Elena Esposito

The structures of uncertainty: performativity and unpredictability in economic operations

Abstract The paper reflects on the presuppositions and consequences of the concept of performativity (understood as the involvement of the observer in the objects and projects he/she describes). The paper proposes a broader notion of performativity, one that not only concerns theory but is also extended to the entire economy, which observes itself in all of its operations. This conception has the advantage of being connected with critical approaches inside economics, which highlight the central role of uncertainty and surprise. It can explain how and why performativity turns into counter-performativity and how financial operators exploit uncertainty when orienting their behaviour, expecting and using the unpredictability of the future.

Der Computer als Medium und Maschine

Zusammenfassung Auf dem Hintergrund der Forschung über die Art und Weise, wie Kommunikationstechnologien auf Formen der Kommunikation einwirken, werden die Merkmale der Einführung der informatischen Technologie untersucht, in der eine Maschine benutzt wird, um Kommunikation zu verbreiten und zu verarbeiten. Die grundlegende Frage ist, wie eine Kommunikation behandelt werden kann, die immer abstrakter gegenüber dem außer-kommunikativen Kontext und immer unabhängiger vom Mitteilungsereignis ist: der Sinn der Kommunikation hängt immer weniger von der Absicht des Mitteilenden ab. Die Hypothese wird diskutiert, daß in dem individuellen Gebrauch des Computers die Maschine nicht als Kommunikationspartner betrachtet werden muß, sondern dazu dient, eine virtuelle Kontingenz als Unterstützung in der Verarbeitung der Informationen zu generieren. Diese virtuelle Kontingenz kann auch im kommunikativen Gebrauch gefunden werden: der Gebrauch der Maschine dient dazu, Informationen zu verarbeiten, die von der Tatsache, daß eine Mitteilung stattgefunden hat, aber immer weniger vom Sinn der Mitteilung selbst abhängig sind.

The Future of Futures

This book reconstructs the dynamics of economics, beginning explicitly with the role and the relevance of time: money uses the future in order to generate present wealth. Financial markets sell and buy risk, thereby binding the future. Elena Esposito explains that complex risk management techniques of structured finance produce new and uncontrolled risks because they use a simplified idea of the future, failing to account for how the future reacts to attempts at controlling it. During the recent financial crisis, the future had already been used (through securitizations, derivatives and other tools) to the extent that we had many futures, but no open future available.

Originality through Imitation: The Rationality of Fashion

Fashion, apparently irrational and whimsical, presents on the contrary a non-random way of managing the limits of rationality in the relations between individuals. Fashion is an inherently paradoxical phenomenon, as was observed at the beginning of its diffusion in the 17th century, a time that discovered, like the recent theory of organization, the necessity and the strategic role of disorder. Fashion relies on the stability of transition (everything changes, and this is the only thing we can rely on) and on the conformity with deviance (everyone wants to be original, and in this desire is like everyone else). Fashion works combining these paradoxes and neutralizing them in the form of banality. What can the theory of organization learn from the trivial mystery of fashion, that prevails on everyone just because nobody takes it seriously?

The Arts of Contingency

If we consider the present situation of the arts of transmission in the broad sense of the phrase as Francis Bacon used it—namely, as the whole of the procedures that circulate, record, and organize knowledge—wehave to admit to quite a discouraging condition for theoretical reflection.While there exist many techniques in the sense of technologies, machineries, and instruments, the ancient sense of art, as used by Bacon, has been lost. In this sense, art—the art of carpentry, for instance, or the art of navigation or persuasion—is something governed by rules that can be taught. These rules indicate what to do, how to do it, and for what purpose. On a conceptual level, there does not presently seem to be much to teach, in spite of incessant reflection on media and of the multiplication of theories about media. Technological development andmedia practice proceed quickly but also proceed independently of theoretical reflection. Theory seems rather to be concerned with integrating mostly uninterpreted new developments: chat rooms rather than virtual reality (which was much theorized but quickly faded from general interest), the internet explosion instead of interactive television (which failed because of a lack of interest rather than because of technological difficulties), very intelligent video games rather than (often quite stupid) artificial intelligence. We lack autonomous theoretical categories that can deal with these developments. Instead of surprising and informing the development of technology, theory seems to be continuously surprised by the evolution of technology. Media theory seems to be suffering from a kind of interpretive inadequacy. Inmedia analysis, for instance, theory tends topresuppose adubious

