A consensual hallucination no more? The Internet as simulation machine

Abstract

In this article, we investigate the macro-role being played – and played out – by digital, social and ‘new’ media today. We suggest that these media, facilitated by the Internet, can together be understood as a vast simulation machine that mediates and modulates everyday life to refashion what was once the ‘real world’ in its own image. Life in the ‘meatspace’ (the physical world) is most valuable, we suggest, not because it involves tweets, opinions or our desires but because these data produce useful and computable digital resources for finance, business and government. Today’s Big Data mining and predictive analytics allow for digital priorities to become non-digital realities, resulting – we suggest – in the algorithmically generated landscapes of today (and tomorrow). The imperatives driving today’s Internet and mobile technology have more to do with making the world computationally comprehensible than with the facilitation of free expression, open markets or open communication. We discuss the conditions created by these digital simulation machines as well as emerging opportunities for subversion and resistance.