power/information

In view of this course’s themes of media, technology, theory and everyday experience, I want to explore the relationship between information, surveillance, and power. I posted previously about the concept of a smart grid, which would feed back information from households about their energy use to the grid, which would adjust its flow to distribute electricity more efficiently. I think this concept would be a good way into a discussion about the ways in which electrical power is a form of political and economic power.

I will read Langlois’ dissertation and Wiener’s The Human Use of Human Beings, supplemented by J. C. R. Licklider’s “Man-Computer Symbiosis,” in relation to these questions. In particular, Langlois’ analysis of Amazon.com and its commercial relation to individuality will be useful to examine the implications of this kind of surveillance. In the case of the smart grid, people do not even have to activate an account or actively browse; aspects of their daily lives can be monitored simply by virtue of their connection to a power supply.

Through Wiener’s and Licklider’s texts, it will be possible to draw connections to earlier information technologies that could be labeled ‘smart.’ Licklider suggests the possibility of a symbiotic relationship between man and machine in order to increase man’s efficiency and productivity. Wiener also talks of machines “learning” when he discusses feedback: “If, however, the information which proceeds backward from the performance is able to change the general method and pattern of performance, we have a process which may well be called learning” (61). The adaptation through feedback produced by surveillance will be my point of departure in reading through these texts the relation between power and information.