Enclosure through Transduction into Cyberspace

This essay concerns itself with a single question: Why would capitalism support the development and proliferation of the internet and what does it stand to gain from drawing ever more of our activities into virtual cyberspace? The answer is that this process is a form of enclosure.

This essay consists of two parts, the former delineates the context and theory within which the latter is argued. As such, principally, I will set the background stage by elaborating on Harvey’s regime of flexible accumulation, thereafter I will introduce the reader to concepts that at on the one hand inform my understanding of the interactions between code and space and whose distinctions will be important for later argumentation. Thereafter, I will briefly delineate the key concepts in this essay – Transduction and Enclosure – before expounding on their relationship in three moments each of which argues its equality to a step in the process of enclosure.

The Regime of Flexible Accumulation

Harvey posits that the immutable laws of capitalism result in recurrent crises of ‘overaccumulation’ i.e. a point is reached within a certain geographic area where accumulation produces a surplus of capital relative to possibilities to employ that capital. In such an event capitalism can employ several remedies: the devaluation of commodities, macroeconomic control, or the absorption of overaccumulation through temporal, spatial or time-space displacements (Harvey, 1990, p. 181-184). The crisis of 1973 – the end of the Fordist regime of accumulation – was marked by a running out of these options and consequently the emergence of a new regime of accumulation: Flexible Accumulation. The latter relies on flexibility rather than rigidity concerning labour processes, markets, and patterns of consumption (p. 147). It relies on faster turnover times for capital and focuses on economies of scale to rapidly adapt to business cycles and trends (p. 156). Whereas, the breakdown of the Fordist regime was effected due to the lack of possibilities for spatial displacement brought about by the maturity Fordist production systems had reached, spatial displacement has become possible again in the regime of Flexible Accumulation through a geographical expansion into cyberspace. By means of investing capital into the creation of virtual worlds through code, space was created that was infrastructure at the same time

Code & Space

To fully contemplate the impact of the creation of virtual space, it is essential that we do not conceive of it as separate from physical reality but define their modes of (conjoint) being and the effects thereof. Therefore, the succeeding paragraphs concern themselves with a clarification of such concepts.

“Code/Space”, to start off, is the presence of a dyadic relationship between code and spatiality, where they are mutually constituted and produced through one another. The spatiality is the product of code, and the code exists only to produce the spatiality, for example, in the check in area of an airport. There, if the software crashes, the spatiality ceases being a check-in area, and is merely a waiting room, since there are no other ways of checking a person onto a flight as manual procedures have been phased out. The same holds true for a supermarket, with computerized cash registers. Should these crash no more transactions can occur and the supermarket becomes a mere temporary warehouse until the reactivation of the code (Kitchin & Dodge, 2011, p. 16-17).

“Coded Space”, on the other hand, is a mode of conjoint being where software matters to the functioning of a space e.g. in terms of efficiency, safety, facilitation, monitoring, et cetera, but is not constitutive of the space. For example, a garden with an automated watering system, here, if the code fails, it retains its spatiality and functionality as garden, albeit the watering will have to be done by hand (Kitchin & Dodge, 2011, p. 18).

At last, what I for the purposes of this essay term “Cyberspace”, this is where code does not change spatiality, but rather it invokes the experience of code as its own spatiality, with the possibility of navigating through that space. That is, by and large, what we commonly call the internet. In cyberspace, we feel like we are traveling to a variety of spaces that consist merely of code. This is, for example, when we sit at home but through our mobile phone watch online videos, book a holiday, or use a search engine. This means that our spatial experience has almost nothing to do with the locality around us. Whereas in cyberspace we travel from code to code, in a given cyberplace we are experiencing the code created by one unity, a singular instantiation with a constrained purpose e.g. an internet “platform”.

To conclude the preceding definitions: the effect of code is that it can create new spaces such as cyberplaces and cyberspace. Additionally, it can transform localities through code/space and coded space. This establishes that the experience of code is always a modulation of the conditions under which social processes normally operate, since social relations are not independent of space. As the qualities of the latter is a constitutive element that gives context and meaning to the social relations, communal formations, and political organization within it. Meaning that, for example, a workplace is the necessary requirement for work relations (Kitchin & Dodge, 2011, p. 65-66).

