Utopias & the Information Society (FK13 | HM)

Informationsphilosophie. Information und urbanes Systeme 1
Utopias and
the Information Society
Philosophy of Information (Course in English)
Fakultät 13, Hochschule München, Winter Semester 2016-2017
José María Díaz Nafría (Universidad de León, Spain)

Utopias and the Information Society
I. An amalgamation of Utopias from long ago (the
project of modernity)
1. Social ideal
2. Abstract vs concrete utopias
3. Utopias of the information society
4. Past, present and future utopias
II. Designing liberty
1. Information in organisms
2. Cybernetics eyes
3. Cybersyn: deploying democracy
III. Security vs Trust (the Island or the Globe)
1. Is the solar system a secure place to live in?
2. Historical remarks
3. Soft/Hard Power (lyric vs. Obsession)
4. Rousseau vs. Bentham
5. Liberalistic Foundations
6. Utopias and Globalization
Utopias and the Information Society 2

Bibliography
• MATTELART, A. (2003). The Information Society: An Introduction. Thousand Oak, CA, USA: SAGE
Publications.
• HESSE, H. (1943, orig.). The Glass Bead Game (transl. from orig. Das Glasperlenspiel). Vintage.
(s. documents section)
• BORGES, J.L. (1941). The Library of Babel, transl. by James E. Irby, in Labyrinths, 1962. Available
at: http://jubal.westnet.com/hyperdiscordia/library_of_babel.html
• ZAMYATIN, E. (1921). We. Englisch edition, E. P. Dutton (s. documents section)
• ORWELL, G. (1949). Nineteen Eighty-Four. Penguin, London 2008 [BBC TV - George Orwell's 1984
(1954), in Internet Archive: http://www.archive.org/details/Meatpies_1984].
• HUXLEY, A. (1932). Brave New World. [Other related resources in Internet Archive: David Gilbar.
SomaBNW (short Film): http://www.archive.org/details/SomaBNW; Qi Yang. Brave New World - The
Hatchery].
• BRADBURY, R. (1953). Fahrenheit 451. München: Heyne-Verlag, 2000.
• CHOMSKY, N. (1972). Problems of Knowledge and Freedom. Th Russel Lectures. New York,
USA: Vintage [In Internet Archive: Mark Achbar and Peter Wintonick (1993). Manufacturing Consent:
Noam Chomsky and the Media http://www.archive.org/details/manufacturing_consent]
• FUCHS, C. (2010). Critical Theory of Information. In Díaz, Pérez-Montoro, Salto. Glossarium BITri.
León, Spanien: Universidad de León. [online: http://glossarium.bitrum.unileon.es]
Utopias and the Information Society 3

PRIMER
Education Programme
4
Education & Research programme
International Summer Academies
Support: EU (under request)
Period: 2015-2019
Venues: Spain, Austria, Greece

I. An amalgamation of utopias (the project of modernity)
1. Social Ideal/programme
“Universal History is perhaps the history of a few metaphors”
(J.L. Borges)
“Universal History is perhaps the history of a few UTOPIAS”
(A. Mattelart)
Utopia as a kind of social programme (social ideal) | Plato, The Republic
“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… Isn’t it the best for the republic counting
with the best men and the best women?...”
5Utopias and the Information Society

I.2 Abstract vs concrete utopias
6
Ideas
Form Appearance
I
Observer
Decontextualizing:
Die existing Forms belong
to the otherworldliness
(a-spatial, a-temporal)

7
I.2 Abstract vs concrete utopias
The platonic model encapsulated in the
utopic understanding of information
• From the viewpoint of the modern signal
theory (Digital Transmission): Ideal of
transparence
Si
{S1, S2,… SN}
Noise
Si’ Compared with
{S1, S2,… SN}
Si

