advanced. In Denmark, for example, not only does
a comparatively large amount of energy come from renewable sources (27.2
percent of total use, as of 2014), but 80 percent of the country\'s
wind-generated electricity is produced by self-administered cooperatives
or by individual people and
households.[^96^](#c3-note-0096){#c3-note-0096a} The latter, as is
typical of commons, function simultaneously as producers and consumers.

It is not a coincidence that commons have begun to infiltrate the energy
sector. As Jeremy Rifkin has remarked:[]{#Page_171 type="pagebreak"
title="171"}

::: {.extract}
The generation that grew up on the Communication Internet and that takes
for granted its right to create value in distributed, collaborative,
peer-to-peer virtual commons has little hesitation about generating
their own green electricity and sharing it on an Energy Internet. They
find themselves living through a deepening global economic crisis and an
even more terrifying shift in the earth\'s climate, caused by an
economic system reliant on fossil fuel energy and managed by
centralized, top-down command and control systems. If they fault the
giant telecommunications, media and entertainment companies for blocking
their right to collaborate freely with their peers in an open
Information Commons, they are no less critical of the world\'s giant
energy, power, and utility companies, which they blame, in part, for the
high price of energy, a declining economy and looming environmental
crisis.[^97^](#c3-note-0097){#c3-note-0097a}
:::

It is not necessary to see in this, as Rifkin and a few others have
done, the ineluctable demise of
capitalism.[^98^](#c3-note-0098){#c3-note-0098a} Yet, like the influence
of post-democratic institutions over social mass media and beyond, the
commons are also shaping new expectations about possible courses of
action and about the institutions that might embody these possibilities.
:::

::: {.section}
### Eroding the commons: cloud software and the sharing economy {#c3-sec-0016}

Even if the commons have recently enjoyed a renaissance, their continued
success is far from guaranteed. This is not only because legal
frameworks, then and now, are not oriented toward them. Two movements
currently stand out that threaten to undermine the commons from within
before they can properly establish themselves. These movements have been
exploiting certain aspects of the commons while pursuing goals that are
harmful to them. Thus, there are ways of using communal resources in
order to offer, on their basis, closed and centralized services. An
example of this is so-called cloud software; that is, applications that
no longer have to be installed on the computer of the user but rather
are centrally run on the providers\' servers. Such programs are no
longer operated in the traditional sense, and thus they are exempt from
the obligations mandated by free licenses. They do not, []{#Page_172
type="pagebreak" title="172"}in other words, have to make their readable
source code available along with their executable program code. Cloud
providers are thus able to make wide use of free software, but they
contribute very little to its further development. The changes that they
make are implemented exclusively on their own computers and therefore do
not have to be made public. They therefore follow the letter of the
license, but not its spirit. Through the control of services, it is also
possible for nominally free and open-source software to be centrally
controlled. Google\'s Android operating system for smartphones consists
largely of free software, but by integrating it so deeply with its
closed applications (such as Google Maps and Google Play Store), the
company ensures that even modified versions of the system will supply
data in which Google has an
interest.[^99^](#c3-note-0099){#c3-note-0099a}

The idea of the communal use and provision of resources is eroded most
clearly by the so-called sharing economy, especially by companies such
as the short-term lodging service Airbnb or Uber, which began as a taxi
service but has since expanded into other areas of business. In such
cases, terms like "open" or "sharing" do little more than give a trendy
and positive veneer to hyper-capitalistic structures. Instead of
supporting new forms of horizontal cooperation, the sharing economy is
forcing more and more people into working conditions in which they have
to assert themselves on their own, without insurance and with complete
flexibility, all the while being coordin­ated by centralized,
internet-based platforms.[^100^](#c3-note-0100){#c3-note-0100a} Although
the companies in question take a significant portion of overall revenue
for their "intermediary" services, they act as though they merely
facilitate such work and thus take no responsibility for their "newly
self-employed" freelance
workforce.[^101^](#c3-note-0101){#c3-note-0101a} The risk is passed on
to individual providers, who are in constant competition with one
another, and this only heightens the precariousness of labor relations.
As is typical of post-democratic institutions, the sharing economy has
allowed certain disparities to expand into broader sectors of society,
namely the power and income gap that exists between those who
"voluntarily" use these services and the providers that determine the
conditions imposed by the platforms in question.[]{#Page_173
type="pagebreak" title="173"}
:::
:::