By means of modern technology, most digital spaces are part of a complex web of transactions and interactions that extend into an expansive network architecture. Through reach of the mobile internet network almost any space has become a latent code/space, coded space and cyberspace i.e. the augmented reality mobile game “Pokemon Go” can make any street with network reception into a space for catching pocket monsters (Kitchin & Dodge, 2011, p. 17). Therefore, the succeeding elaborations on space do not carry their effects solely in the digital domain but extend over and affect many more spaces. To portray the way they do so, I will next consider how these digital spaces process their users, that is transduction.

Transduction

At the heart of the operation of transduction lie so-called individuations, small incremental steps, utilized by actors to solve relational problems that constitute a transduction. These individuations could e.g. be movements, speech acts, perceptions, sensations, and memories that lead to a modulation of the conditions of a person and their situation. Most individuations are imperfect reiterations of previous individuations, such as placing one foot in front of another. A transduction, on the other hand, is an operation through which an activity propagates itself from one location to another. Cyberspace and Code solve our relational problems by transducing our everyday problems either into the domain of the computable or by giving us access to or creating a space wherein we can solve it (Kitchin & Dodge, 2011, p. 71-73). Next, I will delineate the notion of enclosure to afterwards portray how transduction into cyberspace features the same characteristics.

The notion of enclosure.

What distinguishes enclosure from other capitalist techniques of dispossession is that space is the key vehicle of dispossession rather than a mere container of it (Sevilla, 2015, p. 2). Across the different expressions of enclosure in any given time period, it utilizes a constant technique of normalizing space under a unitary political economic rationale. Therein, it firstsacrifices space that was shaped by practices of commoning on a local and use value-oriented basis into a to operational rationality that makes it legible for market mechanisms (p. 3). Secondly, it engages in fragmentation and hierarchization, to pursue the creative destruction –the eradication of old through the construction of new spaces – of previously autonomous forms of social spaces and value regimes. Third, the newly created spaces are institutionalized in such a way to support capitalist accumulation (p. 5).

Subsequently I will portray how all these phenomena are found as we transduce our matters into cyberspace.

Enclosure through Transduction into Cyberspace

Homogenization: Disassembly into Measurable Differences.

In interacting with the digital we are termed users; our devices usually emphasize our personal ownership of them e.g. by using folder names such as “my documents”. Additionally, so called “windows”, that can be closed at will offer us the illusion of protection behind a see-through wall through which merely innocuous light can pass. We do not feel as if we were interacting, as much as we feel empowered because we are spectating. This illusion of power transfixes us to the extent that most of us do not even know that we are always being spectated in turn and our representations circulated. Interfaces hide the code that would attest to that. In fact, whenever we are jacked in, we are not merely reading but also being read in turn. Merely being connected to the internet but idle, your computer sends information such as your Internet Protocol address, browser type, language preference, and userdomain. Your ethernet card is ceaselessly dialoguingwith others (Friedberg, 2003, p. 346; Chun, 2008a, p. 3-4, 21, 59, 130).

For this dialogue to be successful, machines need to be speaking the same language and hence machine communication is standardized by means of protocol – a widely shared clearly defined set of standards. Galloway (2004) pointed out the nature of proctological control: it achieves openness and inclusion by means of a strategy of enforcing universalization and homogeneity. It is anti-diversity. I argue that as humans navigate code and protocol, we disassemble and comport ourselves into its universal language i.e. as I am trying to transmit my thought by means of this word processor, I must first seek to make my insights surface as conscious thought, in a manner expressible as a written medium in one of a select few fonts.Using the word processor, I reduce, confess, and transmit myself according to the terms of protocol. This is a necessary progression to transduce my relational problems into cyberspace.

This homogenization that one subjects oneself to, serves to record difference. Ultimately, software or digital space does not exist. No device could start without an autobooting faculty of elementary functions which are part of the silicon and hence the hardware. All operations of code are metaphoric and come down to local string operations, that are signifiers of voltage differences. In fact, software can only be separated from hardware by ideology. Hence, when I transduce an activity or space, a representation of it – fitted into the standards of protocol – as matter on a server, it is saved or computed as voltage differences (Kittler, 1995). This means that, transducing matters into the digital, constitutes a disassembly of the self in order to fit protocol, a reduction of the real and a compression of space by means of transducing it into voltage differences.

