Nervous Systems Quantified Life and the Social Question

Beyond contemporary disclosures about mass surveillance by intelligence services, the promises inherent in ?big data? determine discourses about future innovations and systems of classification in government and industry, which aim to increasingly transform political and systemic questions into those of technological management. The promises of participation and ?digital democracy? stand in contrast to new forms of cybernetic control and modulation of social behavior on an unprecedented scale. The countless sensors of ubiquitous digital and technological infrastructures have united the state, industry, body and technology into ever more complex 'nervous systems'. This nervousness is revealed in particular where relationships of power and participation come to the fore, namely in the 'social question'. 00Exhibition: Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Germany (02-04.2016).