::: {.section}
Against a Lack of Alternatives {#c3-sec-0017}
------------------------------

For now, the digital condition has given rise to two highly divergent
political tendencies. The tendency toward "post-democracy" is
essentially leading to an authoritarian society. Although this society
may admittedly contain a high degree of cultural diversity, and although
its citizens are able to (or have to) lead their lives in a
self-responsible manner, they are no longer able to exert any influence
over the political and economic structures in which their lives are
unfolding. On the basis of data-intensive and comprehensive
surveillance, these structures are instead shaped disproportionally by
an influential few. The resulting imbalance of power has been growing
steadily, as has income inequality. In contrast to this, the tendency
toward commons is leading to a renewal of democracy, based on
institutions that exist outside of the market and the state. At its core
this movement involves a new combination of economic, social, and
(ever-more pressing) ecological dimensions of everyday life on the basis
of data-intensive participatory processes.

What these two developments share in common is their comprehensive
realization of the infrastructural possibilities of the present. Both of
them develop new relations of production on the basis of new productive
forces (to revisit the terminology introduced at the beginning of this
chapter) or, in more general terms, they create suitable social
institutions for these new opportunities. In this sense, both
developments represent coherent and comprehensive answers to the
Gutenberg Galaxy\'s long-lasting crisis of cultural forms and social
institutions.

It remains to be seen whether one of these developments will prevail
entirely or whether and how they will coexist. Despite all of the new
and specialized methods for making predictions, the future is still
largely unpredictable. Too many moving variables are at play, and they
are constantly influencing one another. This is not least the case
because everyone\'s activity -- at times singularly aggregated, at times
collectively organized -- is contributing directly and indirectly to
these contradictory developments. And even though an individual or
communal contribution may seem small, it is still exactly []{#Page_174
type="pagebreak" title="174"}that: a contribution to a collective
movement in one direction or the other. This assessment should not be
taken as some naïve appeal along the lines of "Be the change you want to
see!" The issue here is not one of personal attitudes but rather of
social structures. Effective change requires forms of organization that
are able to implement it for the long term and in the face of
resistance. In this regard, the side of the commons has a great deal
more work to do.

Yet if, despite all of the simplifications that I have made, this
juxtaposition of post-democracy and the commons has revealed anything,
it is that even rapid changes, whose historical and structural
dimensions cannot be controlled on account of their overwhelming
complexity, are anything but fixed in their concrete social
formulations. Even if it is impossible to preserve the old institutions
and cultural forms in their traditional roles -- regardless of all the
historical achievements that may be associated with them -- the dispute
over what world we want to live in and the goals that should be achieved
by the available potential of the present is as open as ever. And such
is the case even though post-democracy wishes to abolish the political
itself and subordinate everything to a technocratic lack of
alternatives. The development of the commons, after all, has shown that
genuine, fundamental, and cutting-edge alternatives do indeed exist. The
contradictory nature of the present is keeping the future
open.[]{#Page_175 type="pagebreak" title="175"}
:::

::: {.section .notesSet type="rearnotes"}
[]{#notesSet}Notes {#c3-ntgp-9999}
------------------

::: {.section .notesList}
[1](#c3-note-0001a){#c3-note-0001}  Karl Marx, *A Contribution to the
Critique of Political Economy*, trans. S. W. Ryazanskaya (London:
Lawrence and Wishart, 1971), p. 21.[]{#Page_196 type="pagebreak"
title="196"}

[2](#c3-note-0002a){#c3-note-0002}  See, for instance, Tomasz Konicz and
Florian Rötzer (eds), *Aufbruch ins Ungewisse: Auf der Suche nach
Alternativen zur kapitalistischen Dauerkrise* (Hanover: Heise
Zeitschriften Verlag, 2014).

[3](#c3-note-0003a){#c3-note-0003}  Jacques Rancière, *Disagreement:
Politics and Philosophy*, trans. Julie Rose (Minneapolis, MN: University
of Minnesota Press, 1999), p. 102 (the emphasis is original).

[4](#c3-note-0004a){#c3-note-0004}  Colin Crouch, *Post-Democracy*
(Cambridge: Polity, 2004), p. 4.

[5](#c3-note-0005a){#c3-note-0005}  Ibid., p. 6.

[6](#c3-note-0006a){#c3-note-0006}  Ibid., p. 96.

[7](#c3-note-0007a){#c3-note-0007}  These questions have already been
discussed at length, for instance in a special issue of the journal
*Neue Soziale Be­wegungen* (vol. 4, 2006) and in the first two issues of
the journal *Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte* (2011).

