Utopias and the information society ws2013

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

Utopias and
the Information Society
José María Díaz Nafría (Universidad Information und urbanes Systeme
Informationsphilosophie. de León, Spanien)

1

Utopias and the Information Society
I.

An amalgamation of Utopias from long ago
(the project of modernity)
1.
2.
3.
4.

Social ideal
Abstract vs concrete utopias
Utopias of the information society
Past, present and future utopias

II. Perdurability of the Planetary System
III. Security and Trust (the Island or the
Globe)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Historical remarks
Soft/Hard Power (lyric vs. Obsession)
Rousseau vs. Bentham
Liberalistic Foundations
Utopias and Globalization


2

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

3

I.2 Abstract vs concrete utopias
Form

Appearance
Ideas

I

Observador

Decontextualizing:
Die existing Forms belong
to the otherworldliness (aspatial, a-temporal)


4

I.2 Abstract vs concrete utopias
The platonic model encapsulated in the understanding of
information

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

Si
{S1, S2,… SN}

Compared with
{S1, S2,… SN}

Si

Noise


5

I.3 Utopias of the information society
Utopic background

Supporters

Utopias of the
Information Society

Supporters

Dystopia

Perfect Language

Lull, Wilkins

Computable Language

Turing,
Chomsky

Borges: „The analytic
language of John Wilkins“

Perfect thought

Lull, Leibniz

Computable Thought

Babbage,
Hollerith,
Turing

Hesse: „The Glass Bed
Game“

Perfect wisdom

Bacon,
Encyclopedist,
Comte

Unlimited Availability of
Knowledge

Outlet, La
Fontaine

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

Perfect social order

Nicholas of Cusa,

Computable Social Order
(Normalization)

Saint Simon,
Comte,
Babbage

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

Transparent society

Rousseau,
Emerson,
Chevalier

Communication without
borders

Mumford,
Shannon,
McLuhan

Orwell: „1984“

Trustful society

Bentham, Tarde

Security vs Trust of the
Information Society

J. Nye,

Orwell: „1984“


6

I.3 Backgrounds of IS’ utopias


7

I.3 Backgrounds of IS’ utopias


8

I.4 Historical utopias
Mitified cities
Imagened territories
Dystopias
Conematographic utopias
Unbanistic utopias
Communitary utopias
Green: old
Yellow: XVI-XVIII C.
Orange: XIX C.
Red: XX-XXI C.

9

I.4 Idealised Cities
Babilon

10

I.4 The Cristian utopia of equality and
fraternity

11

I.4 Utopias at the beginning of Modernity
- Thomas More
- Francis Bacon: New Atlantis

12

I.4 North American utopia:
the conquest of liberty

13

I.4 Utopias of Enlightenment
Saline d’Arc-et-Senans:
Industrial architecture and integrated society (1774)
Salina
House of director control and survillance
Inhabitants perfect semicircle: equidistance
Gardens
Bentham’s panotic: inspirator of Orwell’s
“Big Brother”

14

I.4 The advent of citizenship
Territorial search of equility
Geometrical approach (1780): R. de Hesseln, propuesto
por el Abad Sieyès a la asamblea constituyente de 1989.
• 1 departamento = 9 cantones
• 1 cantón = 9 comunidades
• Lado del departamento: 72 Km

15

Pragmatical approach: aprobado por la
asamblea constituyente de 1989
• 83 departamentos
• Tamaño del departamento: medio día a
caballo hasta el centro administrativo

I.4 Schooling: a global challenge
Late alphabetisation of the South (XVII-XX C.)

16

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

Press experiences

Rotative board of
European anarquist
Will of developing an
anarchist international:
Londres 1864
Ginebra 1866
Congr. Bruselas 1868
Congr. Bâle 1869
Saint-Imier (Suiza) 1872
Amsterdam 1904
Congreso Anarquista
Internacional de
Amsterdam 1907

17

I.4 The great bifurcation
From social to communication utopias
Making something together… Too much?

In mid 19th Century
the social utopias are
abandoned (rift
between Sant-Simon
school)

18

Perfect communication

I.4 Esperanto: the linguistic utopia
Members of national esperantist associations
European
Esperantist
Democracy
Movement (EDE):
in the Europan
elections 2009

19

I.4 The utopia of the species improvement
Birth selection: from utopia to taboode la utopía al
EE.UU. and nationalsocialismy: developments of
the eugenesic project

20

I.4 The creative utopia (Bauhaus)
Global vision of the
artistic disciplines

International influences
through its scholars

21

I.4 The panarrab utopia
The cultural community keep on being a warranty of continuity

22

I.4 The tragic universe of utopias
“1984” world according to G. Orwell

Fluctuating alliances (unfounded
character of warfare)
23

Final victory of Oceania which
ensures its dominancy

Disputed

I.4 The end of waste: recycling, recovering
Improvement of the Industrial scheme for a radical change of the flow of materials:

24

I.4 Save the planet: biospherical limits
The elusive global governability of environment
Expression of
the relations of
geopolitical
forces:
Adversaries
Supporters
Undecided

Three pillars of
the lasting
development:

25

I.4 Other world is possible
Alter-globalisation movement and Indignants Movement reject neoliberalism
Mediatic birth of
the alterglobalisation
movement

26

World Social Summits
Peasant Movement, debt cancellation,
against financial specualtion

