Informational Things Or The Position of the In/Exclusion ... - FAMe

Master Thesis Carsten Ochs 

Center for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College/ London, 2005 

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Informational Things Or 

The Position 

of the In/Exclusion Machine 

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Contents: 

1. Introduction............................................................................................................1 

2. Dismissing the Object.............................................................................................3 

2.1. The Fourfold: 

Bringing Together the Gods and the Mortals, The Earth and the Sky......................4 

2.2. Back to Benjamin..............................................................................................8 

3. Access (Denied) Or the Cultural Logic of the Information Age.......................11 

1 3.1. Information I: Basic Elements (Parasites, Hosts, Noise)................................13 

2 3.2. Information II: From Immateriality to Material-Semiotics.............................15 

3.3. Information III: The Logic of Exclusion.........................................................17 

4. Networks: The Politics of Information...............................................................20 

5. Conclusion: 

Making the Place of Resistance Visible, Or The In/Exclusion Machine...............24 

6. Reference Matter....................................................................................................29 


1. Introduction 



Informational Things Or 

The Position of the In/Exclusion Machine 

‘This is not exactly an art show, nor is it a political rally, 

but an experimental assembly of assemblies.’ 

Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel, 2005 

‘Der Leser sähe sich auf einen Weg gebracht, 

den ein Autor vorausgegangen ist, 

der im Glücksfall ein augere, 

ein Gedeihenlassen auslöst.’ 

Martin Heidegger, 1954 

In 1934, Walter Benjamin wrote a text being concerned with the irreducible 

‘connection between (…) two factors, political line and quality’ of a literary work. 

(Benjamin 2002: 69). A work, he argued, ‘that shows the correct political tendency, 

need show no other quality.’, for: ‘The correct political tendency of a work includes 

its literary quality because it includes its literary tendency.’ (ibid.: 69) 

This was not to say that a work simply had to transmit the correct political message; 

instead, the work had to articulate reflexively its own position in the social order of its 

time: ‘Rather than asking: what is the attitude of a work to the relations of production 

of its time? I should like to ask: what is its position in them?’ (ibid.: 70) 




Following this thought about 70 years after the text was written, in this essay I 

want to modify Benjamin’s question a little bit. I am not concerned with literature 

here, which had in 1934 already lost its status as cutting-edge form of virtuality (there 

was film and radio). I am not interested in the position of a virtuality in the form of 

literary production, but in the form of a production that makes use of informational 

technologies and techniques (computers, software, programming, genetic engineering, 

etc.). This is what I call an informational work. 

I am thus concerned with the position of an informational work in the 

relations of production established by contemporary social order: the order of the 

information age. This work, however, I want to mention explicitly, is not necessarily 

an art work. 1 Instead of talking about the art work, I want to discuss the artificial 

work, that is, the artefact as an autonomous thing. This thing, I will argue, might be 

able to articulate a certain self-critique, a critique of the position of informational 

things in the order of information and could thus contribute to a practical critique of 

information (Lash). 

To accomplish this task, I will try to link certain theoretical perspectives. 

The first step will be to clarify the status of a work that is artificial but not 

(necessarily) art. How could we define such a work? Here, we will have a look at the 

concept of the thing, in the sense of Heidegger. Starting from a review of his essay 

Das Ding, we will hopefully obtain a strong notion of a work as a thing by translating 

Heidegger into 2005 – with the help of a couple of further authors, of course (chapter 

2). 

Having established a robust notion of the thing, the third and fourth chapter 

will ask the question: If the ‘correct political tendency of a work includes its 

1 As we will see later, it is even questionable, whether it is at all possible to call an informational work 

an art work. 




informational quality, because it includes its informational tendency’, then: What is 

this informational tendency? What is the cultural logic of information? What is the 

politics of information? To answer these questions, we will need two chapters, one 

focusing on the logic of informational processes (chapter 3), and one on the political 

implications of this logic (chapter 4). 

In a last step, I will try to combine the gained insights, and to understand how 

an informational work, that is, an informational thing, could be conceptualised 

(chapter 5). 

2. Dismissing the Object 

There is a very long tradition of basing theory on the idea of the subject in 

Western philosophy. On the flipside of the active subject, there was the passive object, 

somehow complementing this Cartesian Cut, as Baudrillard argued: 

‘We have always lived off the splendor of the subject and the poverty of the object. It 

is the subject that makes history, it’s the subject that totalises the world (…) the object 

is only a detour on the royal road of subjectivity.’ (Baudrillard 1990: 111) 

Deeply dissatisfied with this idea, Baudrillard attacked subject-centred theorising by 

almost totally subtracting the subject from the theoretical formula describing the 

social order. Dismissing the activity of desire (as accomplished by the subject, he 

emphasized the seductive ‘activity‘ of the object. The theoretical result of this 

approach can be summarized as follows: ’Everything comes from the object and 

everything returns to it, just as everything started with seduction, not with desire.’ 

(ibid.: 111) 




While fruitfully and radically breaking with the over-emphasis on the subject 

by Western thought, Baudrillard’s notion of the seductive object carried, however, a 

serious problem: the ‘traditional’ approach was only turned around 180 degrees, 

thereby confirming the subject/object distinction. For, the concept of seduction 

remained within the classical framework, condemning the object to stay passive 

(seduction is a passivity that causes activity; it is an ‘active passivity’). It does not 

matter, whether ‘everything started with seduction’ or desire or whatever, because it is 

not even the question what everything started with. To find a way out of the classical 

approach, it is therefore not sufficient to shift all emphasis from the subject to the 

object, while ascribing the ‘active passivity’ of seduction to the latter. Also dead 

entities can seduce. What is needed instead is a theory that gives a certain kind of life 

to non-organic entities, a framework in which so-called objects can play an active 

role. 

2.1. The Fourfold: 

Bringing Together the Gods and the Mortals, The Earth and the Sky 

Some theorists have argued recently that the mission of replacing the object 

could be accomplished by the idea of the thing. 2 So what is a thing? Let’s start by 

shortly reviewing the concept in Heidegger’s essay Das Ding, written 1950. 3 

2 See Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel (eds.) 2005: Making Things Public. Atmospheres of Democracy. 