[8](#c3-note-0008a){#c3-note-0008}  See Jonathan B. Postel, "RFC 821,
Simple Mail Transfer Protocol," *Information Sciences Institute:
University of Southern California* (August 1982), online: "An important
feature of SMTP is its capability to relay mail across transport service
environments."

[9](#c3-note-0009a){#c3-note-0009}  One of the first providers of
Webmail was Hotmail, which became available in 1996. Just one year
later, the company was purchased by Microsoft.

[10](#c3-note-0010a){#c3-note-0010}  Barton Gellmann and Ashkan Soltani,
"NSA Infiltrates Links to Yahoo, Google Data Centers Worldwide, Snowden
Documents Say," *Washington Post* (October 30, 2013), online.

[11](#c3-note-0011a){#c3-note-0011}  Initiated by hackers and activists,
the Mailpile project raised more than \$160,000 in September 2013 (the
fundraising goal had been just \$100,000). In July 2014, the rather
business-oriented project ProtonMail raised \$400,000 (its target, too,
had been just \$100,000).

[12](#c3-note-0012a){#c3-note-0012}  In July 2014, for instance, Google
announced that it would support "end-to-end" encryption for emails. See
"Making End-to-End Encryption Easier to Use," *Google Security Blog*
(June 3, 2014), online.

[13](#c3-note-0013a){#c3-note-0013}  Not all services use algorithms to
sort through data. Twitter does not filter the news stream of individual
users but rather allows users to create their own lists or to rely on
external service providers to select and configure them. This is one of
the reasons why Twitter is regarded as "difficult." The service is so
centralized, however, that this can change at any time, which indeed
happened at the beginning of 2016.

[14](#c3-note-0014a){#c3-note-0014}  Quoted from "Schrems:
'Facebook-Abstimmung ist eine Farce'," *Futurezone.at* (July 4, 2012),
online \[--trans.\].

[15](#c3-note-0015a){#c3-note-0015}  Elliot Schrage, "Proposed Updates
to Our Governing Documents," [Facebook.com](http://Facebook.com)
(November 21, 2011), online.[]{#Page_197 type="pagebreak" title="197"}

[16](#c3-note-0016a){#c3-note-0016}  Quoted from the documentary film
*Terms and Conditions May Apply* (2013), directed by Cullen Hoback.

[17](#c3-note-0017a){#c3-note-0017}  Felix Stalder and Christine Mayer,
"Der zweite Index: Suchmaschinen, Personalisierung und Überwachung," in
Konrad Becker and Felix Stalder (eds), *Deep Search: Die Politik des
Suchens jenseits von Google* (Innsbruck: Studienverlag, 2009), pp.
112--31.

[18](#c3-note-0018a){#c3-note-0018}  Thus, in 2012, Google announced
under a rather generic and difficult-to-Google headline that, from now
on, "we may combine information you\'ve provided from one service with
information from other services." See "Updating Our Privacy Policies and
Terms of Service," *Google Official Blog* (January 24, 2012), online.

[19](#c3-note-0019a){#c3-note-0019}  Wolfie Christl, "Kommerzielle
digitale Überwachung im Alltag," *Studie im Auftrag der
Bundesarbeitskammer* (November 2014), online.

[20](#c3-note-0020a){#c3-note-0020}  Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and
Kenneth Cukier, *Big Data: A Revolution That Will Change How We Live,
Work and Think* (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013).

[21](#c3-note-0021a){#c3-note-0021}  Carlos Diuk, "The Formation of
Love," *Facebook Data Science Blog* (February 14, 2014), online.

[22](#c3-note-0022a){#c3-note-0022}  Facebook could have determined this
simply by examining the location data that were transmitted by its own
smartphone app. The study in question, however, did not take such
information into account.

[23](#c3-note-0023a){#c3-note-0023}  Dan Lyons, "A Lot of Top
Journalists Don\'t Look at Traffic Numbers: Here\'s Why," *Huffington
Post* (March 27, 2014), online.

[24](#c3-note-0024a){#c3-note-0024}  Adam Kramer et al., "Experimental
Evidence of Massive-Scale Emotional Contagion through Social Networks,"
*Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences* 111 (2014): 8788--90.

