In a world of ruseful cunning and manipulation, nothing is unambiguous or unproblematic, everything is pliable, biddable, suggestible. The question of the tools one uses, the forces one has at one’s disposal, and the ways in which these can be made to work to one’s advantage is thus permanently open, despite the sleek facades and seamless, transparent interfaces which seem to tell another story. In the multiple fields of knowledge production, the exercise of strategic or stratagematic intelligence requires an attentiveness to what would otherwise remain irredeemably obscure epistemological discussion, hair-splitting conceptual distinctions, even throwaway comments and off the cuff remarks. Chairman Mao knew this only too well, pointing out – in the field of politics – that trouble is an excellent thing. Even the emergence of a controversy in a scientific field can furnish crucial indicators for otherwise imperceptible shifts, geopolitical impasses and social problems, offering a toehold for the astute media operative. In this way, the cracks, faults and disturbances marking our mental universes offer the same kinds of opportunities for exploitation as do bugs in the algorithmic universes of software, and one stratagem is always in the position of being able to turn another to its own account
via Matthew Fuller and Andrew Goffey » On the Usefulness of Anxiety, two Evil Media Stratagems.
The authors equate several kinds of matter (and matters) in the same episteme (brains, psychotropic drugs, mathematical algorithms, software, databased and biometric economies and so on). Because of that, their article is a great a read as it asks us to be critical of its suggestions.
