The Technical of Revision and Virtual Maps

Abstract

Chapter 1 describes the development of social media within a broader context of digital capitalism. The chapter analyses a ‘double privatisation’ aiming first to accumulate technological knowledge in private corporations and second to employ the knowledge to commodify the user base. Such unprecedented conditions set the stage for the emergence of virtual maps that represent the technological empowerment of revisionist actors. Chapter 2 introduces the theoretical background inspiring the notion of preceding maps and their non-anthropic foundations. The chapter untangles machine learning, which drives the Information Age’s latest stage, from ill-formed musings regarding Artificial Intelligence. Chapter 3 provides a link to Security Studies discussion dealing with the risks and threats stemming from technology. Here, the book argues that when seeking to understand technology, the discipline has a history of treating the issue in a rather futurological manner, more often than not converging into alarmism and eschatological imaginaries. Chapter 4 provides an empirical analysis of the Islamic State’s visual preceding map. From the conceptual and methodological viewpoint, the chapter shows how to operationalise complexity by applying a machine learning method (a probabilistic topic model). Furthermore, analysing the unprecedented case of the Islamic State, it provides an empirical guideline for identifying preceding maps in the wild. Chapter 5 then proceeds to another revisionist case comprising the Czech language version of Sputnik International, the news outlet. By applying the same method as in the Islamic State case, it identifies a further type of virtual map: a blind map, and shows how it differs from preceding maps. The distinction is empirically realised by utilising the complexity-based guideline introduced in the previous chapter. The concluding chapter returns to the notion of ‘Technology of Revision’ and invokes the Heideggerian notion which considers technology a catalyst of the demise of the Western centric world order. Finally, a relevance of Heidegger’s ‘technology as final metaphysics’ is discussed, showing that the notion requires an empirical grounding otherwise it invites fallacious visions addressed in Chapter 3.