[25](#c3-note-0025a){#c3-note-0025}  In all of these studies, it was
presupposed that users present themselves naïvely and entirely
truthfully. If someone writes something positive ("I\'m doing great!"),
it is assumed that this person really is doing well. This, of course, is
a highly problematic assumption. See John M. Grohl, "Emotional Contagion
on Facebook? More Like Bad Research Methods," *PsychCentral* (June 23,
2014), online.

[26](#c3-note-0026a){#c3-note-0026}  See Adrienne LaFrance, "Even the
Editor of Facebook\'s Mood Study Thought It Was Creepy," *The Atlantic*
(June 29, 2014), online: "\[T\]he authors \[...\] said their local
institutional review board had approved it -- and apparently on the
grounds that Facebook apparently manipulates people\'s News Feeds all
the time."

[27](#c3-note-0027a){#c3-note-0027}  In a rare moment of openness, the
founder of a large dating service made the following remark: "But guess
what, everybody: []{#Page_198 type="pagebreak" title="198"}if you use
the Internet, you\'re the subject of hundreds of experiments at any
given time, on every site. That\'s how websites work." See Christian
Rudder, "We Experiment on Human Beings!" *OKtrends* (July 28, 2014),
online.

[28](#c3-note-0028a){#c3-note-0028}  Zoe Corbyn, "Facebook Experiment
Boosts US Voter Turnout," *Nature* (September 12, 2012), online. Because
of the relative homogeneity of social groups, it can be assumed that a
large majority of those who were indirectly influenced to vote have the
same political preferences as those who were directly influenced.

[29](#c3-note-0029a){#c3-note-0029}  In the year 2000, according to the
official count, George W. Bush won the decisive state of Florida by a
mere 537 votes.

[30](#c3-note-0030a){#c3-note-0030}  Jonathan Zittrain, "Facebook Could
Decide an Election without Anyone Ever Finding Out," *New Republic*
(June 1, 2014), online.

[31](#c3-note-0031a){#c3-note-0031}  This was the central insight that
Norbert Wiener drew from his experiments on air defense during World War
II. Although it could never be applied during the war itself, it would
nevertheless prove of great importance to the development of
cybernetics.

[32](#c3-note-0032a){#c3-note-0032}  Gregory Bateson, "Social Planning
and the Concept of Deutero-learning," in Bateson, *Steps to an Ecology
of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution and
Epistemology* (London: Jason Aronson, 1972), pp. 166--82, at 177.

[33](#c3-note-0033a){#c3-note-0033}  Tiqqun, "The Cybernetic
Hypothesis," p. 4 (online).

[34](#c3-note-0034a){#c3-note-0034}  B. F. Skinner, *The Behavior of
Organisms: An Experimental Analysis* (New York: Appleton Century, 1938).

[35](#c3-note-0035a){#c3-note-0035}  Richard H. Thaler and Cass
Sunstein, *Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and
Happiness* (New York: Penguin, 2008).

[36](#c3-note-0036a){#c3-note-0036}  It happened repeatedly, for
instance, that pictures of breastfeeding mothers would be removed
because they apparently violated Facebook\'s rule against sharing
pornography. After a long protest, Facebook changed its "community
standards" in 2014. Under the term "Nudity," it now reads as follows:
"We also restrict some images of female breasts if they include the
nipple, but we always allow photos of women actively engaged in
breastfeeding or showing breasts with post-mastectomy scarring. We also
allow photographs of paintings, sculptures and other art that depicts
nude figures." See "Community Standards,"
[Facebook.com](http://Facebook.com) (2017), online.

[37](#c3-note-0037a){#c3-note-0037}  Michael Seemann, *Digital Tailspin:
Ten Rules for the Internet after Snowden* (Amsterdam: Institute for
Network Cultures, 2015).

[38](#c3-note-0038a){#c3-note-0038}  The exception to this is fairtrade
products, in which case it is attempted to legitimate their higher
prices with reference to []{#Page_199 type="pagebreak" title="199"}the
input -- that is, to the social and ecological conditions of their
production.

[39](#c3-note-0039a){#c3-note-0039}  This is only partially true,
however, as more institutions (universities, for instance) have begun to
outsource their technical infrastructure (to Google Mail, for example).
In such cases, people are indeed being coerced, in the classical sense,
to use these services.

[40](#c3-note-0040a){#c3-note-0040}  Mary Madden et al., "Teens, Social
Media and Privacy," *Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech* (May
21, 2013), online.

