Fwd: <nettime> confessions without relief

[Cecilia Tanaka]

Wow,
​s​
ynchronicity works!  Received this message just right now and didn't watch
the talk yet, but it seems pretty provocative!  :D

​Wish you all good masturbation and/or sex​ and millions of orgasms!  <3

-  c.



---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Morlock Elloi <morlockelloi at gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Dec 30, 2016 at 7:27 PM
Subject: <nettime> confessions without relief
To: nettime-l at kein.org


An interesting talk today at 33c3 by Charleyne Biondi- parallels between
the modern day surveillance and 18th century crusades against masturbation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-Ae0qscmDk


>From the intro:

The High Priests of the Digital Age

The High Priests of the Digital Age Are Working Behind Your Back to Make
You Confess, and Repent.

Just as 18th century priests enforced total surveillance measures on
masturbators, the new priests of the digital age are listening to your
confessions and forcing you into puritanical repentance.

Who doesn’t have a relative, a friend, a colleague, who broke up because of
an iMessage showing up on the wrong device, fooled by the iCloud, by a
suspicious Facebook like, or a Pokemon caught in the wrong neighborhood?

I want to make the claim that a new system of surveillance, organized by
the new priests of our digital age, are slyly acting behind our back to
make us conform to a new form of puritan morality.

At the beginning of the 18th century, masturbation suddenly became a topic
of intense reflection. In the Enlightenment Encyclopedia it is described as
the new disease of a wounded conscience and a heinous sin. Surprisingly,
the Christian Church was not responsible. It had, until then, never
regarded masturbation as anything other than a marginal problem for adult
men (and especially monks).

The people responsible for making masturbation a sin were economists, who
worried about the consequences of masturbation for productivity in an
economy that depended on the endless desire for more. The condemnation of
masturbation spread, and in no time, doctors were making scientific claims
to prove the dangers of masturbation, while priests made it their new
obsession.

In the confessional, the sinners had to avow everything, not only their
reprehensible actions, but their reprehensible dreams, the languorous
images that crossed their consciousness, the birth of desire in their
troubled mind. The priests demanded to know it all, the most inner thoughts
of the masturbators. The sinner was meant to keep his own mind under
surveillance.

Today, we believe that we have overcome this obscure period. Masturbation
is widely accepted as a healthy sexual practice. But most importantly, our
liberal democracies strongly posit that public ethics should remain neutral
regarding sexuality, and that each one of us is free to have the sexuality
that we prefer, enjoy, and that no institution is authorized to morally
judge us for our sexual activities.

Yet, I want to make the claim that a new system of surveillance, organized
by the new priests of our digital age, are slyly acting behind our back to
make us conform to a new form of puritan morality. Just as the 18th century
priests did in their Churches, the high priests of the digital age listen
to our confessions, record them, and eventually make us repent.


The economic interests of having us behave morally are numerous: the best
customer is predictable, and who is more predictable than an obedient
child, or a pious wife or husband? From the pithy history of masturbation
to real life break-ups, I will demonstrate the dark connections between
digital surveillance, neoliberal economics and morality.

I am a researcher at Columbia University and Sciences Po Paris in political
philosophy. I am an expert of the Snowden case and digital surveillance.
This will be my first talk on masturbation.

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