What of this fourth information revolution: the other three being Copernicus, Darwin, and Freud that have decentered ‘Man’?
We are living through extraordinary times, a phrase that has been said often enough historically. Yet, it is difficult to not think otherwise. Some, like Yann Moulier Boutang (2011), have placed their own twist on this state of affairs following the lead of Foucault. He has called it ‘third capitalism’ or ‘cognitive capitalism’ that goes beyond mercantile, industrial, and financial capitalism. Boutang (50–56) provides fifteen separate descriptors, which succinctly map out this phase of capitalism. Such a society has come to be known as a ‘the knowledge society.’ Boutang follows Foucault when he says that such “capitalism produces knowledge and the living through the production of the population. This production of life can be called ‘bio-production.’ And the power that has, as its function, the control of this ‘bio-production’ is called ‘biopower’” (56). The full force of such ‘biopower’ is felt globally as the COVID-19 pandemic spreads hysterically around the globe as governments declare a ‘national emergency’ and close their borders to stop an invisible invader that has no boundaries; it’s a nonhuman agency capable of ‘stilling’ a capitalist economic system as the stock markets go into a freefall. Conspiracy theories abound as China is accused of bioengineering a synthetic virus in order to destroy global economies; its release in Wuhan was simply an accident! The irony of this global event should not go unnoticed. What climate advocates desire, and those of us who argue against the inequalities of a capitalist system are being realized, at least during this special moment of the event: air and cruise ship travel is down, meaning less pollution filling our skies and oceans; dolphins have been spotted in Venice canals now that boat traffic has stopped; emission of toxic nitrogen dioxide drastically cut in Beijing has saved lives; the economy has tanked forcing governments to think in more ‘socialist’ terms, even in the United States where, with reluctance, those who must stay home and isolate because of the virus, or who have had their small businesses suspended as the service sector is placed on hold are to receive (reluctantly) monetary benefits of some kind, which will never be enough. Concerns for the aging and at-risk populations (homeless, disabilities, the unemployed, and the uninsured) have entered the public discourse via government spokespeople, if only by recognition. The Anthropocene era has its first ‘confirmed’ global case, so to speak. As numerous ecologists and environmentalists have shown, zoonotic diseases have increased due to the constant destruction of ecological niches and biodiversity (Vidal 2020). We now live in an era of chronic emergency and global bioinsecurity, an unprecedented turn from ‘business as usual,’ and an ontological turn that is only beginning to be recognized. The oeuvre of Bernhard Stiegler (2010, 2014, 2015, 2018) is crucial here as he maps out the capture of ‘tertiary memory’ via contemporary digital grammatization. COVID’s nonhuman agency, a ‘classical’ case of biopolitics infused with biopower (following Foucault), requires an account of “noopolitics of psychopower,” supplanting Foucault’s ‘care of the self’ (Heideggerian Sorge) with soin (the care of something or somebody) (Stiegler 2016, Webpage).
Unquestionably, the technological marvels of digitalization, the so-called third industrial revolution that is constantly ‘progressing’ in computer speed, the constant upgrading of smart technologies, and commodity capitalism since the 2018 economic crash in the United States (so many thought that this was the knell toll of capitalism!) were steadily recovering globally, but with COVID-19 the knell tolls once again, it seems. Trump gloated as his corporate tax cuts increased profits through right-wing conservative ‘trickle-down economics.’ The problem is that very little ‘trickles down.’ The top 1% simply become richer as they buy back their own stock with new profits. Financial capital reigns along with a state capitalism. Yet, a global recession is now at hand, and markets are sent into a fever pitch; presidential hopefuls like Bernie Sanders present this uncomfortable truth to many Americans.