Karlsruhe / Cambridge, Mass. / London 

3 Please note that, since at the time I wrote this essay, I only had access to the German version of the 

text. This is why I will refer to that version throughout the text, translating it into English while giving 

also the German quote. There is an English translation of the text (‘The Thing‘), which probably differs 

from mine. I hope that my translation still transports the meaning of the German version, and that this 

will not confuse the reader. This is probably not the best way to integrate Heidegger‘s text into this 

essay; the only alternative, however, would have been not to draw on Das Ding at all. Since this text is 

of major importance for the discussion of the concept of the thing, however, I decided to do it this way. 




Here, Heidegger, starting from the question of Nähe (’nearness’), arrives soon 

at the question what a thing is, since nearness (Nähe) is not to be found unmediated - 

it is always some-thing, which is near. So Heidegger starts to discuss the jug as an 

example of a thing. As he notes, the jug is a thing that was generated or 

manufactured, it is an artefact, and we, although considering it an artefact, do not 

grasp it in terms of a mere object (’bloßer Gegenstand‘), but of a thing. 4 

What qualifies the jug as jug then is not its being an artefact or being 

produced: ‘The jug is not a container, because it was produced, but the jug had to be 

produced since it is this very container.’ 5 In other words, the artificial ‘nature’ of 

some-thing, does not contradict to its being a thing and it is thus not even a criteria for 

the ‘thingness‘ of a thing, whether it is ‘natural’, like a tree, or ‘artificial’ like a jug. 

Things, as Heidegger notes, do not come into being ‘through the machinations 

(‘Machenschaften’) of humans.’ But they requires their vigilance (’Wachsamkeit’). 

(Heidegger 2000: 183, 184) 

What Heidegger wants to tell us here, I think, concerns two dimensions: 

First, the production of a thing is not so much about the work and action of an active 

subject designing an entirely passive object. The production process is not about dead 

matter being in-formed. Rather, the process of production is interactive and occurs 

between human and non-human agents. In the foreword of the Gesamtausgabe, Band 

7, Heidegger talks about the author as an auctor, somebody causing an augere, that is, 

causing something to flourish (’ein Gedeihenlassen auslösen’), like growing a plant. It 

is this what happens when people write code (copy and paste), make electronic music 

(sampling), genetically engineer (manipulate genes), or design brands in co-operation 

4 ‘Nehmen wir den Krug als hergestelltes Gefäß, dann fassen wir ihn doch, so scheint es, als ein Ding 

und keinesfalls als bloßes Objekt.‘ (Heidegger 2000: 169) 

5 ‚Der Krug ist nicht Gefäß, weil er hergestellt wurde, sondern der Krug musste hergestellt werden, 

weil er dieses Gefäß ist.‘ (Heidegger 2000: 169) 




with a computer. It is even more so, when people write genetic algorithms and the 

like. 

The second dimension refers to the insight that things, although they might be 

artefacts, do have a certain autonomous status. They are not only mental reflections, 

no matter whether they are material like a rock, or characterised by a different mode 

of existence, like the soul. (ibid.: 178) Jugs are things, but also Kant’s Ding-an-sich. 

The decisive point is: they exist, not totally depending on humans, while being 

connected to them. 6 And they can be material or not (I consider this a position that is 

quite close to what is called material-semiotics). 

Now I want to go a little bit into one of the elements being mentioned above, 

since this one constitutes one of the most important theoretical strengths of the 

concept of the thing: connectedness. This term points to an aspect of the thing, which 

is emphasized by many theorists: the thing as something that ‘draws other things 

together’, that is, the thing as a Versammlung or assemblage. For Heidegger, things 

have the ’capacity to bring together what he calls in his poetic language the ‘fourfold’ 

of mortals, gods, Earth and sky.’ (Kharkhodin 2005: 281) An obvious example for the 

realisation of this capacity would be a bridge: ’the bridge involves and invokes other 

entities when it brings people together, and thus cannot be described as a passive 

object that only human subjects use (…) The bridge links the people, the elements and 

God in their intertwined fate and serves as an arena for their struggles.’ 7 (ibid.: 282) 

As we can see clearly, the assembly-building activity of things is empirically 

6 Heidegger illustrates the autonomy of things also by referring to expressions in different languages, 

such as English. He says: ‘that‘s a great thing: das ist eine große (feine, gewaltige, herrliche) Sache, 

d.h. ein aus sich Kommendes, den Menschen Angehendes.‘ (Heidegger 2000: 177), which means: 

‘That’s a great thing: this is a great (fine, massive, wonderful) thing, that is, some-thing coming out of 

itself, some-thing concerning humans.‘ Here, despite the translation problem, I hope the autonomy 

(‘coming out of itself‘) and connectedness (‘concerning humans‘) of things become obvious. 

7 In ‘Things as Res publicae. Making Things Public‘ Oleg Kharkhodin analyses the bridge connecting 

the two parts of the Russian city of Novgorod, being separated by a river. The bridge is analysed as a 

thing and Khorkhadin is able to show the plausibility of Heidegger‘s idea of the ‘fourfold‘ by drawing 

on the medieval scripts of the First Novgorod Chronicle. 




examinable. It would be a deep misunderstanding of Heidegger‘s thing, if we only 

address the etymological plausibility of connecting Ding or thing and assembly. 8 Of 

course, this misunderstanding is not very likely, since Heidegger himself, while 

drawing on the etymology of the word, explicitly notes that he is not concerned with 

word-play: not only ‘thing’ is connected to assemblages, but also things! 9 

This is where we leave Heidegger, since the points we picked are helpful for 

the purpose of this essay, in contrast to some problematic assumptions in Heidegger’s 

notion of the thing. 10 So let’s summarise the benefits of that concept, as far as it 

concerns our own purpose, the elaboration of characteristics of an informational work. 

If we conceptualise the work as thing, what do we gain? 

