“What is the being-there of a spectre?”, asks Derrida in a different, but well-known hauntological context, “What is the mode of presence of a spectre?” He continues: A presence of absence whereby all absentees are replaced by the same ghost. It’s the ghost presence of someone who was once available, who is now unreachable via this channel, who is absent. It takes the place of what has before been an individual profile picture or a collection of individual profile pictures. It can haunt you as the image of a ghost in front of a gray background suddenly appearing on your Signal app once a user has deleted his or her account. The specter of control can also manifest itself in the praxis of ghosting someone or in being ghosted by someone on social media, or on a messenger app. This one even comes in various forms and is known under several names, such as “Disappear”, “Ghoul”, “Halloween” or “Ghost” (the latter is Apple’s name for it). Yet people love to use it (it’s in the top 100 of the most popular emojis). In other instances it is a popular emoticon that you don’t exactly know how and when to use or how and in which context it is being used by others, in short, what it signifies: 👻. It’s not really a ghost, but it is still somehow reminiscent of one: Sometimes, a digital specter reaches you in the form of an intergalactic explorer nudging you into health challenges in a nation-wide health promotion initiative, a small, cute, cuddly friend looking like a mixture of a raindrop or a cute ghost. The specters of control come in various forms and shapes. In this context, it can be a symbol for the imperative to connect, to immediately reply––or simply the symbol of a remarkably successful platform and, thus, the data economy or surveillance capitalism as such:
The specter of control is a small icon, not bigger than the usual app-sized picture you see on your smartphone’s screen, a notification that something significant (at least to you) happened on Snapchat, naturally making a yellow, encircled ghost appear. »Mind no longer goes more ghostly than a ghost« Specters of Control by Felix Maschewski and Anna-Verena Nosthoff Apby Anna-Verena Nosthoff & Felix Maschewski What are the Specters of Control?
0 kommentar(er)