In sum, when transducing both our activities and spaces into cyberspace they are subjected to an abstraction that fits them into homogenized forms for circulation. The binarity and the physicality of technological storage means that they are circulated as measurable (voltage) differences, signifying that their digital counterparts are legible to numerical modes of analyses. This is the first step of enclosure, by which a space is subjected to an operational rationality and made legible for the market.

Fragmentation and Assortment: Cyberspace as Marketplace

The Fordist regime had largely run out of places for spatial displacement. However, as innovation is a continuity in capitalism, space was invented. Or, to be precise, when the Internet arose, Capital understood that it fits it’s needs for flexible investment, information generation, and economies of scope and selected the technology for investment. It enabled commerce and as such it saw continuous development and expansion, and ultimately rose to social prominence. Next, to enabling instant communications necessary for the Flexible Accumulation it also created the conditions of existence of the “long tail” economy: Before, any product needed to be sufficiently popular in a certain local territory to make its production or sale financially viable. Cyberspace, however, offers an immense accumulation of networked individuals greatly increasing the chances for more obscure products and needs to reach the critical threshold in potential consumers to warrant their production and sale. In essence, cyberspace makes the catchment area for products and services global. To give an example, a local record store can only offer those popular records certain to sell enough copies in their locality, hence it provides only “hit” albums, as it is less likely to sell obscure one’s. Music streaming services, on the other hand, offer even the most obscure albums, for due to their greater access to consumers through cyberspace – coupled with lower costs in digital storage – they are more likely to reach the critical threshold needed to sell/produce a given obscure piece of music (Anderson, 2018).

I argue that the enlargement of the catchment area, is a general principle by which cyberspace is structured. That is, cyberspace is incomprehensibly large and made up of uncountable cyberplaces. Cyberspace is a marketplace for cyberplaces, each one concerning a different niche, specialized product, occult community, only coming into existence because of the global catchment area. Therein cyberspace enables and develops further individuation of individuals within the total set of spaces, which can then be exploited for the sale of niche products. That is to say that capitalism, has turned towards the active production of space, as cyberplaces, through Assortment and Fragmentation – techniques of enclosure. However, cyberspace is not a onetime expansion wherein new avenues of consumption were uncovered. Instead it accords perfectly with the capitalist need for flexibility: Cyberspace is enduring whilst cyberplaces are ephemeral.

Chun (2008b, p. 169) states that in cyberspace regeneration is linked to degeneration. By this she means that, naturally, in cyberspace, cyberplaces are lost. Always, servers break down, are taken offline, or are deserted. However, a community, thought, or cyberplace will persist in the decentralized infrastructure of the web if it is regenerated or repeated continually so. Everything that persists in cyberspace over a long duration, must have been accessed and reproduced, and it is through reproduction that things propagate and remain. That is to say that cyberspace in its active production of places is never finished but always reconfiguring according to what is accessed, reproduced and how often so. It is efficient in its allotment of cyberplaces in cyberspace, yet, it is not an archive of places, it is a marketplace of cyberplaces, because if cyberplaces lose their relevance, they simply disappear and fade out while the network allows easy capital investment for the creation of other’s. Cyberspace cannot be a common, because it is atomized into cyberplaces. Moreover, it is in a continuous flux, flexible, and adaptable. Just as enclosure does, it engages in fragmentation and creative destruction, through the destruction of old by the emergence of new cyberplaces. Continuously.

From Institution to Execution: Accumulation by Explicit Permission.