[41](#c3-note-0041a){#c3-note-0041}  Meta-data are data that provide
information about other data. In the case of an email, the header lines
(the sender, recipient, date, subject, etc.) form the meta-data, while
the data are made up of the actual content of communication. In
practice, however, the two categories cannot always be sharply
distinguished from one another.

[42](#c3-note-0042a){#c3-note-0042}  By manipulating online polls, for
instance, or flooding social mass media with algorithmically generated
propaganda. See Glen Greenwald, "Hacking Online Polls and Other Ways
British Spies Seek to Control the Internet," *The Intercept* (July 14,
2014), online.

[43](#c3-note-0043a){#c3-note-0043}  Jeremy Scahill and Glenn Greenwald,
"The NSA\'s Secret Role in the US Assassination Program," *The
Intercept* (February 10, 2014), online.

[44](#c3-note-0044a){#c3-note-0044}  Regarding the interconnections
between Google and the US State Department, see Julian Assange, *When
Google Met WikiLeaks* (New York: O/R Books, 2014).

[45](#c3-note-0045a){#c3-note-0045}  For a catalog of these
publications, see the DARPA website:
\<[opencatalog.darpa.mil/SMISC.html](http://opencatalog.darpa.mil/SMISC.html)\>.

[46](#c3-note-0046a){#c3-note-0046}  See the military\'s own description
of the project at:
\<[minerva.dtic.mil/funded.html](http://minerva.dtic.mil/funded.html)\>.

[47](#c3-note-0047a){#c3-note-0047}  Such is the goal stated on the
project\'s homepage: \<\>.

[48](#c3-note-0048a){#c3-note-0048}  Bruce Schneier, "Don\'t Listen to
Google and Facebook: The Public--Private Surveillance Partnership Is
Still Going Strong," *The Atlantic* (March 25, 2014), online.

[49](#c3-note-0049a){#c3-note-0049}  See the documentary film *Low
Definition Control* (2011), directed by Michael Palm.

[50](#c3-note-0050a){#c3-note-0050}  Felix Stalder, "In der zweiten
digitalen Phase: Daten versus Kommunikation," *Le Monde Diplomatique*
(February 14, 2014), online.

[51](#c3-note-0051a){#c3-note-0051}  In 2009, the European Parliament
and the European Council ratified Directive 2009/72/EC, which stipulates
that, by the year 2020, 80 percent of all households in the EU will have
to be equipped with an intelligent metering system.[]{#Page_200
type="pagebreak" title="200"}

[52](#c3-note-0052a){#c3-note-0052}  There is no consensus about how or
whether smart meters will contribute to the more efficient use of
energy. On the contrary, one study commissioned by the German Federal
Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy concluded that the
comprehensive implementation of smart metering would have negative
economic effects for consumers. See Helmut Edelmann and Thomas Kästner,
"Cost--Benefit Analysis for the Comprehensive Use of Smart Metering,"
*Ernst & Young* (June 2013), online.

[53](#c3-note-0053a){#c3-note-0053}  Quoted from "United Nations Working
towards Urbanization," *United Nations Urbanization Agenda* (July 7,
2015), online. For a comprehensive critique of such visions, see Adam
Greenfield, *Against the Smart City* (New York City: Do Projects, 2013).

[54](#c3-note-0054a){#c3-note-0054}  Stefan Selke, *Lifelogging: Warum
wir unser Leben nicht digitalen Technologien überlassen sollten*
(Berlin: Econ, 2014).

[55](#c3-note-0055a){#c3-note-0055}  Rainer Schneider, "Rabatte für
Gesundheitsdaten: Was die deutschen Krankenversicherer planen," *ZDNet*
(December 18, 2014), online \[--trans.\].

[56](#c3-note-0056a){#c3-note-0056}  Frank Pasquale, *The Black Box
Society: The Secret Algorithms that Control Money and Information*
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015).

[57](#c3-note-0057a){#c3-note-0057}  "Facebook Gives People around the
World the Power to Publish Their Own Stories," *Facebook Help Center*
(2017), online.

[58](#c3-note-0058a){#c3-note-0058}  Lena Kampf et al., "Deutsche im
NSA-Visier: Als Extremist gebrandmarkt," *Tagesschau.de* (July 3, 2014),
online.

[59](#c3-note-0059a){#c3-note-0059}  Florian Klenk, "Der Prozess gegen
Josef S.," *Falter* (July 8, 2014), online.