First, we get rid of the annoying subject-object trap. While dismissing the 

notion of an object, we get an entity that ‘has an inner life of its own that withdraws 

from all human awareness’ (Harman 2005: 270). In the age of Biomedia (E. Thacker) 

it might be wise to ascribe a certain life to nonhuman, non-organic entities for 

analytical purposes. The radical break with subject-centred, but also object-centred 

8 The following is, however, an example for the etymological relation of thing and assembly: ‘Many 

parliaments in Nordic and Saxon nations still activate the old root of this etymology: Norwegian 

congressman assemble in the Storting; Icelandic deputies called the equivalent of ‘thingmen‘ gather in 

the Althing; Isle of Man seniors used to gather around the Ting; the German landscape is dotted with 

Thingstätten and you can see in many places the circles of stones where the Thing used to stand.‘ 

(Latour 2005: 23) The ‘empirical‘ dimension was illustrated by many scholars whose perspective 

became known as Actor-Network-Theory. See also Latour: Drawing Things Together, Latour 1999 and 

Latour 2000. 

9 This is why also the ‘etymological criticism‘ of some theorists, in the end, do not find their target. 

Masato Fukushima, for example, is not convinced of the idea of thing, since in Japanese tradition, there 

is no etymological line from ‘things‘ to assemblages to be found (Fukushima 2005), while in Chinese, 

for example, the etymological argument makes sense. (Zito 2005) Is the concept of the thing therefore 

only of local value? I cannot discuss this question sufficiently here, but I want to note that also in 

cultural formations which differ in terms of etymological traditions, things have the capacity to gather, 

which is another way of expressing the bringing together of the fourfold. (Latour 2005: 23) The 

etymology therefore is only a hint, but the concept of the thing is not just based on that. 

10 There is definitely not sufficient space to discuss these problems and I am also not qualified to do so; 

Harman 2005 however notes that Heidegger ‘has a disturbingly narrow sense of what counts as a thing. 

(...) Technological devices always appear in his pages only as raging monsters bent on objectifying 

things, converting them into mere useful stockpiles, reducing them uniformly to sheer presence-athand.‘ 

(270) For Heidegger, technology is a non-thing, a mere Ge-stell, which is why we stopped above 

to follow his thought: for us, abandoning any romanticism, technology is an excellent example for a 

thing! For further criticism of Heidegger see Latour 2005 and Rorty 2005. 




theory transforms also the author, making him somebody interacting with something, 

which leads to the emergence of a thing. 

Second, the thing, as either material or not, opens up a space for a material- 

semiotic perspective, which might be helpful in the Age of Information. 

And, third, things are assemblages, that is, they are gatherings of other things. 

I think we can translate Heidegger’s fourfold into contemporary terms: networks. 

Networks consist of things of all kinds, as we know from Actor-Network-Theory: 

people and ideas, immaterial and material things, technologies and techniques, models 

and theories, and so on. All things constituting nodes in networks consist of different 

things in their turn (machines made of machines). 11 If any-thing generally builds 

networks, we have to clarify the specialty of informational things: do they build 

networks that are different from the ones built by a tree, or a jug for example? We 

will come back to that question later. Before doing so, however, I want to link back 

what was said about things to Benjamins essay on the quality of a work. 

2.2. Back to Benjamin 

We said things build networks, they gather different entities. We can couple 

this perspective to Benjamin’s insight that there is ‘absolutely no use for such rigid 

isolated things as: work, novel, book.’ One ‘has to insert them into the living social 

context.’ (Benjamin 2002: 69) Now, what is a ‘living social context’? Taking into 

account what we learned from Heidegger, we might say: it is a living social network. 

My impression is that it is here where Benjamin’s theory comes to its limits, and it is 

here where we can break the limits by coupling it to Heidegger’s notion of the thing. 

11 See for example: Latour 1999. 




For, in Benjamin, there seems to be an indecision when it comes to the question: is a 

work to articulate its own position in the relations of the production process, or the 

one of the author? Both perspectives are to be found in the text I’m referring to. We 

have to break with that indecision. 12 

Consequently, we stick to the assumption that one always has to view things 

in relation to their con-text, or, more precise, to their con-things. However, the 

network built by the things and their con-things is not only ’a living social’ one; it is 

natural, as well as social, as well as technological. In this hybrid network, the thing is 

an actor. Thus, a thing as an informational work, has to articulate its own position in 

the socio-technical network. It has to articulate what Heidegger called das Dinghafte 

des Dings (’the thing-ic of the thing‘). In terms of a perspective that focuses on 

processes (change of states) rather than on states as such, we could say, the Dinghafte 

des Dings is its modus operandi. The crucial question is therefore, what kind of logic 

informs the operations of a thing. It is this what defines its position in the socio- 

technical network and thereby shapes the network – this seems to be a reciprocal 

process between thing (actor) and network. Now, the question which position an actor 

holds in a network is generally a political one, being linked to questions of power 

relations. The way an actor acts depends on power-relations, while the actions at the 

same time inform these relations. What follows from that is that the way a thing 

operates, its modus operandi, defines its position, and depends on its position, in the 

network. 

And this is precisely what a work, as I understand Benjamin, has to articulate: 

its position in the relations of production. This would be a work of quality then: ’a 

work that shows the correct political tendency need show no other quality. You can 

12 Sometimes Benjamin talks about the ’attitude of the work’, sometimes about the ’position of the 

intellectual in the process of production’. 




also declare: a work that exhibit’s the correct tendency must of necessity have every 

other quality.’ (ibid.: 69) A thing therefore has to articulate its own position, its own 

modus operandi, the power relations it depends on and that it establishes, in short: its 

politics, that is. 

Benjamin was astonishingly prescient and already had a vague idea of socio- 

technical, rather than just social networks. When he analysed Brecht‘s epic theatre, he 

demanded theatrical techniques ‘to use and learn (…), to enter into debate with‘ the, 

at this time, new media of film and radio. (78) The modus operandi, or the 

‘procedure‘ of film and radio, was, according to him, the principle of interruption. 

Applying this principle, Brecht accomplished an Umfunktionierung (‘modification of 

the function/ing‘) of theatre. The question an author as a producer had to ask himself 

was thus: ‘Has he proposals for the Umfunktionierung of the novel, of the drama, the 

poem? The more completely he can orient his activity towards this task, the more 

correct will be the political tendency, and necessarily also the higher the technical 

quality of the work.‘ (ibid.: 81) In other words, the quality of the work depends on 

whether it succeeds to articulate its politics, which emerge from the interaction 

between itself and the network within which it holds a position. 

