Цифровые множества: власть и субъективность в эпоху новых медиа

Abstract

This paper is a reply to Evgeniy Maslanov’s article “Challenges of Digitalization for Technogenic Civilization”. Emphasizing the total impact of digitalization on modern society, the author tends to agree with E. Maslanov that at the moment human existence is proceeding in a hybrid mode, for which the “real-virtual” dichotomy seems irrelevant. Being in this mode, a person leaves a digital footprint on the network, which forms her or his digital identity. The latter turns out to be “transparent”, vulnerable to instrumental influence from outside. Digital footprints are totalized into gigantic amounts of big data that can be used for social manipulation, as evidenced by the Cambridge Analytica case study. The manipulative activity of Cambridge Analytica fits into the context of the post-truth policy, which tends to ignore the facts in favor of false information that brings pragmatic benefits to the subject of the statement. This article argues that the complexity of social dynamics characteristic of the digital age is balanced by new means of description and analysis that enable us to better understand and navigate modernity. Nevertheless, a total description and thus stabilization of social reality seems impossible, given its advantageously network nature. The flip side of digitalization includes increased control within labor relations, blurring the boundaries between work and home as blurring the distinction between the “real” and the virtual. Along with it, the digital space is becoming a space of emancipation, where individuals-singularities form sets freed from violent unity (in the terms of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri). The multitudes unfold their subjectivity in opposition to the social system, to which they oppose networked col-lective action and solidarity. The article concludes about the dialectical role of digitalization, which can serve as both a means of control and a means of emancipation. Thus, the challenges of digitalization seem not so much a technological call as a social one.