The Cybernetic Hypothesis (Semiotext(e) / Intervention Series)

Tiqqun was a short-lived magazine in Paris during 1999 to 2001. The articles and essays in the magazine covered specific topics, all of a decidedly post-modern, post-Marxist, post-anarchic, Situationalist, Critical bent. These essays and articles are all anonymous and are written in apocalyptic tone, the town criers of the day warning the people of the things to come. The magazine can be considered the forerunner of the Anonymous Movement.This book is a collection of the essays and articles found in its second issue. The topic of the second issue was the then (and now) internet, computers, systems, what was then called Cybernetics, the “cybernetic hypothesis.”The essays in this collection will change your outlook on using the internet or computers. On the other hand, if you are one of the many zombied-out consumers of Social Media, these essays won’t make much of a difference. But, of course, this is the problem. The authors of these essays stress how the internet as it existed then in 2001, and as it certainly exists now, oppresses the society and population in much the same manner as Capital did in the Industrial Revolution when Marx wrote. Only this time, Capital works in partnership with the State, and the State with the military and other State apparatuses, to create an oppression in a more pervasive, pernicious, hidden, manner. The result is a submissive, passive society whose individuality is morphed to communicating only with machines.The Cybernetic Hypothesis creates an unbroken cycle for endless oppression. The advent of the computer created the need for information systems; those systems were designed to prevent the unanticipated uncertainties; those uncertainties encouraged the prevalence of security systems, the very root of the State apparatuses. And on it goes.There are many other moments like this in this collection. These observations were made, not from a government or semi-government think tank, but a motley collection of French intellectuals and philosophers, who no doubt discussed their views in some bistro on the Left Bank. These are musings, most amazingly, were made in 2000. Pretty amazing!