Critical Intervention

Against Visual Minimalism

Critical Theory and Digital Transformation

"Over the past two centuries a mode of governmentality has developed in Western society that is heavily reliant on generating and monitoring systematic information about individuals by institutions. Software-enabled technologies qualitatively alter both the depth and the scope of this disciplinary gaze, but also introduce new forms of governance, because they make the systems and apparatus of governance more panoptical in nature. . . . Software creates more effective systems of surveillance and creates new capture systems that actively reshape behaviour by altering the nature of a task . . . there is still much conceptual and empirical work to be done to understand how forms of governance are being transformed and the role played by software, and not simply the broader technologies they enable." — Kitchin, 2011, as cited in Berry, 2014, p. 39