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,
Encyclopedist (Turgot)
Computable Social
Order (Normalization)
Saint Simon,
Comte,
Babbage
Huxley: “Brave New World”
Deleuze: „Control society“
Transparent society Rousseau, Bentham,
Emerson, Chevalier
Communication
without borders
Mumford,
Shannon,
McLuhan
Orwell: “1984”
Wachowski bros.: “Matrix”
Trustful society Bentham, Tarde Security vs Trust of the
Information Society
J. Nye Orwell: “1984”

9
I.3 Perfect Language / Past
Ramon Llull (1232-1315 AC)

10
I.3 Perfect Language / I.S.
Noam Chomsky (1928-)

11
I.3 Perfect Language / Dystopic
Borges (1899-1986): The analytic language of J. Wilkins

12
I.3 Perfect Thinking / Past
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716)

13
I.3 Perfect Thinking / I.S.
C. Babbage (1791-1871) | A. Turing (1912-1954)

14
I.3 Perfect Thinking / Dystopic
H. Hesse: The Glass Bead Game (1877-1962)

I.3 Perfect Wisdom / Past
R. Llull | Francis Bacon (1561-1626) | W. Leibniz
Leibniz scholar's cabinet of quotes and references

I.3 Perfect Wisdom / I.S.
Paul Outlet (1868-1944) | La Fountaine (1854-1943)

17
I.3 Perfect Wisdom / Dystopic
Borges – Funes the memorius (1899-1986)
Ireneo Funes, who, after falling off his horse and
receiving a bad head injury, acquired the amazing
talent — or curse — of remembering absolutely
everything. “He knew the forms of the clouds in
the southern sky on the morning of April 30, 1882,
and he could compare them in his memory with the
veins in the marbled binding of a book he had seen
only once,” Borges relates.

18
I.4 Perfect Social Order / Past
Nicolas of Cusa (1401-1464) | A. Quetelet (1796–1874)
Cusa: Earthly
order as an
image of
heavenly order
Quetelet:
Moral science
as a physics of
average man

19
I.4 Perfect Social Order / I.S.
Herman Hollerith (1860-1929)

20
I.4 Perfect Social Order / Dystopic
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)

21
I.4 Transparent Society / Past
Jean-J. Rousseau (1712-1778) | J. Bentham (1748-1832)

22
I.4 Transparent Society / I.S.
Claude Shannon (1916-2001)

23
I.4 Transparent Society / Dystopic
G. Orwell (1903-1950): “1984”

24
I.4 Trustful Society / Past
John Locke (1632-1704) | Gabriel Tarde (1843-1904)
“All mankind… being all equal and independent,
no one ought to harm another in his life, health,
liberty or possessions.” J. Locke

25
I.4 Trustful Society / I.S.
Joseph Nye (1937-)
“As we think of power
in the 21st century,
we want to get away
from the idea that
power’s always zero
sum –my gain is your
loss and vice versa.
Power can also be
positive sum, where
your gain can be my
gain.”

26
I.4 Trustful Society / Dystopic
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)

From tree-like structures to Complex Networks| Systems vs Networks
27
Complex Networks (species, language, science…)
The tree of encyclopedic knowledge
The tree of species (evolutionism)
Again: What is the Information Society?
Trees vs Networks (commentary on “The Power of Networks”)

30
D’Alambert & Diderot’s Encyclopedia
(XVIII century)

32
2.1 Los tres grandes momentos históricos de
búsqueda de la verdad:
antigüedad, modernidad, post-modernidad
The actual structure of the Networks

I.4 Past, present and future utopias
33
Mythologised cities
Imagined territories
Dystopias
Cinematographic utopias
Urban utopias
Communitarian utopias
Green: old
Yellow: XVI-XVIII C.
Orange: XIX C.
Red: XX-XXI C.