[60](#c3-note-0060a){#c3-note-0060}  Zygmunt Bauman, *Liquid Modernity*
(Cambridge: Polity, 2000), p. 35.

[61](#c3-note-0061a){#c3-note-0061}  This is so regardless of whether
the dominant regime, eager to seem impervious to opposition, represents
itself as the one and only alternative. See Byung-Chul Han, "Why
Revolution Is No Longer Possible," *Transformation* (October 23, 2015),
online.

[62](#c3-note-0062a){#c3-note-0062}  See the *Süddeutsche Zeitung*\'s
special website devoted to the "Offshore Leaks":
\.

[63](#c3-note-0063a){#c3-note-0063}  The *Süddeutsche Zeitung*\'s
website devoted to the "Luxembourg Leaks" can be found at:
\.

[64](#c3-note-0064a){#c3-note-0064}  See the documentary film
*Citizenfour* (2014), directed by Lara Poitras.

[65](#c3-note-0065a){#c3-note-0065}  Felix Stalder, "WikiLeaks und die
neue Ökologie der Nach­richtenmedien," in Heinrich Geiselberger (ed.),
*WikiLeaks und die Folgen* (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2011), pp.
96--110.[]{#Page_201 type="pagebreak" title="201"}

[66](#c3-note-0066a){#c3-note-0066}  Yochai Benkler, "Coase\'s Penguin,
or, Linux and the Nature of the Firm," *Yale Law Journal* 112 (2002):
369--446.

[67](#c3-note-0067a){#c3-note-0067}  For an overview of the many commons
traditions, see David Bollier and Silke Helfrich, *The Wealth of the
Commons: A World beyond Market and State* (Amherst: Levellers Press,
2012).

[68](#c3-note-0068a){#c3-note-0068}  Massimo De Angelis and Stavros
Stavrides, "On the Commons: A Public Interview," *e-flux* 17 (June
2010), online.

[69](#c3-note-0069a){#c3-note-0069}  Elinor Ostrom, *Governing the
Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action*
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).

[70](#c3-note-0070a){#c3-note-0070}  Michael McGinnis and Elinor Ostrom,
"Design Principles for Local and Global Commons," *International
Political Economy and International Institutions* 2 (1996): 465--93.

[71](#c3-note-0071a){#c3-note-0071}  I say "allegedly" because the
argument about their inevitable tragedy, which has been made without any
empirical evidence, falsely conceives of the commons as a limited but
fully unregulated resource. Because people are only interested in
maximizing their own short-term benefits -- or so the conclusion goes --
the resource will either have to be privatized or administered by the
government in order to protect it from being over-used and to ensure the
well-being of everyone involved. It was never taken into consideration
that users could speak with one another and organize themselves. See
Garrett Hardin, "The Tragedy of the Commons," *Science* 162 (1968):
1243--8.

[72](#c3-note-0072a){#c3-note-0072}  Jonathan Rowe, "The Real Tragedy:
Ecological Ruin Stems from What Happens to -- Not What Is Caused by --
the Commons," *On the Commons* (April 30, 2013), online.

[73](#c3-note-0073a){#c3-note-0073}  James Boyle, "A Politics of
Intellectual Property: Environmentalism for the Net?" *Duke Law Journal*
47 (1997): 87--116.

[74](#c3-note-0074a){#c3-note-0074}  Quoted from:
\<[debian.org/intro/about.html](http://debian.org/intro/about.html)\>.

[75](#c3-note-0075a){#c3-note-0075}  The Debian Social Contract can be
read at: \<\>.

[76](#c3-note-0076a){#c3-note-0076}  Gabriella E. Coleman and Benjamin
Hill, "The Social Production of Ethics in Debian and Free Software
Communities: Anthropological Lessons for Vocational Ethics," in Stefan
Koch (ed.), *Free/Open Source Software Development* (Hershey, PA: Idea
Group, 2005), pp. 273--95.

[77](#c3-note-0077a){#c3-note-0077}  While it is relatively easy to
identify the inner circle of such a project, it is impossible to
determine the number of those who have contributed to it. This is
because, among other reasons, the distinction between producers and
consumers is so fluid that any firm line drawn between them for
quantitative purposes would be entirely arbitrary. Should someone who
writes the documentation be considered a producer of a software
[]{#Page_202 type="pagebreak" title="202"}project? To be counted as
such, is it sufficient to report a single bug? Or to confirm the
validity of a bug report that has already been sent? Should everyone be
counted who has helped another person solve a problem in a forum?

