Abstract
This article is about technologies that arithmetize and data-manage the other and the foe. It undertakes a mini-genealogy of information technology used to identify and sort individuals. Information management technologies developed in libraries are identified as fundamental, yet overlooked, sources of a bio-political revolution. In particular, the library card registry and the smart number has led to a radicalization and standardization of the state's capacities to know individuals. This article is also about a curious North-South symbiosis, or ‘boomerang effect’, where technologies first used on the other in illegible, securitized situations are then transported back to the metropole where they are initially deployed to capture the internal other and then, ultimately, the entire population. Finally, this article is about the global war on terror and how ‘knowing the enemy’ is intimately connected to a whole host of data-mining techniques and statistical knowledges.
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