It seems technocratic governments are pervasive globally. With the ascendency of Trump, with the help of Russian electoral interferences and Cambridge Analytica, there is no pretense left that this was not the case, and state and business have become One. Trump has begun to privatize government under his oligarchy; he has attorney general William Barr, an evangelical, in his pocket, along with Ivanka, Jarred, and his sons in tow. Trump has infused US politics with a sycophant GOP under his brand of bullying, temper tantrums, and above all a new means of communication for political advantage: the Twitter platform that targets his minions of followers and believers in the ‘cult of Trump.’ It’s a machinic assemblage capturing affect to divide and polarize their country: you are either a Trumper wearing your red hat and shouting ‘Make America Great Again’ at his rallies, or a non-Trumper or even a never-Trumper is in danger of being scorned by the president of the United States, maligned and then fired. Quite extraordinary.
Too many have pointed out the fascism of Trump and his White House with West Wing figures such as Steven Miller, a known xenophobe and white nationalist, advising him regarding immigration policy. But his train keeps rolling along. The experiment known as ‘democracy’ is slowly fading as the judicial branches in countries like the United States, Poland, and Hungry are usurped of power. Trump and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell continue to stack as many conservative judges as they can muster. The US Supreme Court as an impartial body for the people has lost its credibility with the appointments of Neil Gorsuch and Brett Cavanaugh. This was always a tenuous question ever since the Supreme Court, with the help of conservative judges, spearheaded by Antonin Scalia, and then joined by William Rehnquist and Clarence Thomas, sided with Bush against Al Gore in the 2000 US presidential election concerning the ‘hanging chads’ of punch cards in the Florida election, which eventually resulted in the country’s turn to conservativism, a turn away from climate reform and warmongering on Iraq that assured Bush Jr. a second term. Chief Justice John Roberts has favored the Trump administration, exempting Trump for his indiscretions to interfere with court trails (especially regarding the trial of Roger Stone), yet castigating Chuck Schumer, democrat senate minority leader, for questioning the political bias of the Supreme Court. Adam Cohen’s (2020) book, Supreme Injustice, charts the history of the ups and downs of the Court’s record.
According to Alain Badiou (2019), a mere “264 people have the same amount of money as a total of 7 billion other people” (15). Capitalist ethics and corporate responsibility, as Jean-Pierre Dupuy (2014) has long argued, come too late and too little as politics has been overshadowed by business management. Luciano Floridi, Director of the Digital Ethics Lab at the University of Oxford, provides a wide-ranging discussion on information ethics, concluding that AI is a force for the good when used responsibly via a ‘soft ethics.’ Floridi (2002) has been on the forefront on what has been called the philosophy of information (PI) (Floridi 2002). The turn is toward computational methods to shine new light on philosophical problems. Any philosophical question, he states, can be repositioned as being informational or computational. Information is this case is organized into three domains: first, information as reality; that is, information is ontological and corresponds to the philosophy of communication. Second, information is also about reality. This descriptive link addresses semantic information with actual objects and concepts. It covers the philosophy of the linguistic sciences. Third, there is information for reality. This last domain is pragmatic, which is operational in character where philosophy of computing science comes into play. Floridi’s (2011) neologism for this PI paradigm is “demiurgology.” This is a comprehensive and ambitious philosophy that is to harness the powers of AI for human well-being. Floridi draws from the Greek word demiourgos, which literally refers to a ‘public worker,’ an artisan who practiced his (sic) craft or trade for public use. A demiurge is an artisan who extends ontic powers of control, creation, design, and so on over oneself through a variety of dimensions. Floridi has ethics, genetics, neurology, narratology, and physiology in mind. But, this is not all. This ontic power must be extended to society as a whole: culturally, politically, economically, and religiously. If that is not enough, Floridi also includes the domains of natural and artificial environments that require physical and informational care of humanity’s use. Hence, the combination of these three forms of information is to provide for a comprehensive ethics informed by computing sciences. It is the ultimate anthropocentric dream of stewardship of the planet.
If only it was that easy! As if there will be no bad actors like Cambridge Analytica in the future! Despite Floridi’s plea and vision for AI’s use for a social good, ...