[78](#c3-note-0078a){#c3-note-0078}  Raphaël Hertzog, "The State of the
Debian--Ubuntu Relationship" (December 6, 2010), online.

[79](#c3-note-0079a){#c3-note-0079}  This, in any case, is the number of
free software programs that appears in Wikipedia\'s entry titled "List
of Text Editors." This list, however, is probably incomplete.

[80](#c3-note-0080a){#c3-note-0080}  In this regard, the most
significant legal changes were enacted through the Copyright Treaty of
the World Intellectual Property Organization (1996), the US Digital
Millennium Copyright Act (1998), and the EU guidelines for the
harmonization of certain aspects of copyright (2001). Since 2006, a
popular tactic in Germany and elsewhere has been to issue floods of
cease-and-desist letters. This involves sending tens of thousands of
semi-automatically generated threats of legal action with demands for
payment in response to the presumably unauthorized use of
copyright-protected material.

[81](#c3-note-0081a){#c3-note-0081}  Examples include the Open Content
License (1998) and the Free Art License (2000).

[82](#c3-note-0082a){#c3-note-0082}  Benjamin Mako Hill, "Towards a
Standard of Freedom: Creative Commons and the Free Software Movement,"
*mako.cc* (June 29, 2005), online.

[83](#c3-note-0083a){#c3-note-0083}  Since 2007, Wikipedia has
continuously been one of the 10 most-used websites.

[84](#c3-note-0084a){#c3-note-0084}  One of the best studies of
Wikipedia remains Christian Stegbauer, *Wikipedia: Das Rätsel der
Kooperation* (Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2009).

[85](#c3-note-0085a){#c3-note-0085}  Dan Wielsch, "Governance of Massive
Multiauthor Collabor­ation -- Linux, Wikipedia and Other Networks:
Governed by Bilateral Contracts, Partnerships or Something in Between?"
*JIPITEC* 1 (2010): 96--108.

[86](#c3-note-0086a){#c3-note-0086}  See Wikipedia\'s 2013--14
fundraising report at:
\<[meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising/2013-14\_Report](http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising/2013-14_Report)\>.

[87](#c3-note-0087a){#c3-note-0087}  Roland Ramthun, "Offene Geodaten
durch OpenStreetMap," in Ulrich Herb (ed.), *Open Initiatives: Offenheit
in der digitalen Welt und Wissenschaft* (Saarbrücken: Universaar, 2012),
pp. 159--84.

[88](#c3-note-0088a){#c3-note-0088}  "Automated Edits Code of Conduct,"
[WikiOpenStreetMap.org](http://WikiOpenStreetMap.org) (March 15, 2015),
online.

[89](#c3-note-0089a){#c3-note-0089}  See the information provided at:
\<[wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Finances](http://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Finances)\>.

[90](#c3-note-0090a){#c3-note-0090}  As part of its "Knight News
Challenge," for instance, the American Knight Foundation gave \$570,000
in 2012 to the []{#Page_203 type="pagebreak" title="203"}company Mapbox
in order for the latter to make improvements to OSM\'s infrastructure.

[91](#c3-note-0091a){#c3-note-0091}  This was accomplished, for
instance, by introducing methods for data indexing and quality control.
See Ramthum, "Offene Geodaten durch OpenStreetMap" (cited above).

[92](#c3-note-0092a){#c3-note-0092}  Trevor Paglen and Adam C. Thompson,
*Torture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA\'s Rendition Flights* (Hoboken,
NJ: Melville House, 2006).

[93](#c3-note-0093a){#c3-note-0093}  See the project\'s website:
\<[airqualityegg.com](http://airqualityegg.com)\>.

[94](#c3-note-0094a){#c3-note-0094}  See the project\'s homepage:
\<[index.okfn.org](http://index.okfn.org)\>.

[95](#c3-note-0095a){#c3-note-0095}  The homepage of the Digital
Openness Index can be found at: \<[do-index.org](http://do-index.org)\>.

[96](#c3-note-0096a){#c3-note-0096}  Tildy Bayar, "Community Wind
Arrives Stateside," *Renewable Energy World* (July 5, 2012), online.

[97](#c3-note-0097a){#c3-note-0097}  Jeremy Rifkin, *The Zero Marginal
Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons and the
Eclipse of Capitalism* (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), p. 217.