From self-reference to autology: how to operationalize a circular approach

One of the most innovative features of Niklas Luhmanns theory resides in its allegedly circular construction: it starts from the assumption that even a theory of society itself is but a part of the object (society) that it aims to explain. Hence the relevance and crucial position of the issue of self-description. Using observation theory and second-order cybernetics, the paper briefly examines the epistemological presuppositions that are the basis for this position. It then turns to one of the aspects of the theory that reveals most clearly the consequences of this circular approach: the study of communication as applied to the system of science.

Algorithmische Kontingenz. Der Umgang mit Unsicherheit im Web

Wie die Soziologie und andere Disziplinen inspirierend und facettenreich untersucht haben (siehe nur Luhmann 1992; Foucault 1966; Koselleck 1979), ist die moderne Gesellschaft geplagt und fasziniert von der Kontingenz – von der immer unbestimmter werdenden Offenheit des Moglichen, mit all ihren Moglichkeiten und Bedrohungen. Wie dieses Phanomen bewertet wird, ist bekanntlich immer noch sehr unterschiedlich. Die Risikodebatte verdeutlicht dies: Die Ausdehnung des Moglichen fuhrt dazu, dass aktiv Gelegenheiten geschaffen werden, die genutzt werden konnen, sie erzeugt aber auch die Gefahr vor Verletzungen, Enttauschungen und Schuldzuweisungen.

Economic Circularities and Second-Order Observation: The Reality of Ratings

Can observers observe the economy from outside? Recent developments in economic sociology tend to blur the classic distinction and combination of economy and society and to move to a condition in which the observer (each observer) is inside the society he describes. The behaviour of financial actors can be analysed combining two concepts with a long standing tradition and many implications: beauty contest and moral hazard; and can then be translated into the terms and tradition of observation theory. Keynes’ beauty contest can be interpreted as a systematic recognition of second-order observation: financial operators observe primarily other observers and what they observe. This observation produces particular circularities; first of all the insoluble problem of moral hazard, which reproduces in the field of finance Merton’s famous model of self-defeating/self-fulfilling prophecies.If finance is second-order observation however, its movements cannot be explained by reference to the world, but rather to observation and its structures: the reality reference of finance is increasingly provided by ratings, which offer information not on how the world is, but on what the others observe. The spread of ratings in recent decades and doubts about their reliability are related in the article to the generalized move by modern society to second-order observation, that produces specific problems and specific puzzles but also structures and constraints.

Ästhetik und Spiel

Die Medien, das wissen wir inzwischen, dienen nicht zuerst und auch nicht primar dazu, zu „vermitteln“, also Inhalte mit raumlich und zeitlich fernen Partnern gemeinsam zu haben, sondern vor allem dazu, unser Verhaltnis mit der Welt zu artikulieren und komplexer zu gestalten. Mit den Worten der Systemtheorie, auf die ich mich in diesem Beitrag beziehen werde, kann man sagen, dass die Medien vor allem dazu dienen, die Beziehung/ Unterscheidung von Fremdreferenz und Selbstreferenz zu bestimmen – d. h. unsere Fahigkeit, uns auf uns selbst zu beziehen, um uns auf anderes beziehen zu konnen. Die bekannteste Formel, um diesen Gebrauch der Medien auszudrucken, ist vielleicht immer noch McLuhans Vorstellung der Medien als „Ausdehnungen der Sinne“ (1964). Sie ist sicher verkurzt und zu einfach, verweist aber auf die Idee von Medien als Mittel, welche die Formen und Modalitaten der Beobachtung von sich selbst und von der Welt ausweiten und verandern.

The Hypertrophy of Simultaneity in Telematic Communication

The paper deals with the changes in the sense of synchronicity and simultaneity connected with the transformations in the structure of society. It examines and criticizes the modern concept of absolute chronology, understood as an objective temporal reference common to all observers. This notion is compared with the relative and flexible (but neither objective nor generalizable) forms of synchronization of different societies. The paper discusses finally the hypothesis that contemporary society is realizing a more complex and recursive form of temporality, that questions the modern ideal of synchronicity. This temporality is connected with recent developments in telematics.