Course MCM 0230: Digital Media

If hospitals, prisons, corporations, and schools concretize the ways in which societies’ control individual existence (through control of reform, production, health, etc), digital media plays an interesting role in defining what exactly we are controlled by when engaged with by individuals. The internet might be far too fast to examine in this particular example, but the world of World of Warcraft might suffice. Thinking of the ways in which Foucault’s notion of biopower sublimate in the World of Warcraft, we can see a similar connection to Deleuze. The power of institutions in societies of control is gaseous, it spreads out beyond the institution itself and permeates. Deleuze’s text makes me think about the ways in which his notions of control conflate and intersect with digital media, potentially creating a problem that exists in both the digital and non-digital world. In particular, I’m thinking on online-for profit colleges, or modes of production that are entirely digital like the World of Warcraft gold farmers.