ILPC 2027

In the last decade industrial production in highly technologized regions underwent big changes due to the rising importance of networked digital technologies. This process can be described as a mediatisation of industry. My paper will focus on the introduction of digital apparatuses of process control as an important part of this transformation. The hypothesis is that along with these apparatuses goes a revitalization of a cybernetic mode of control. This is based on massive data collection which is used for automatic feedbacks, that in turn aims to create self-optimizing systems. Therefore, I call these technologies apparatuses of cybernetic control (ACC). This paper theoretically and empirically follows the question of how ACC affect power relations between management and workers within industrial organizations.

While on the one hand the introduction of ACC can easily be understood as a mediatisation of production, on the other hand, they present themselves as de-mediatisation on a phenomenological level: They aim for a mode of feedback that is im-mediate on a temporal as well as on a spatial level. I refer to this paradox as de-mediatization through mediatization. This not only describes the presence of certain technologies, but a shift in power relations. If in Roman law the term mediatisation described the loss of immediacy between a subject and a higher authority, de-mediatisation through feedback-technologies is the reverse: It aims to create an immediate coupling of the behaviour of a subject to the aims of control, which is exactly what classical first-order cybernetics was about.

To elaborate this, I argue for a synthesis of critical media and information studies and labour process analysis. This synthesis is fruitful because on the one hand, ACC are essentially media. Not only in the sense that they mediate between management and workers, but also in the sense that they fulfil very similar functions in the process of capital accumulation as classical digital media do. On the other hand, ACC are always part of an organisational setting that, other than classical media, mainly has the purpose of control.

The presentation will start with some conceptual considerations on the term of the apparatus, by drawing on Michael Burawoys´ concept of the "apparatuses of production". Burawoys concept will be put into relation with concepts of media apparatuses to arrive to an appropriate understanding of the technological as well as the organizational elements of ACC. This synthesis will be used to analyse exemplary ACC on the micro level of individual operations. The technological element will be elaborated by a short summary of the principles of cybernetic control. The organizational element will be elaborated with empirical results of a series of interviews with managers and workers of the mediatized industry in Germany. I will end by summing up cybernetic power relations as de-mediatisation through mediatisation. The research is part of my ongoing PhD-project.