2008-02-11 17:21:09 - by
Nicolas Malevé
From the text Future Map, by Brian Holmes
"The trading function are overlaid on a map of the Middle East, like windows of geopolitical opportunity. This interface, and the lure of profit it offered, would be the electrodes attached to the precognitive lobes of the investors. If they produced striking images, then preemptive policies would follow."
"The PAM trading interface is literally a “future map.” It is also a perfect example of what Foucault calls a “security device,” and it offers precise insight into the dynamics of surveillance under cybernetic capitalism. It is not a police program, but a market instituted in such a way as to precisely condition the free behavior of its participants. It produces information, while turning human actors into functional relays, or indeed, into servomechanisms; and it “consumes freedom” for a purpose. Like all security devices, it serves two functions. One is to optimize economic development: in this case, the development of financial speculation. But the other function is to produce information that will help to eliminate deviant behavior, of the kind that can’t be brought into line with any “normal” curve. This is the double teleology of closed-loop information systems in cybercapitalism. The map of the future is always a promised land to come. But there are always a few enemy targets on the way to get there. The question is, do you hold the gun? Do you just watch as the others take aim? Or do you try to dodge the magic bullet?"
