The fetish of information. How we believe that information will save or destroy the world

Nico Carpentier

Utopian perspectives

• CNC = broadcasting & narrowcasting + interactivity + low cost + accessibility

E.g., Negroponte• Industry replaced by information economy• “all information for all people at all times”

Rosenfeld and Morville "Information Architecture for the world wide web"

‘information devours its own contents; it devours communication and the social’

Fetish

Substitute for, or condensation of, desire in one object or situation

Freud (sexual fetish) and Marx (commodity fetishism)

All the social condensed in information – both dystopian and utopian approaches

Different questions

Displacement.

Why?

At what expense?

Fantasies• Predicting the future• Maintaining the overview (Alexandria)• Hypervisibility and tangibility of power• Comprehensibility of the One structure• Controlling (will to power)

Hiding & displacing• Knowledge• Complex power logics in society (govermentality / empty seat of power / hegemonies)