The concept of an informational thing has therefore to deal with the logic of 

the culture it is woven into. This logic, in contemporary cultures, is informational, as 

many authors have argued recently. We will thus turn now to the culture/politics of the 

information age. 




3. Access (Denied) Or the Cultural Logic of the Information Age 

‘Look for a third before 

reaching for the hatchet. 

Strike but listen first.’ 

Michel Serres 1980 

‘Information’ is perhaps the most redundant term in contemporary sociology, 

cultural studies and related disciplines. Sometimes, the concept of ’Information’ even 

seems to function as the ‘new decisive node’ in the network of theories, theorists, 

scientific apparatuses, and secular but nonetheless religious doctrines of salvation, 13 

replacing the idea of postmodernity. 14 

Whether or not ’Information’ is the new key-concept, it is out of question that 

there is a deep transformation of contemporary cultures, and information is at the 

heart of this transformation. Some theorists pointed to the importance of the 

informational model as dispositif, or as something limiting discourse(s). 15 For this or 

other reasons, in many accounts the point of departure or arrival is Shannon and 

Weaver’s well-known ‘Mathematical Theory of Communciation’. 16 For obvious 

13 Note, how many theorists in the last few decades started talking about the figure of the ‘angel‘ 

(Serres, Kittler, Krämer, Levy) - coincidence? 

14 See for example Lash 2002: 1, 2 

15 See, for example, Kittler (1999: 5), who starts from a Foucauldian archaeologist‘s standpoint, but 

criticizes him for having simply forgotten to analyse the technologies of achivization. However, Kittler 

still remains in the framework of discourse theory, even if he proposes to replace discourse analysis by 

a kind of media archaeology. It is questionable that we gain apt analytical tools from that move. Lash, 

for example, argues that ‘Power was once largely discursive; it is now largely informational.‘ (Lash 

2002: 3) Consequently, he refers to technology in terms of ‘technological forms of life‘ (ibid.: 13-25) It 

is absolutely insufficient, then, to talk about ICT, for example, in terms of archives - they‘re so much 

more than that! They are social actors (things). 

16 For Kittler (1996: 68), it is the point of arrival, for Terranova the point of departure (2005: 3). 




reasons, of course: this theory was a breakthrough in the definition of information. 

Still, the promise of precision as carried by mathematics, should not make us 

forget that Shannon and Weaver’s theory of communication was clearly developed for 

engineering purposes. Information, however, is in a certain sense irreducible, and this 

is precisely what cultural theorists constantly argue: information is not reducible to 

the realm of machinic communication. It is distributed within the socio-technical 

networks that surround us; this distribution is thus not limited to the technical aspect 

of the network: ’The constant bombardment by signals, the ads of consumer culture 

and the like does not constitute information. It is chaos, noise. It only becomes 

information when meaning is attached to it. (…) If there is no meaning, there is no 

information.’ (Lash 2002: 18) If I receive acoustic signals via my mobile, the 

attachment of meaning is not accomplished by the device; I receive a phone call, once 

I do attach meaning to the signals, thus converting them into information (this is the 

work of the information destination in Shannon and Weaver’s terms). For some 

theorists, however, this meaning-attaching activity becomes ever more secondary: 

’Within informational cultures, the struggle over meanings is subordinated to that 

over ’media effects’’. Then ’Information is what stands out from noise’ (Terranova 

2005: 10). But what stands out from noise is not defined in terms of meaning; 

information equals the relation of signal to noise. In contrast to Lash’s perspective, 

here, we seem to have information also if there is no meaning at all, but only a media 

effect: if the offered signals are merely perceived or get attention. 

But we can say there is a minimum agreement on that ’Meaning (…) changes. 

It becomes informational’ (Lash 2002: 18), and that ’cultural processes are taking on 

the attributes of information’; (Terranova 2004: 7) And this is precisely the reason for 

the drawing upon the ‘Mathematical Theory of Communication’ by so many theorists. 




However, ’We are no longer mostly dealing with information that is 

transmitted from a source to a receiver’. (ibid.: 7) instead, information ’propagates 

and by propagation it affects and modifies its milieu.’ (ibid.: 51) Consequently, we 

have to search for a less static concept of information processes than the engineering 

one of Shannon and Weaver. We need a broader perspective on information that 

allows us to avoid the shortcomings of the linear sender/receiver model and to 

integrate the non-linearity of contemporary info-cultural processes. Michel Serres, 

when dealing with the logic of the parasite, was obviously heavily inspired by 

Shannon and Weaver’s model, while re-formulating and further developing it (Serres 

1980). Let’s have a look at that. 

3.1. Information I: Basic Elements (Parasites, Hosts, Noise) 

For Serres, the logic of the parasite is something like an anthropological or 

cosmological constant. There is a parasitic chain, and the parasite is always the one 

who takes or gets the benefit by jumping to the end of it (the simple arrow: the chain 

only goes in one direction and there is no reciprocity, just one way; Serres here 

includes the idea of thermodynamic irreversibility). The parasite is fed by the host. 

Thus we have two elements. Serres replaces sender and receiver by parasite and host, 

while ‘flexibilizing’ their positions. The position of the parasite and of the host are 

only temporarily and provisory ascribable, any entity can generally jump to the end of 

the parasitic chain at any time. It is even not always clear who is host, and who 

parasite, but depends on the perspective or is not knowable, because entities 

constantly change their roles and this process hides the distribution of the roles (this is 




the l’hôte double situation and can be very dangerous, as Serres notes). 

So we have, like in Shannon and Weaver, two major elements, however 

conceptualised in a more flexible way: a host and a parasite. Now one of the major 

strengths of Serres’ model is that he goes on to include a ‘third man’: noise. Noise can 

occur in different forms: either human, or non-human, as interception or accident. It is 

a fundamental element of a communication system, not only something to be 

excluded, as the non-desirable noise in Shannon and Weaver. This is very important as 

we will see: The excluded ‘third man’, be it physical (white noise), biological (an 

individual interrupter), or social (a collective interrupter), ’gives rise to a new system, 

an order that is more complex than the simple chain. This parasite interrupts at first 

glance, consolidates when you look again’; ’This constant is a law.’ (Serres 1980: 14, 

12) We will come back to that. 

