Avalanche - The Anarchist correspondence zine Avalanche-EN-13 | Page 10

ing attempted by means of linking computer systems,
increasing their calculating power, and decreasing their
physical size. Digitalization makes it possible to add
all this data together, which thanks to chips and the in-
ternet, can put a number on everything. In the logic of
domination, this data is then evaluated with computers,
filtered and put into statistics – to finally draw an ex-
act terrain, in which regulation, punishing, culling, and
optimization is possible. An always-present everything
including but soft domination, thanks to the all appre-
hending technology, that has everything in view and can
influence everybody – at best in advance/preventively.
The power of this technology crystallizes less in the
figure of the technocrat – of the specialist, who is the
only one that has the knowledge, the permission, and
in the end also some feeling of responsibility, to main-
tain the technological city and to change it – but in the
material city itself. The material environment, contain-
ing fibre-optics, antennas, chips, and networks which is
not only everywhere – and therefore totalitarian – but
also, in the double sense, is dictatorial; it is a material
dictatorship. On the one hand it operates through mild
but relentless coercion, a constant pressure on every-
one to always be connected and on duty, receiving and
following orders, listening and being obedient, proceed-
ing towards the next work task, the next schedule, the
next news. Through the gapless self-disclosure one
offers everything – and is therefore far more suspect,
when one tries to hide something – habituated to the
permanent presence of bugs in one’s pockets and there-
fore just ignores, that all movements, relationships and
talks, that happen in the net – meaning via or often in
the attendance of the devices – are stored, analysed,
calculated, and predicted.
The technological material environment becomes to an
ever greater degree the fundamental means by which
the state exerts its basic function: social control. The
exertion of power is less dependent upon singular peo-
ple in uniforms than it is upon the entirety of a com-
partmentalized and omnipresent network, such that
those who operate it have more of a maintenance role
than that of an executive decision-maker. And through
constant, continuous production. And unquestioned,
continuous purchase. And development of power made
manifest in technology, that which has always been to-
talitarian, since it always strives to get into every as-
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pect of life and into every living being (to be capable
to decide over life and death – but we don’t have to
point fingers at nanotechnology or nuclear technology
to see what technological totality means). Therefore the
project of the smart city is a colossal step in the direc-
tion of installing new technology in every area of urban
space, and therefore in our daily lives and in front of our
homes – and to weave this technological web even more
tightly, more profitably, to capture all of our movements.
At the same time already now the soil is prepared to
advance the project of the smart city across the bound-
aries of specific neighbourhoods, through the expansion
of screening and cleaning processes, so as to displace
the unproductive, the untamed, and the delinquent con-
founding factors and thereby create the perfect frame-
work for fr