State Executor

One exciting point of "The Postmodern Condition" was when Lyotard related the cybernetic systems we have been studying (system that describe self-automating robots, humans, factories, and other "organisms" on a relatively micro scale) as models for the same type of systems that describe entire nations and multi-national corporations:

"The true goal of the system, the reason its programs function like a computer, is the optimization of the global relationships between input and output" (11).

The move from the single disembodied human in Hayle's book has been transformed into a disembodied institution of power. Cybernetics can now equate a discrete machine with the millions of people living in- or the thousands of people running a- country. The scientists, the academics, and the factory boss operate within a single I/O device (perhaps measured by the NYSE or imports/exports?).

This raised an interesting question for me when Lyotard brought up scientific knowledge as executable, not executory.

"In this context, the only role positive knowledge can play is to inform the practical subject about the reality within which the execution of the prescription is to be inscribed. It allows the subjects to circumscribe the executable, or what is possible to do. But the executory, what should be done, is not within the purview of possible knowledge.... knowledge is no longer the subject, but in the service of the subject" (36).

Thus, the state often builds these scientific knowledge seeking apparatuses (LHC at CERN, Watson at Brown Uni., NSA at the gov) and we accumulate these vast amounts of executable knowledge the state can feed back into its own system (an increase in input) for better automation (or in this case, control).

The language game limits this positivist knowledge (i.e., knowledge for the purpose of system regulation) to prescriptive statements (executable), but who takes the place of executor in the cybernetic nation? Within the body we have the POV, the machine has a programmed consciousness, but what about the nation?

I believe this would be a question of legitimacy. The morality of this scientific knowledge is very different from narrative knowledge that gains legitimacy and execution from its "meter" (self-reproduction that appropriates the subject). So can this scientific knowledge have an "accent" that acts as an executor? Or the limited dissent of the scientist/researcher? Or is this a void that the state or capitalism swallows to execute these regulating acts?