Abstract

Lengthy discussion of the Cambridge analytica scandal in light of cybernetic governance and the digitisation of democracies, with reference to the thought of Günther Anders. The essay concludes that next to the need for debate regarding the ownership and power of disposition over our data, there is an urgent necessity to engage with the crucial question of how the digital affects the very character of the political itself and politics as such. In this vein, it is essential not to confuse networks with a politically sustainable concept of the social per se. Rather, what is needed is a debate on the relation between politics and technics that goes beyond the usual poles of blind technophilia on the one hand, and unproductive ressentiment on the other hand. This, however, also necessitates our thinking through certain revolutionary shifts that the aforementioned Günther Anders had already diagnosed at the beginning of the 1980’s: That insofar as technics has started to intervene in political structures, it is, from day to day, less the case that technics develops “within the political frame. On the contrary, then, an actual revolution takes place. That is: at that point, technics’ significance gains the upper hand to such an extent that the political happenings eventually occur within its frame.”