This essay had a tremendous impact on me when I first read it. Deleuze died in 1995, and so didn't really get to see the rise of the web, but I've always wondered what he'd write about it...
This is fantastic. I must quote from the conclusion:<p>"Can we already grasp the rough outlines of these coming forms, capable of threatening the joys of marketing? Many young people strangely boast of being 'motivated'; they re-request apprenticeships and permanent training. It's up to them to discover what they're being made to serve…"
edit: I was wrong, see below.<p>- - - -<p>I have since misplaced it, but there's a book on the history of the computer wherein a conversation with Babbage was quoted. He was asked something like, "So the engine is the perfection of the executive?", and he agreed.
That phrase, "the perfection of the executive", has stayed with me.<p>The "executive" in this sense means the "part of government that enforces law, and has responsibility for the governance of a state." ~<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_(government)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_(government)</a>
In other words <i>control</i>. Babbage and his interlocutor saw the computer as the perfection of control in the political sense, and I think we're seeing that unfold today before our eyes.