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

I.4 A world without growth
El decrecimiento se convierte en utopía concreta frente al agotamiento de los
recursos naturales:
creditor
state:
biocapacity >
ecological
footprint
Indebted state:
ecological footprint >
biocapacity

27

I.4 Utopic Communities – 20th Century

28

I.4 Eco-utopias
Longo-Maï Network
Self-managed (alternative, laic,
autogestionadas rural and anticapitalist ideology)
Selfsufficient
Solidary-pacifist
Mediatic Movilisation
Commodity and Ideas exchange

29

I.4 Rights and Dignity: an step towards
democracy
Squares, symbol of a democratic wind?
Confrontation among peoples and real powers.
(squares represented by its surface)

30

I.4 Restorative Justice
Aleternative to the penal system:
Restoring better than sanctioning
The individum who has commited a crime has a debt with the
victim and with the community

31

Dystopic justice
Minority Report

I.4 Nature is reasserted in the city
Habitable-tree: organic structure self-climaticed
(Belgian arquitect and designer Luc Schuiten)

32

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

I.4 The end of the north-south divide?
Triad (former economic
NGB per inhabitant in 2010:

dominancy, decline in growth
and trust)

Post-comunist
countries (integrated in the
market economy)

BRICS bridgehead of the
emerging world

33

The inequality among rich and poor is globally increasing

I.4 The new interactive and free world
Digital paradise? The new space keep on being strongly unequal
- Cyberattack
guvernmental
private

- Liberty under control
- States which are enemy
of Internet (according to
Journalist without Borders)

rol

Parte de la
población
con acceso
a internet en
2011
34

I.4. 100% renewable (Green energy)
Global awareness raising: sceneries for a more prosperous future

Initiatives at urban scale,
aiming at:
- CO2 reduction
- Renewal energy
- Efficiency
Ongoing politcs:
- Public financing
- Urbanistic planning
- Building regulations
- Infrastructures and
public transport

Renewable energy rate in
the final energy per
country
35

II. Perdurability of the
Planetary System (Laplace)

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

36

II. Perdurability of the
Planetary System (Laplace)
• Subjective vs. Objective Sense (certitude
vs. Stability of the system)
Self-realisation necessity: to be
useful to others without effort
Self-esteem necessity:
community acknowledgment
Necessity of belonging-to:
being part of a community
Security Necessity: by group
validation
Functional Necessities: finding a
place to eat, sleep, drink


37

III. Security and trust (the insel
and the globe)
• 1990s: Information Society (transparent and
borderless) – September 11th
• Security vs. Trust (Boundary Conditions vs. Inner
Conditions)
• Contradictions in the liberalist discourses with
respect to protectionism and interventionism
• Pendulum with respect to the awareness of
threats.


38

III.1 Historical Notes
“It is a very common clever device that when anyone
has attained the summit of greatness, he kicks away
the ladder by which he has climbed up, to deprive
others of the means of climbing up after him […]
Any nation which by means of protective duties and
restrictions on navigation has raised her manufacturing
power and her navigation to such a degree of
development that no other nation can sustain free
competition with her, can do nothing wiser than to
throw away these ladders of her greatness, to preach to
other nations the benefits of free trade”
(List 1885, pp. 295-296).

39

III.1 Historical Notes
III.2 Soft/Hard Power (lyric vs. obsession)
a) Beginings of freetrading | s.XXI:
Famine in Ireland (1846-48) vs. Opium Wars (1842, 1858)
Opium Wars (s.XIX) vs. Iraq Wars (s.XX)
i) False arguments, ii) effect of previous war
iii) de facto Colonialism, iv) hindered long term development,
v) Losses of historical and artistic assests, vi) separatist, ethnic and
religious rebellions favored

b) Hard Power vs. Soft Power (Joseph Nye)
Global Information Dominance (Echelon, National
Imagery and Mapping Agency, Future Imagery
Architecture)


40

III.3 Rousseau vs. Bentham
M.Foucault (The eye of the power):
„Bentham was the complement to
Rousseau. What in fact was the
Rousseauist dream that motivated many
of the revolutionaries? It was the dream of
a transparent society, visible and legible
in each of its parts, the dream of there no
longer existing any zones of darkness [...]
It was the dream that each individual,
whatever portion he occupied, might be
able to see the whole society…”

41

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

42

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

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

• Decolonisation and reaction (1950-1970s)
• New International Economic Order (1974), New
World Inf. and Comm. Order (1974), C. MacBride

43

III.4 Liberal Foundations
• John Locke
"those, who like one another so well as to join into society, cannot
but be supposed to have some acquaintance and friendship
together, and some trust one in another; they could not but have
greater apprehensions of others, than of one another: and
therefore their first care and thought cannot but be supposed to
be, how to secure themselves against foreign force. It was natural
for them to put themselves under a frame of government which
might best serve to that end…"
(Second Treatise on Government. 1690, §107).

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

44

III.4 Liberal Foundations
(a new difference)
Differences in the objective of each position:
• The transparency/trustworthiness, hence the communications
without borders is at the groundings of many utopias of the
Information Society (MacLuhan, Etzioni, Toffles, Barlow, etc)
as well as of other technical utopias as Kropotkin’s,
advocating the dissolution of (concentrated) power.
• There is a close connection with the various foundations of
liberalism, in which different approaches are present:
– Degree of Free-will vs Authoritarianism (Rousseau / Bentham)
– Degree of Fairness/equality vs Unfairness/Unequality
(Bentham/conservative Liberals)


45

III.5 Utopias and Globalisation


46

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