Book Review: Uncoding the Digital: Technology, Subjectivity and Action in the Control Society, by David Savat

Abstract

Uncoding the Digital: Technology, Subjectivity and Action in the Control Society. David Savat. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. 246 pp. $85 hbk.As will soon become obvious, an accidental tourist who has ventured into an unfamil- iar land has written this review. This is a land in which the customs, language, and styles of engagement with the media of communication and its users is something that I have rarely encountered, and in truth, have largely sought to avoid in the past. Given the central role that the philosophy of and the contributions of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari play in this exploratory trek, it is fortunate that Savat's familiarity and expertise is substantial. In addition to lecturing in Communication and Media Studies at the University of Western Australia, Savat is the executive editor of a specialist journal, Deleuze Studies , and along with Mark Poster, he has edited a vol- ume on Deleuze and new technology.As the title suggests, Savat has set out to uncode, translate, perhaps make sense of communication and information technology. He is particularly interested in theo- rizing the relationship between politics and technology, but he warns us early and often about the challenges such a mission entails. The primary challenge might be summed up in a single term: complexity. The nature of this complexity is continually revealed through a technique that at first seems like a bad habit, until its strategic func- becomes clearer with each use. Savat almost never allows any assessment, description, label to stand without a series of adjustments. A comma, followed by or rather, and an alternative that may may not be allowed to stand for the moment, usually signals this process at work.Following a brief introduction, Savat's guided tour is divided into three major parts: The Database, The Interface, and The Network. Eight chapters lead the reader, with considerable care and respect into a conclusion that emphasizes how little prog- ress has actually been made in coming to terms with the myriad complexities encountered along the way. Each of these chapters explores an aspect of the various that are said to operate at different stages in the transformation (or rather the shifting) of society into one another dominant form. The concept of modula- tion is introduced as a process that is developing as a replacement for the disciplin- ary techniques that Foucault described as an earlier mode of power. An emphasis on the prediction, rather the anticipation, of action is identified as central to the distinctions between these modes. The concept of dividuality is introduced in a chapter in which the characteristics of disciplinary and modulatory schema are used to explore the different forms of subjectivity that become the focus-or rather the interest- of power.Three chapters make up Savat's examination of the interface, rather the relation- ships between humans and the various machines that constitute a particular techno- logical ensemble that shape and express particular human ways of being and doing. …