We have thus a model with three basic elements that can constantly change 

their positions; the latter are equivalent and each ‘is in line with the others, and each 

can play the third.’ (ibid.: 19) 

3.2. Information II: From Immateriality to Material-Semiotics 

Quite often, the informational worlds are said to be immaterial. Information 

then is conceptualised as the opposite of material, informational equals immaterial. 

This perspective, however, is not very fruitful, considering that everything, from a 

mental state, a thought, to the three-dimensional simulation of an airplane cockpit, 

these things could not exist, if the material they are ‘attached to’ wouldn’t exist. The 

manipulation of sequences of genes, as accomplished by genetic engineers, does not 




operate in a vacuum either. Hybrid disciplines, such as the whole field of what Donna 

Haraway called ’techno-science’, in this respect, is only a symptom, not so much for 

the de-materialization of the world, but its material ‘semioticization’: ’Once, 

technology was by definition ’material’ and science by definition ’semiotic’. Now 

science is ’semiotic-material’. (…) At the same time, however, technology, so to 

speak, semioticizes, so that it is no longer recognizable as a purely material realm.’ 

(Lash 2002: 190) 

Now this is only a symptom for a more fundamental transformation. Generally 

speaking, what is at stake, in Serres terms, is the triumph of communication over 

production (Serres 1980). The manipulation of the environment, or to have access to 

the means of environmental manipulation, nowadays locates one in a much more 

powerful position, than the accumulation of goods (Lash 2002). How is this possible? 

To understand this transformation, we should conceptualise information as the 

state/s of a given material. For example, a pair of Nike-sneakers, is usually and 

generally not characterised by such a wide range of possible states: if the Nike-sign is 

fixed on the shoes, it is a Nike-sneaker. If not, it’s not. Of course, the shoes could be 

wet, dirty, or somebody could have unfixed the sign. But firstly, we are speaking 

generally, and secondly, it is not that important whether they are wet or not in terms of 

the logic of the information age. For, the crucial information here is not wet/dry, but 

the brand (Lash 2002: 23). In terms of the brand, sneakers can possibly have two 

states: Nike/non-Nike. This is one bit of information (Shannon and Weaver 1964: 9). 17 

The decisive point here is consequently not only the state/s of a material, but their 

definition: wet/dry is not defined, but nike/non-nike is! Information then is the 

17 Sneakers are, of course analogeous, computers digital. The sneaker example might therefore be a bit 

‘impure‘. But it points precisely to what I want to emphasize: sneakers are analogeous, but digital 

devices, although operating basically with two possible states (1/0), can process everything expressable 

in sequences of 1‘s and 0‘s (that’s why it is called the Universal Machine). 




definition of the correspondence of material states and their decoded semiotic 

sequence (after the transmission of this information, one can attach a whole range of 

different meanings to it, while the contingency of the latter in the case of a global 

player like Nike is attempted to be reduced through the bombardment advertisement 

clips). 

Anyway, shoes as such are not an example for the informational logic of 

contemporary culture. Brands are. With brands, shoes are not anymore like 

Heidegger’s Zeug, the Schuhzeug he describes in Der Ursprung des Kunstwerks. They 

are reproducible, which is to say, they do not only lose their Aura (Benjamin); in a 

certain sense they are not even really produced: ‘Real production is undoubtedly rare 

(…) is unexpected and improbable; it overflows with information and is always 

immediately parasited.’ (Serres 1980: 4) ‘Real production’, for Serres, is only the 

production of something ’really new’, and overflows with information: it is not 

redundant. Nike-sneakers are mass products, not real products, and their informational 

value is, while being crucial (most often, somebody chooses a certain pair of sneakers 

for semiotic reasons, not for material ones), as we have seen, very poor. So you have 

to accumulate pairs of sneakers to increase the informational value. 

What has this to do with, say ICT, usually being considered the driving force 

of the information age? Pretty much. Because, having figured out the informational 

aspect of something ‘strictly material’ as a pair of sneakers, we can easily see what the 

crucial point of ICT is. ICT are material things, of course. You can touch them, 

destroy them, plug them in or out. The decisive point, however, is that they are things 

that have the capacity to change their states seemingly endlessly. They can have any 

state, as long as this state is definable. Out of the operational logic of two possible 

states emerges a Universal Machine that, while not being able to simulate the world, 18 

18 Goldin / Keil / Wegner 2001: 14, 15 




can make us experience an overwhelming, seemingly absolute polymorphism. That’s 

what gives this kind of life to them: with ICT, we start to produce more and more 

material things that are able to take on ever more different defined states. Since these 

things can be connected and differences can be transmitted, we have even more 

possible states. Thus, accumulation is replaced by circulation. Differences start to 

propagate. This leads to increased complexity and the emergence of self-organisation. 

The ’network of networks’, the Internet, makes theorists rightly speak of a living 

entity when they refer to it. The whole world seems to become a potential resonance 

space. 

What follows from that? 

3.3. Information III: The Logic of Exclusion 

For Serres, this results in something, one might call the ‘cybernetic separation‘ 

- the separation of material force and semiotic control. Therefore, his ‘parasite invents 

something new’; ’For he pays in information, in energy on the microscopic level. He 

offers words for the force - yes, his voice, air, for a solid substance. Worse yet, he 

takes control and governs.’ (ibid.: 35, 36) This fundamentally changes the ’nature’ of 

power, because now, what matters is not to own many things, but to control many 

changes in the state/s of matter. Consequently, defending a power-position now means 

to exclude others from this control: ’In the end, power is nothing else. (…) It is the 

relation and literally the balance beam between the loci in which information is 

stocked and those from which it is withdrawn.’ (ibid.: 37) The division of work means 

precisely this: one giving directions, while the other gives her/his force. In order to 




maintain this relation, the other must not have the opportunity to have access to 

information. The other must be excluded from the flows of information. 

This is the first, and maybe most obvious form of exclusion, that occurs in 

relation to information: exclusion from the flows of information. Please note that what 

is excluded here is noise, the third man, in one or the other form: ’To hold a dialogue 

is to suppose a third man and to seek to exclude him.’ (Serres 1982, cited in Terranova 

2005) Whether white noise, or the collective human murmuring in the background, 

the principle is the same: exclusion of the Other, of that which prevents sender and 

receiver from having contact. 