I.4 Idealised Cities
34
Babylon

I.4 The Cristian utopia of equality and
fraternity
35

I.4 Utopias at the beginning of Modernity
36
- Thomas More
- Francis Bacon: New Atlantis

I.4 North American utopia:
the conquest of liberty
37

I.4 Utopias of Enlightenment
38
Saline
House of director control and surveillance
Inhabitants perfect semicircle: equidistance
Gardens
Bentham’s panoptic: inspired Orwell’s “Big
Brother”
Saline d’Arc-et-Senans:
Industrial architecture and integrated society (1774)

I.4 The advent of citizenship
39
Pragmatic approach: approved by the constitutive
assembly of 1989
• 83 departments
• Department size: half day of horse riding
distance until the administrative centre
Territorial search of equality
Geometrical approach (1780): R. de Hesseln, proposed by
Abad Sieyès in the constitutive assembly of 1989.
• 1 department = 9 canton
• 1 canton = 9 communities
• Side of department: 72 Km

I.4 Schooling: a global challenge
40
Late alphabetisation of the South (XVII-XX C.)

I.4 The anarchist utopia:
The dream of a society without lords and states
41
Theoretical precursors
Press experiences
Rotary board of
European anarchist
Will of developing an
anarchist international:
London1864
Geneva1866
Congr. Brussels 1868
Congr. Bâle 1869
Saint-Imier (Suiza) 1872
Amsterdam 1904
International Anarchist
Congress of
Amsterdam 1907

I.4 The great bifurcation
From social to communication utopias
42
Making something together… Too much? Perfect communication
In mid 19th Century
the social utopias are
abandoned (rift
between Saint-Simon
school)

I.4 Esperanto: the linguistic utopia
43
Members of national esperantist associations
European
Esperantist
Democracy
Movement (EDE):
in the European
elections 2009

I.4 The utopia of the species improvement
44
Birth selection: from utopia to taboo
EE.UU. and national-
socialism: developments of
the eugenesic project

I.4 The creative utopia (Bauhaus)
45
Global vision of the
artistic disciplines
International influences
through its scholars

I.4 The Panarab Utopia
46
The cultural community keep on being a warranty of continuity

I.4 The tragic universe of utopias
47
“1984” world according to G. Orwell
DisputedFluctuating alliances (unfounded
character of warfare)
Final victory of Oceania which
ensures its dominancy

I.4 The end of waste: recycling, recovering
48
Improvement of the Industrial scheme for a radical change of the flow of materials:

I.4 Save the planet: biospherical limits
49
The elusive global governability of environment
Expression of
the relations of
geopolitical
forces:
Adversaries
Supporters
Undecided
Three pillars of
the lasting
development:

I.4 A world without growth
50
De-growth becomes a concrete utopia in the face of the natural resources depletion :
creditor state:
bio-capacity >
ecological
footprint
Indebted state:
ecological footprint >
bio-capacity

I.4 Nature is reasserted in the city
51
Habitable-tree: organic structure self-conditioned
(Belgian architect and designer Luc Schuiten)
SeaOrbiter: floatting lab, 51 m. height
(French architect Jacques Rougerie)

I.4. 100% renewable (Green energy)
52
Global awareness raising: sceneries for a more prosperous future
Initiatives at urban scale,
aiming at:
- CO2 reduction
- Renewal energy
- Efficiency
Ongoing politics:
- Public financing
- Urban planning
- Building regulations
- Infrastructures and
public transport
Renewable energy rate in
the final energy per
country

I.4 Utopic Communities – 20th Century
53

I.4 Eco-utopias
54
Longo-Maï Network
Self-managed (alternative, laic, self-
managed rural and anti-capitalist
ideology)
Self-sufficient
Solidary-pacifist
Media Mobilisation
Commodity and Ideas exchange

rol
I.4 The new interactive and free world
55
Digital paradise? The new space keep on being strongly unequal
Part of the
population with
Internet
Access (2011)
- Cyber-attack
governmental
private
- Liberty under control
- States which are enemy
of Internet (according to
Journalist without Borders)