[98](#c3-note-0098a){#c3-note-0098}  See, for instance, Ludger
Eversmann, *Post-Kapitalismus: Blueprint für die nächste Gesellschaft*
(Hanover: Heise Zeitschriften Verlag, 2014).

[99](#c3-note-0099a){#c3-note-0099}  Ron Amadeo, "Google\'s Iron Grip on
Android: Controlling Open Source by Any Means Necessary," *Ars Technica*
(October 21, 2013), online.

[100](#c3-note-0100a){#c3-note-0100}  Seb Olma, "To Share or Not to
Share," [nettime.org](http://nettime.org) (October 20, 2014), online.

[101](#c3-note-0101a){#c3-note-0101}  Susie Cagle, "The Case against
Sharing," *The Nib* (May 27, 2014), online.[]{#Page_204 type="pagebreak"
title="204"}
:::
:::

[Copyright page]{.chapterTitle} {#ffirs03}

=

::: {.section}
First published in German as *Kultur der Digitalitaet* © Suhrkamp Verlag,
Berlin, 2016

This English edition © Polity Press, 2018

Polity Press

65 Bridge Street

Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Polity Press

101 Station Landing

Suite 300

Medford, MA 02155, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the
purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or
by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

P. 51, Brautigan, Richard: From "All Watched Over by Machines of Loving
Grace" by Richard Brautigan. Copyright © 1967 by Richard Brautigan,
renewed 1995 by Ianthe Brautigan Swenson. Reprinted with the permission
of the Estate of Richard Brautigan; all rights reserved.

ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-1959-0

ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-1960-6 (pb)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Stalder, Felix, author.

Title: The digital condition / Felix Stalder.

Other titles: Kultur der Digitalitaet. English

Description: Cambridge, UK ; Medford, MA : Polity Press, \[2017\] \|
Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017024678 (print) \| LCCN 2017037573 (ebook) \| ISBN
9781509519620 (Mobi) \| ISBN 9781509519637 (Epub) \| ISBN 9781509519590
(hardback) \| ISBN 9781509519606 (pbk.)

Subjects: LCSH: Digital communications--Social aspects. \| Information
society. \| Information society--Forecasting.

Classification: LCC HM851 (ebook) \| LCC HM851 .S728813 2017 (print) \|
DDC 302.23/1--dc23

LC record available at

Typeset in 10.5 on 12 pt Sabon

by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited

Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon

The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for
external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the
time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for
the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or
that the content is or will remain appropriate.

Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any
have been inadvertently overlooked the publisher will be pleased to
include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.

For further information on Polity, visit our website:
politybooks.com[]{#Page_iv type="pagebreak" title="iv"}
:::
 
Adema 2009 Adema 2019 Adema & Hall 2013 Barok 2014 Barok 2014 Barok 2014 Barok 2018 Bodo 2014 Bodo 2015 Bodo 2016 Constant 2009 Constant 2015 Constant 2016 Constant 2018 Custodians 2015 Dean, Dockray, Ludovico, Broekman, Thoburn & Vilensky 2013 Dekker & Barok 2017 Dockray 2010 Dockray 2013 Dockray 2013 Dockray & Liang 2015 Dockray, Forster & Public Office 2018 Dockray, Pasquinelli, Smith & Waldorf 2010 Elbakyan 2016 Fuller 2016 Fuller & Dockray 2011 Giorgetta, Nicoletti & Adema 2015 Goldsmith 0 Goldsmith 2011 Graziano 2018 Graziano, Mars & Medak 2019 Hamerman 2015 Kelty, Bodo & Allen 2018 Liang 2012 Ludovico 2013 Marczewska, Adema, McDonald & Trettien 2018 Mars & Medak 2017 Mars & Medak 2019 Mars & Medak 2019 Mars, Medak & Sekulic 2016 Mattern 2014 Mattern 2018 Medak 2016 Medak, Mars & WHW 2015 Medak, Sekulic & Mertens 2014 Murtaugh 2016 Sekulic 2015 Sekulic 2018 Sollfrank 2018 Sollfrank & Dockray 2013 Sollfrank & Goldsmith 2013 Sollfrank & Kleiner 2012 Sollfrank & Mars 2013 Sollfrank & Snelting 2014 Sollfrank, Francke & Weinmayr 2013 Stalder 2018 Stankievech 2016 Tenen 2016 Tenen & Foxman 2014 Thylstrup 2019 USDC 2015 USDC 2015 WHW 2016 Weinmayr 2019

Display 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000 ALL characters around the word.