But, to complicate matters, there is seemingly another form of exclusion: 

‘The transmission of information implies the communication and exclusion of 

probable alternatives.’ (Terranova 2005: 22) This form of exclusion refers to the 

reduction of possible choices in the communication situation. Informational exclusion 

here means to downsize the number of alternatives, to reduce possibilities. In the Age 

of Information, Terranova notes, this situation leads to a permanent political struggle 

about ‘the organized space of the real and the possible.’ The informational definition 

of what is real, and what is possible, tends to exclude alternatives, while paradoxically 

opening up a new space of the virtual, the extremely improbable but nevertheless 

possible: ’It is because communication, as a political technique, attempts to enclose an 

informational milieu around the informational couple ’actual/probable’ that it also 

opens up another space - that of the fluctuations that produce the unpredictable, of the 

inventions that break the space of possibility, of the choices that are no choices at all 

but a kind of quantum jump onto another plane.’ (ibid.: 26) 

As we can see, this form of exclusion, formulated in terms of politics, is 

actually not really different from the one Serres elaborated. The ‘quantum jump onto 




another plane’ is nothing else, but the break-down of a system, bringing new 

situations of choice. The virtual, in this sense, is what is currently not only not real, 

but also seemingly not possible. In order to ascribe a certain possibility to it, the 

system needs to change. 

Thus exclusion, the exclusion of the possible and of the virtual (the possibly 

possible), is part of the informational logic. 

And there is no way to flee from that logic. The regime of information does 

not have any blind spots and constantly increases complexity. (Serres 1980: 37, 38) 

The shape of formations within this informational plane is the one of networks: ’This 

cybernetics gets more and more complicated, makes a chain, then a network.’ (ibid.: 

37) 

This is the logic of information. 

4. Networks: The Politics of Information 

‘The one who plays the position will always 

beat the one who plays the content.’ 

Michel Serres 1980 

In spite of taking a different path to the elaboration of the logic of information 

than the ‘Shannon-and-Weaverian’ one followed by Terranova, we arrive in a certain 

sense at the same result, which can be summarized as follows: ‘Information is neither 

simply a physical domain nor a social construction, nor the content of a 

communication act, nor an immaterial entity set to take over the real, but a specific 




reorientation of forms of power and modes of resistance.’ (Terranova 2005: 37) In 

other words, in terms of the politics of information, what is crucial is the underlying 

logic of the modus operandi of informational power. This logic shifts from 

exploitation, modus operandi of power in manufacturing capitalism, to exclusion in 

the Age of Information capitalism. (Lash 2002: 4, 9) Exclusion can take on many 

different forms and ranges from the self-exclusion of a global elite from national 

flows, to the involuntary exclusion of an underclass that is irrelevant to the global 

production of information flows. (ibid.: 5) There is a manifold of examples for these 

excluding processes: Copyright, Patents, and Trademarks (ibid.: 193-201), exclusion 

from work (Rifkin 1995: XVII),from payment for work (Terranova 2005: 73 -97), 

from knowledge and ideas, services and social benefits, spaces and publics (Rifkin 

2001), and things (technologies), such as ICT (Norris 2001; Warschauer 2003) and 

networks (Castells 2001: 247- 274). All of these refer to the question of access to 

flows of information. 19 

The reason for this is that while things in general create living networks (they 

gather entities) informational things create networks that are so much alive, that are so 

complex and self-organised, that lack central control, change so fast and are so 

19 This is not to say there’s no ownership and no exploitation anymore. 

Rifkin 2001 argues that we live in the Age of Access, since access becomes more important 

than ownership. Still one needs to own distribution channels and the like. However, if one owns these 

channels, one has access to them in the sense that one is able to control the flows of information that 

these channels carry. In this respect, ownership can be analysed in terms of access. In contrast, access 

to knowledge cannot analysed in terms of ownership, which is why the concept of ‘access‘ seems to be 

better suited to provide analytical plausibility for the description of informational cultures. Ownership 

does still exist, but becomes a special form of access. 

The situation is similar when it comes to the question of exploitation. It still exists, of course. 

The exploitation of workers in factories in China or South-America, as well as the exploitation of the 

‘Netslaves‘ (Terranova 2005: 73) in the West are all taking place within networks. They are included. 

The opportunity to exploit them, however, only arises from the permanent possibility to exclude them. 

Here, capital and information ‘get married‘, resulting in the logic of temporary inclusion/exclusion. 

The threat of being excluded is the precondition for the exploitation of workers. In addition, in the case 

of the netslaves, they still remain excluded - free labour is exclusion from the benefits of labour - while 

being at the same included (into the production process). Any entity is at the same time excluded 

from/included into multiple networks (Thacker 2004)! That is, also here, the concept of ‘access‘ 

provides an analytical tool to grasp these processes, and even more so, if we take into account that we 

can re-formulate the power operating within a network like the cyberspace, for example, in terms of 

exclusion/inclusion or ‘access‘ (Jordan 1999). 




polymorphous that one almost even cannot speak anymore of networks, but of 

swarms (Thacker 2004). I will stick here to the metaphor of the living network, but it 

is has to be said that the informationally produced ones differ qualitatively from the 

ones produced by things such as jugs etc. I cannot define this different quality here, 

but I think the exponential increase of defined state/s of matter changes the quality of 

the networks built by things. 

We are thus included into/excluded from multiple living networks, sometimes 

voluntarily, sometimes not, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. As Thacker 

notes, networks are highly ambivalent phenomenon, and the network as such, 

although being overloaded with the promise of automatic democratisation, cannot be 

considered a liberating entity. 20 However, they transform the space for possible 

resistance. 

This leads us to a crucial point: the question of the inside/outside. As is well 

known, some theorists claimed that there is no outside anymore - no outside to the 

Empire (Hardt and Negri 2000). Hardt and Negri highlight the inclusive logic of what 

they call ‘network power’: ‘Network power must be distinguished from other purely 

expansionist and imperialist forms of expansion. The fundamental difference is that 

the expansiveness of the immanent concept of sovereignty is inclusive, not exclusive. 