Physical space may be considered ontogenetic, that is in a constant state of becoming. In these terms it is a practice and a doing – a reality that is recreated from moment to moment. In this way, a city is constantly being altered, breaking apart, and constructed through the complex sociospatial relations of a given society. The same ontogeneity holds true for the meaning of space, it too is continually brought into existence. For example, Trafalgar Square in London and it’s meaning is always recreated and maintained, as people use it to chat, take tourist pictures, visit museums and catch a subway. Whilst it’s reproduction as Trafalgar Square may appear stable, it is only maintained through a set of discursive and material practices ranging from the street cleaning to pavement repairs and policing. Naturally, ideas and hegemonic ideology and its resistances also play a great part in the make up and meaning of such places. When protesters assemble on a public place, they change the meaning of that place from one of tourism to one of critique and public voice, in that space they create a new kind of association with each other. I argue that this resignification of space through people’s practices is severely hindered in cyberspace.

This impossibility of remaking spaces becomes apparent when we consider Lessig’s argument that “Code is Law” and Chun’s intervention, that “Code is better than law”. Lessig, posits that, with the advent of code, what were once decisions that took place on the level of legislation are now taking place at the level of code (Lessig, 1999, p. 6). Code is the architecture of cyberspace; it’s building blocks and the determining factor of what is and is not possible. Chun, however, adds that code is better than law. It almost always does what it says, it does not need a human performative to function. Whereas the law’s effectiveness depends on its enforcement, code enforces itself (Chun, 2008a, pp. 66). In other words, in law everything is allowed that is not explicitly forbidden, but in code all that is possible is what is explicitly permitted.

Therefore, I argue, that the owner of a given cyberplace, enjoys sovereignty in that place. Indeed, they could cede a certain amount of re-making power of the space to users, e.g. as is needed for all social media platforms. The problem is such that the owner of the cyberplace has the sole control over the distinction of which part of it is open for re-making by users and which part is closed. Hence, the architect is able to move a dividing line that determines the degree of autonomy a community possesses on a given platform. Furthermore, the cyberplace sovereign is invested with the the power of modulating cyberplace architecture, this translates into two other powers conceptualized by Zuboff. First, through a modulation of space, activities that were once invisible can emerge into visibility. This can help find further differences between humans, which can be exploited for the differentiation of services/products. As a platform puts different choices and impediments in front of the user, they’ll generate different user responses. Therefore, they can design the platform in such a way to bring to light the desired information. Secondly, the modification of behaviour which is achieved by continuous experiments employed by the sovereign. This entails, for example, the correct spacing of rewards and punishments, its goal is to absorb the user into a profit generating mechanical order of things, that through experimentation has been made difficult to escape (Zuboff, 2015, p. 81-85). The exemplar of this is the “feed”: it is personalized with variable reward patterns, it continues loading new content automatically, short to say, it is a makeup of factors wherein the easiest action is to continue on in its flow, and the significantly harder action is to regain a state of decision making to stop the flow. This is to say, the individual, at that moment is caught inside a cyberplace, due to the architecture it’s sovereign has employed, which supports his goal of capital accumulation.

In sum, because code enforces itself it is not subject to place-making processes, it does not adhere to an institutional order but creates its own executional order. It is the sovereigns of cyberplaces that can move the dividing line of what is open to processes of remaking and what is not because they decide all things that the code permits. This, I argue, is Accumulation by Explicit Permission. According to economic theory then, a corporation is incentivized to seek the profit-maximizing position for the line between open and closed. The radical change with previous modes of accumulation is the move from spaces that are institutionalized for capitalist accumulation towards spaces wherein goals of accumulation are part of their execution.

Conclusion

We have established, that the transduction of our activities into cyberspace has the characteristics of enclosure. First, transduction and protocol homogenize people and places for circulation by recording them as measurable differences. Hence, they become subject to numerical and market modes of analysis. Even though cyberspace might seem stable it is internally fragmented and in constant flux which accords with capital’s need for flexibility. This continuous re-fragmentation assures that we always become assorted to value producing spaces. Finally, as a corporation controls a given cyberplace it utilizes “accumulation by explicit permission” which functions on the basis of execution rather than institutionalization. Therefore, it is shielded from the ontogenetic place re-making processes of the social sphere.

In light of this cyber-enclosure, I believe, we must revisit Code/Spaces. For, according to what I have laid out so far, making space into Code/Space, is to yield the power of re-making and negotiating space. In fact, Code/Spaces should be seen as a colonization of the institutional order by the executional order, a sort of digital overlay that aims to control physical space.

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