The Control is the Message: Deleuze, McLuhan and the Virtual Architectures of Power or, How they went on a date at a local cybercafé
In his essay Postscript on the Societies of Control, Gilles Deleuze dives into a societal shift that feels eerily prescient today. Writing back in 1990, he suggested we were transitioning from what Michel Foucault called a "disciplinary society" into something new: a "society of control." In the old world of discipline, people were shaped by institutions—schools, factories, prisons—with rules, boundaries, and consequences. But as Deleuze observed, this framework was starting to crumble, making way for subtler, more pervasive forms of control. While the omnipresence of digitality had yet to fully emerge when he was writing, Deleuze hinted that technology was at the core of this transformation.
Fast forward to now, and we can see exactly what he meant. Algorithms and networks infiltrate every corner of our lives—social, political, economic, and personal. Deleuze’s idea of power shifting from centralized figures like kings or factory owners to something more insidious—“code”—hits home. In this landscape, power isn’t wielded by people in the traditional sense. Instead, it’s embedded in systems that quietly regulate our behavior. Forget about an authoritarian figure punishing you; now, it’s an algorithm freezing your bank account or denying you access to essential services through automated systems.
Marshall McLuhan on the other hand, famous for coining the phrase "The medium is the message," adds another dimension to this conversation. Sure, he’s often accused of being a technological determinist, but his observations remain strikingly relevant. McLuhan wasn’t particularly interested in what people did with technology—whether a light bulb illuminated a stadium or a dentist’s office. For him, the game-changer was the system itself. Electricity, for instance, fundamentally transformed society by enabling entirely new ways of living and thinking. Similarly, McLuhan saw media—cinema, TV, radio—not just as tools but as forces reshaping human perception. The Extensions of Man is the subtitle of his book. Cinema manipulated our sensorium; television rewired our daily rhythms. Now, in the digital age, McLuhan’s focus on the "medium" dovetails with Deleuze’s insights. The internet and its infrastructure are reshaping the social and political terrain in ways both obvious and invisible.
Think about the early days of social media. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and YouTube played with the rhetoric of connection and community. They broke down geographical barriers and gave us a sense of belonging. Remember when Facebook didn’t even have a news feed or a "like" button? You had to actively visit someone’s profile to see what they were up to. But in 2007, Facebook introduced the news feed and "like" button, powered by algorithms designed to learn what users enjoyed and to keep them scrolling. This seemingly minor tweak exploded Facebook’s popularity and set the stage for a much larger transformation.
As the platforms grew, so did their ambitions. Businesses jumped on board, and social media became an advertising goldmine. By 2008, Facebook’s audience optimization tools allowed advertisers to target users based on location, interests, and even political leanings. What started as a tool for connection evolved into a mechanism for influence. Take the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Facebook became embroiled in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, where data from 87 million users was reportedly harvested. An innocuous app, This Is Your Digital Life, gathered personal information to create psychological profiles used to sway voters. Similar tactics surfaced during Brexit. These algorithms are no longer present to just sell you stuff; they shape your worldview, locking you into echo chambers where dissenting opinions rarely appear.
The internet itself carries this duality. Originally developed as a surveillance tool for the U.S. military, it morphed into a public utility promising connection and convenience. But the surveillance never really disappeared. Take Google Maps: it tracks your movements, routes, and even the steps you take every single second. Sure, it can be argued it’s helpful, but it’s also unsettling when you consider the granular detail it collects about your daily life.
Or look at India’s Aarogya Setu app, launched during the COVID-19 pandemic. Marketed as a virus-tracking tool, it required users to link their Aadhaar numbers—India’s biometric ID system. Critics pointed out the privacy risks, arguing that such data could be weaponized to monitor activists and dissidents. The 2021 Pegasus spyware scandal brought this into sharper focus. Developed by the Israeli firm NSO Group, Pegasus could infiltrate smartphones remotely without user consent. Investigations revealed it was used to surveil thousands globally, including politicians, journalists, and human rights activists. Among the targets were French President Emmanuel Macron, Hungarian investigative journalists from Direkt36, Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi, journalist Sidharth Varadrajan, student activist Umar Khalid and many more important figures. These incidents remind us that technology marketed as convenient can double as a mechanism of control.
We’ve moved beyond Foucault’s "bio-politics," where institutions disciplined individuals within physical enclosures. Factories, schools, hospitals, and prisons are relics of a bygone era. Today, control operates differently—through flows of data, capital, and movement. Deleuze’s dividuals have finally become a living breathable entity. We are no longer individuals. Unlike individuals, who were subject to physical discipline, dividuals are fragmented into data points. Your bank sees you as a credit score, you are your watch history to YouTube, and Facebook/Instagram/Twitter monitors your likes and engagement. These data fragments dictate how systems interact with you—whether you qualify for a loan, what content you see, what political beliefs you have or even how much you pay for health insurance.
Consider fitness trackers. They monitor your vitals and relay that data to insurance companies, which then adjust your premiums. The result? You regulate your own behavior based on reports from a device. Control no longer requires a physical presence; it operates in a liminal, all-encompassing digital space.
If you’re imagining a dystopian ‘Big Brother’ or a ‘Skynet - Rise of the Machines’ scenario, take a breath. This isn’t about centralized surveillance—not yet, anyway. What we’re dealing with are processual systems/machines, future-defining mechanisms that constantly evolve and are shaping the socio-economic and political paths we collectively tread. And therein lies an opportunity: to think critically about how we discreetly resist and reclaim agency within these systems.
What’s both fascinating and unnerving is how the internet markets itself as a tool of liberation while embedding structures of surveillance. The real power isn’t in the hands of monarchs or CEOs anymore; it’s with the coders and engineers designing these algorithms. Sure, the internet has transformed entertainment, communication, and access to information, but as McLuhan would say, the medium itself is the message. And in this case, that message is one of control.
Sources
Sen, K. M., 2020. From Aadhaar to Aarogya Setu: How surveillance technology is devaluing India’s democratic rights. [Online]
Available at: https://scroll.in/article/960137/from-aadhaar-to-aarogya-setu-how-surveillance-technology-is-devaluing-indias-democratic-rights
Shankland, S., 2022. Pegasus Spyware and Citizen Surveillance: What You Need to Know. [Online]
Available at: https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/pegasus-spyware-and-citizen-surveillance-what-you-need-to-know/
Deleuze, G., 1992. Postscript on the Societies of Control. October, Volume 59, pp. 3-7.
McLuhan, M., 1964. The Medium is the Message. In: Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Canada: McGraw-Hill, pp. 16-30.
Lim, M., 2020. Algorithmic Enclaves: Affective politics and algorithms in the Neoliberal Social Media Landscape. In: M. Boler & E. Davis, eds. Affective Politics of Digital Media: Propoganda by Other Means. New York & London: Routledge, pp. 186-203.