In other words, when it expands, this new sovereignty does not annex or destroy the 

powers it faces but on the contrary opens itself to them, including them in the 

network.’ (Hardt and Negri 2000: 166; cited in Terranova 2005) 

What do we make of that, considering the claim that informational power 

follows the logic of inclusion/exclusion? 

First, I do agree on that in the Age of Information an informational regime 

20 See Thacker 2004 for the discussion of the idea of the network, the swarm, and the multitude in 

physics/mathematics, biology, and sociologist and political thought. 




emerges that truly has no outside anymore. This is why Lash argues that there is no 

transcendental space anymore, from which to criticize the informational order: 

critique must happen within the flows of information. (Lash 2002: 8-11) The realm of 

information is a global system. This is not to say that information is everywhere, but 

that the informational logic operates globally: one cannot flee from it. 

Networks, in contrast, are local. They are what the global informational 

regime produces: a manifold of local networks, sometimes more, sometimes less 

extensive. These networks can be interconnected and their boundaries are blurred. But 

still, there is no one global network – there are many and they still have an outside. 

How would it be possible to explain a phenomenon like the so-called Digital Divide 

otherwise? The Digital Divide is nothing but the flipside of the informational 

production of (socio-technical) networks: exclusion is the complement of the 

inclusion processes occurring in relation to the internet. As Castells points out, one 

can prefer not to be included in the informational networks such as the internet. 

However: ’Well, if this is your position, I have bad news for you. If you do not care 

about the networks, the networks will care about you, anyway. For as long as you 

want to live in society, at this time and in this place, you will have to deal with the 

network society.’ (Castells 2001: 282) This is precisely the situation: one can stay out 

of the networks, but one cannot stay out of the network society - in other words, out of 

the global informational regime. 21 

Thus, I think we must distinguish the emergence of a global informational 

plane of immanence from the networks that are produced within that plane. Observing 

from this standpoint, we can explain both, the loss of a transcendental space from 

which to formulate a critique and the occurrence of in/excluding networks. 

21 Melucci summarizes this apparent paradox: ‘Even marginality or exclusion are increasingly defined 

in terms internal to the systems, the ‘without‘ is ‘within‘ (...) even the excluded is already 

incorporated.‘ (1996: 180, 181) 




Informational power then operates on two levels, producing 

- an all-encompassing global regime that has no outside 

-and a logic of access to and in/exclusion into/from networks. 

This is, as I think, a fruitful perspective, since it easily linkable to notions of 

‘Living Networks‘ (Thacker 2004), ‘Circulation’ (Lash 2002), or ’Viral Times’ 

(Jordan and Taylor 2005). All these terms refer to a situation that is characterised by 

an increase of possibilities to manipulate states of material things in order to trigger 

semiotic processes - the increasing production and propagation of information. I said 

earlier that the whole world seems to become a potential resonating space. The 

question is now, how an informational thing, as a work in Benjamin’s sense, should 

articulate its position in this kind of world? 

5. Conclusion: 

Making the Place of Resistance Visible, Or The In/Exclusion Machine 

In the work of some of the theorists we already drew on, we find time and 

again a certain hope, as they searched for a potential or a place, where resistance 

could emerge. This place is the one, or more precise, these places are those of the 

Multitude. (Hardt and Negri 2000; Thacker 2004; Terranova 2004) For the Multitude 

is a quite heterogeneous phenomenon, it is ‘a multiplicity, a plane of singularities, an 

open set of relations, which is not homogeneous or identical with itself and bears an 




indistinct, inclusive relation to those outside of it’. (Hardt and Negri 2000: 106; cited 

from Terranova 2005) It is thus not in the working class or in a homogeneous 

Proletariat, that we can find the potential for resistance. If the Multitude is the 

resistance to the global informational regime, it is the noise in the system called 

Empire. Now there is noise in any system, as Serres argued. Sometimes there is the 

attempt to exclude it, but the noise comes always back, sometimes breaking down the 

system, leading to the establishment of a new system: the system ’works because it 

does not work. (…) In the beginning was the noise.’ (Serres 1980: 13) Recall, that 

noise, for Serres, was ‘the excluded third’, possibly non-human, or human. 22 

What follows from this somewhat aporetic, but also teleological perspective, is 

that resistance is a necessary element of a system, driving constantly its evolution by 

interfering. The perspective is aporetic insofar as there is always and necessarily an 

insolvable tension within a system between affirming and resisting forces. It is, on the 

other hand, teleological, since it becomes the cosmological telos of resistance to bring 

change (if we do not assume that the breaking down and rebuilding of systems leads 

to something like a linear progressive evolution). 

I leave it to the reader to judge, whether this perspective maybe tends to 

consider the world a place where the good (resistance bringing change, driving 

evolution) eternally fights against the bad (the imperial regime, then the new regime 

of Empire, trying to prevent change and freeze the status quo). 23 There is no space 

22 ‘The information flow establishes a contact between sender and receiver by excluding all 

interference, that is, by holding off noise. (…) Opposition to the agreement between sender and 

receiver cannot be subjective, but only objective and external, appearing only in the non-human form 

of meaningless noise (or the form of an enemy intent on disrupting the communication between two 

partners in agreement). (Terranova 2005: 15) I don‘t know why Terranova downplays the ‘form of an 

enemy intent‘, which to to me, seems to be human. Anyway, what we learn from that, is that noise is 

not necessarily non-human and technological. 

23 Melucci’s view goes pretty much in this direction; he says: ‘Decision-making as a regulated and 

ordered mechanism is an elemental necessity of any political organization in performing a reduction of 

complexity without which contemporary systems cannot do, but for the very same reason it takes the 

shape of a selective process which excludes and suppresses some of the dynamic components of the 

issue. What has been excluded by the selection mechanisms of the political system remains nonetheless 

stubbornly alive in the society‘ (Melucci 1996: 177, my highlighting). The excluded noise remains part 




here to discuss a possible way out of this theoretical problem, but still I think it is 

worth to stick to this perspective, since it provides an important insight for the 

concept of an informational thing. For if this approach was correct, the task of an 

informational thing could be to articulate the position(s) of the emergence of the 

Multitude, the places where resistance can possibly emerge. These places are the 

places of the production of inequality, suppression, exploitation. As we have seen, in 

the Information Age, we find these where exclusion/inclusion takes place. An 

informational thing is an in/exclusion machine and this is what defines its position. 24 

The question of access in the sense formulated above becomes the sight of political 

struggle. 25 

If a thing as work generally articulates the way it gathers entities, then, in the 

case of informational things, however, it might also articulate its flipside: the 

exclusion from the gatherings. Thus, it articulates its own logic; thereby it articulates 

of the system and sooner or later it might break it down. The situation, defined by the constraints of the 

‘selectable‘ – the virtual strikes back, being followed by new im/possibilities. As far as Melucci is 

concerned, the teleological perspective including forces and resisting forces, seems to be acceptable. 

