Can we ask respect for the subjects of surveillance capitalism if the economic model itself is based on a shadow structure (10.9) that produces opacity on a large scale?
In In the Swarm, Byung-Chul Han makes an accurate reflection on the interaction between respect and the anonymity that characterizes a good deal of digital culture. “Respect is tied to names,” says Han,
anonymity and respect rule each other out. The anonymous communication promoted by digital media is dismantling respect on a massive scale. It is also responsible for the expanding culture of indiscretion and disrespect […] A name provides the basis for recognition, which always occurs by name. Practices that involve responsibility, trustworthiness, and reliability are also tied to being named. Trust may be defined as faith in the name. Giving answers and promises are also acts of the name. The digital medium —which separates messages from messengers, news from its source— is destroying names.
Thus, the anonymity encouraged by social networks (in the form of fake users and increasingly realistic avatars), has led to a devaluation of the name, of responsibility, of respect and trustworthiness within the communities that have adhered to the digital world as a means of social exchange. Since the name is the handle by which the persona, the social mask, can be manipulated and accounted for in civil society (0.13), its loss or voluntary renunciation points to a distancing from the bios that inevitably leads us to the realms of zoē, the natural life susceptible of becoming bare life. As the case of the Los Gatos plane crash (8.12) the disappearance of our name may lead not only to social and political invisibility but to a sharp decline in our dignity as subjects of a civil society. The paradeisos implicit in digital networks depends to a great extent on this circumstance.
- Han, In the Swarm, 2-3. ↩︎
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