Codes of life: identification codes and the machine-readable\ud world

摘要

In this paper we present a detailed examination of identification codes, their embeddedness in\udeveryday life, and how recent trends are qualitatively altering their nature and power. Developing\uda Foucaultian analysis we argue that identification codes are key components of governmentality and\udcapitalism. They provide a means of representing, collating, sorting, categorising, matching, profiling,\udregulating, of generating information, knowledge, and control through processes of abstraction, compu-\udtation, modeling, and classification. Identification codes now provide a means of uniquely addressing all\udthe entities and processes that make up everyday life - people, material objects, information, transactions,\udand territories. Moreover, they provide a means of linking these entities and processes together in\udcomplex ways to form dense rhizomic assemblages of power/knowledge. At present, however, the\udinformation that identification codes provide access to are, at best, oligopticon in nature - that is, they\udafford only partial and selective views. In the latter part of the paper we outline four trends - wide-scale\udtrawling for data, increased granularity, forever storage, and enhanced processing and analysis - that\udseek to convert these partial oligopticons into more panoptic arrangements. In turn, we contend\udthat these trends are part of a larger metatrend --the creation of a machine-readable world in which\udidentification codes can be systematically and automatically 'read' and acted on by software inde-\udpendent of human control. This metatrend is supported by interlocking discourses such as safety,\udsecurity, efficiency, antifraud, citizenship and consumer empowerment, productivity, reliability, flexi-\udbility, economic rationality, and competitive advantage to construct powerful, supportive discursive\udregimes.