24 Pálsson (2005) gives a striking anthropological account of what he calls a ‘digital thing‘ and its logic 

of an in/exclusion machine. He tells the story of a software company and a biotech firm developing the 

‘digital Book of Icelanders that records approximately 700,000 people, the majority of the total number 

of people living in Iceland‘. (Pálsson 2005: 254). This ‘book‘ was also published online. ‘It enables 

Icelanders to trace their family histories and to explore their genealogical connection to almost any 

other Icelander living or dead.‘ (ibid.: 254, 255) So People started to trace their ‘roots‘, checking their 

‘genealogical nearness‘ at drinking parties. However, in some cases, certain people were not ‘part of 

the flows of information‘ (I apologise for the extensive quote, but it‘s necessary): ‘A few comments 

underline serious concerns about belonging and exclusion from the community of Icelanders. Some 

people who, due to some error or lack of information, were not “connected“ to their parents in the 

database, have expressed their existential anxiety, as if the lack of digital connection forced them into 

exile or non-existence: “I registered for the Book of Icelanders and according to the records I have no 

parents! Am I a clone? […] it would be good if you could fix the error so that I can convince myself 

that I actually do exist.“ Judging from such comments, being included and connected to the database is 

equivalent to the declaration of citizenship.‘ (ibid.: 256) I think this ethnographic example speaks 

volumes, since it brings together different informational fields, such as digital computers, genetics, and 

the internet, forming a ‘purely‘ informational thing. It is only about information and signs. In the realm 

of meaning, this results in the production of a desire to be connected in order to have a meaningful 

existence. On the flipside of this connectedness is exclusion; the latter is predominantly symbolic or 

semiotic, and material only insofar the symbolic exclusion couldn‘t have happened without the material 

‘base‘ of the informational thing that produces the different states in the material, which are then 

translated into signs, symbols, and meaning. 

25 Struggle for access to technology see Norris 2001; Warschauer 2004; for ‘empirical‘ examples of 

struggle around copyright issues and ‘alternative news‘, see Gurak and Logie 2003; Kidd 2003. For 

other forms of cyber protest or electronic resistance see Lebert 2003, Vegh 2003. 




its position. Articulating its position, it articulates its politics. 

Finally, ‘Articulating ist politics’ is not about resisting, but showing the place 

of resistance. An informational thing is analytical, it is not a form of ‘Cyberactivism’ 

(McCaughey and Ayers 2003), ‘Electronic Civil Disobedience’ (Critical Art Ensemble 

2001), or ‘Hacktivism’ (Jordan and Taylor 2005). It is not about the ‘critical gesture’, 

Domginguez propagates (Dominguez 2002), for this gesture would be, in Benjamin’s 

terms, to articulate an attitude towards the relations of production. In other words, this 

would be about political action, not about showing ’the correct political tendency’. 

(Benjamin 2002: 69) Political action is necessary, it is, however, not the task of a 

work in the form of an informational thing. 

Now this may sound as if the informational thing was a work of art, making 

something visible. And, indeed, we said that an informational thing needs to be 

conceptual and reflexive in order to articulate its position in the relations of 

production, just like a work of contemporary art is reflexive. 26 However, a work of art 

would have to refer to the system of art in the Age of Information. An informational 

thing does not necessarily have to refer to art - it refers to the global informational 

system. It has, as we have seen, to articulate its self-critique from within, illustrating 

its position, because its position is where the logic of its power technique is applied, 

and thus, where resistance can occur in order to bring change to system. ‘In other 

words, objects - taken as so many issues - bind all of us in ways that map out a public 

space profoundly different from what is usually recognized under the label of “the 

political”. It is this space, this hidden geography’ (Latour 2005: 15), that things exist 

in, as well as mortals etc. It is, however, not sufficient to map out how the things 

26 ‘Conceptual art is reflexive. It is critical. It is a reflexive critique of its own conditions of existence.‘ 

(Lash 2002: 220) Duchamp‘s ready-made ‘The Fountain‘ was such a self-critical thing. It articulated, 

however, the position of the artwork in the system of art. An informational thing, in contrast, articulates 

its position in the plane of information. 




existing in this cosmological space gather the fourfold. Latour asks, how things, 

understood as assemblies ’manage to bring in the relevant parties?’ (ibid.: 34) What 

the informational thing asks is: ‘Do things manage at all to bring in the relevant 

parties? Do they gather?’ These questions are on the flipside of the question of the 

gathering quality of things. 27 They must, however be asked. 

I repeat that 

‘The correct political tendency of a work includes its informational quality because it 

includes its informational tendency.’ 

One of the qualities of information is to produce networks, and it is an 

informational tendency to in/exclude people into/from these networks. An 

informational work has consequently to articulate the un-gathering of the fourfold by 

things, as well as its gathering. 

27 I am seriously running out of space, so I just want to mention in this footnote, that Latour has been 

criticized before for his underplaying of the flipside of the gathering of things (I apologise for the 

length of the quote): ‘in fact Latour and Callon‘s work has opened up a whole new way of analysing 

technology. However, the problem remains with respect to humans and the question of power that such 

mixes may seem to sidestep traditional questions of distribution and access (…) heuristic flattening 

does not mean the same thing as empirical ignoring of differences in access or experience. Rather, it is 

a way of breaking down reified boundaries that prevent us from seeing the ways in which humans and 

machines are intermingled. However, one of the features of the intermingling that occurs maybe that of 

exclusion‘. (Leigh Star 1991: 42, 43) 


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