Zuckerberg’s cave: smartness and discipline in digital modernity

Dariusz Brzezinsky, Kamil Filipek, Kuba Piwowar & Malgorzata Winiarska-Brodowska (eds.), Algorithms, Artificial Intelligence and Beyond: Theorizing Society and Culture of the 21st Century, 72-88

2024

Themes: Artificial Intelligence (AI), Digital modernity

Category: Book chapter, Peer reviewed

This chapter discusses some of the narratives or imaginaries that help structure our experience of, and the development of, the technological suite that mediates the affordances of social life in wealthy Western societies (and increasingly in less wealthy ones, and elsewhere than the West) in the 2020s. It argues that, far from society having transcended modernity to become postmodern, modernity has evolved, from the ‘high’ or ‘reflexive’ modernity of the late 20th century to a characteristic digital modernity. The chapter draws out some of its consequences, sketching its four institutional dimensions. Its disciplinary stance towards individuals gives rise to a myth which is termed Zuckerberg’s Cave, which is compared to the pre-modern cave of Plato, as well as analogous myths of modernity. The realistic prospects of digital modernity are assessed, setting out both its practical risks and its attractions to citizens and policymakers alike.

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