I.4 Other world is possible
56
Alter-globalisation movement and Indignants Movement reject neoliberalism
Mediatic birth of
the alter-
globalisation
movement
World Social Summits
Peasant Movement, debt cancellation,
against financial specualtion
Manifestations (18/11/2011 &
13/05/2012)
National claims
(unemployment, austerity,
education…)

I.4 Rights and Dignity: an step towards
democracy
57
Squares, symbol of a democratic wind?
Confrontation among peoples and real powers.
(squares represented by its surface)

I.4 The end of the north-south divide?
58
NGB per inhabitant in 2010:
Triad (former economic
dominancy, decline in growth
and trust)
Post-communist
countries (integrated in the
market economy)
BRICS bridgehead of the
emerging world
The inequality among rich and poor is globally increasing

I.4 Restorative Justice
59
Alternative to the penal system:
Restoring better than sanctioning
The person who has committed a crime has a debt with the
victim and with the community
Dystopic justice
Minority Report

II. Designing Freedom
1. Information in the organisms

II.1 Information in the organisms
61
DNA RNA
Polypeptid
Transcription
Translation
Since discovery
of Retrovieren
Replication

II.2 Cybernetic eyes and the Viable
System Model (VSM)
65
The three elements as a whole system in
equilibrium
• Which is the key factor of the adaptive systems?
• What is inside and outside?
• What is the role of the border?
• The environment is or not part of the system?
• Does it need to be centralized?
• The organisation must respond to the changes in the
environment

II.2 Cybernetic eyes and the VSM
66
The five parts of the system (inside)

67
Nested systems:
Recursion levelsAshby’s Law of
required variety:
Vorg > Venv, problem

68
Focusing on (vertical dimension):

69
Managing complexity (horizontal):

70
Residual Variety (complexity):

71
Amplifiers and Attenuators:

72

II.3 Cybersyn Project:
deploying democracy
• Recursion levels
• Level 10 (State Economy)

Nationalisation and
collectivisation process
of the industrial
economy is started
1970: Allende win the
elections through a
tight majority
(margin of 1.3%)
74
II.3 Cybersyn Project

Compañías
nacionalizadas
75
• Changes  increase of: Production | GNP | Salaries
• Simultaneous increase of: Inflation | Shortage
• From a macroscopic adjustment (classic) the situation couldn’t be solved
• The microeconomic adjustment came across with problems of internal organisation,
corruption, excessive management costs.
• Fernando Flores plans a model of cybernetic management: calls Stafford Beer
• CORFO (Corporación de Fomento de la Producción)  Industry

• Cybernet: was designed to use the telex network for real-time
monitoring of each business. This control may seem contrary to
Allende’s idea of individual freedom, however, this control was
limited to external observation, results per business day, which
was framed in the idea of centralized economy.
• Cyberstride: collected the set of software used for collect,
process, and distribute data to and from each of the state
enterprises.
• CHECO: short for 'Chilean Economy' was never materialized, but it
was a mathematical and statistical model sought to simulate the
behavior of the Chilean economy as to predict it’s behavior and
likewise seek solutions before problems arise.
• Opsroom: was a space aimed at control the whole system. It
consisted of seven chairs with simple systems for any type of
worker could hold such positions. Opsroom was only materialized
in a prototype.
76

77

78

III. On Security and Trust
79
I. Newton (1642-1727)P.S. Laplace (1749-1827)

III. Security vs Trust
80
• 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

III. Security vs trust
(the Island 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.

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).

III.1 Historical Notes
III.2 Soft/Hard Power (lyric vs. obsession)
83
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 assets, vi) separatist, ethnic and
religious rebellions favoured
b) Hard Power vs. Soft Power (Joseph Nye)
Global Information Dominance (Echelon, National
Imagery and Mapping Agency, Future Imagery
Architecture)

III.3 Rousseau vs. Bentham
84
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…”

85
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”

(Soft/Hard Power)
86
• 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

III.4 Liberal Foundations
87
• 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)

III.4 Liberal Foundations
(a new difference)
88
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)

III.5 Utopias and Globalisation

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