Digital panoptism and algorithmic governmentality. A look from Social Theory

Abstract

Technological surveillance, which began as a business mechanism for client recruitment and loyalty, has undergone such a technological development that, together with the massive collection of unconsciously produced data and its processing by artificial intelligence, has enabled the anticipation of trends and the constant monitoring of users’ desires and interests. The integration of surveillance and consumption has implied that this logic of the market can be handed over to the algorithmic governmentality, transforming static disciplinary rationality into multiple dynamics of observation of a mobile but controllable population in biopolitical terms, so that desire and freedom thus become active dimensions of a current political economy. Some examples of this authentic digital panopticism are offered, as they can be seen in the use of browsers, financial applications, the hypersegmentation of consumption niches or the internet of things. Finally, the transition from this surveillance to a logic of government based on the predetermination of interests is analyzed: it is the transition from panopticism to governmentality.