PERPETUAL PRESENT

In Comments on the Society of the Spectacle (1988), Debord traces back his own steps to form a new vision of power: the integrated spectacle which, according to the author, lives in the perpetual present of incessant technological renewal, of the integration of the public and private spheres in the economy, and of the unequalled insincerity of generalised secrecy. The handling of power in this way is a synthesis of concentrated and diffuse power, which nowadays has found its greatest boon in connected digital technologies – Benthem’s panopticon for a brave new world. From the Internet of Things to social media, by way of Internet platforms (Amazon, Google, Facebook), this technology based on algorithms and machine learning is being used in a totalitarian manner to control and predict. In this simple equation (“control and predict”) that is rooted in the history of capitalism, we encounter actions such as effects on consumption patterns at the niche market level, the manipulation of electoral votes, management of public hate and the inoculation of specific moods into people’s minds. It is for this reason that authors such as Franco “Bifo” Berardi assert that we are witnessing an authentic psychological colonisation.https://lab.cccb.org/en/rereading-debord/