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Abstract
To understand 2020's pandemic is to see virus as a language we can use. By drawing on viral principles—viruses are infections through information, viruses can be understood only through percentages and exponentials, and viruses are zombies from outer space—the dynamics of our twenty-first-century virus crisis can be discerned, even influenced. The crisis isn't just biological, it is about ideas and how they propagate through, for example, conspiracy theories and inflammatory actions. Viral emotions are integral to what is happening, as attention to both the virus of fascism and fear-based reactions to COVID-19 make clear. The opposite of fear, or perhaps the product of fear sometimes, is bravery. Hope is beyond that. Viruses spread because of their intrinsic properties and the relevant vectors, catalysts, growth mediums, and controls. Our future will be shaped by a wide range of viruses. We know it will be abnormal, but viruses will not act alone. Much of nature, and thus human culture, is beyond the viral. The key issue is control and just what mix of authoritarian control, self-control, and out-of-control (in both senses) we will end up living with.

Big Data is control. Consider Technological "watching" (veillance). Whether it is lists of banned books, files and interrogation reports on arrested people, or algorithms searching massive databases, it isn't about voyeurism, but instrumentalist power. Established distinctions between data, information, and knowledge from computer science are a helpful sorting device for understanding why some forms of Big Data are more effective for control than others. Political struggles and corporate hype over veillance Big Data obscures how unuseful it has been so far, and how different "data" of any sort is from actionable information (intelligence). Even then, action doesn't promise effectiveness. Affordances, agency, network architectures, semantics and the political economy determine effective communication and control. Thls is clear from the role of Big Data in neuroscience, which is making great instrumentalist progress. Specific, rigorous knowledge is much more powerful, and dangerous, than data of any size or information, no matter its origin. ; La "mirada" tecnológica (vigilancia) está vinculada al control. Ya se trate de listas de libros prohibidos, expedientes o informes de interrogatorios a personas arrestadas, o algoritmos de búsqueda bases de datos masivas, no se trata de voyeurismo, sino de poder instrumentista. Establecer distinciones entre datos, información y conocimiento en las ciencias de la computación será un dispositivo de clasificación útil para entender por qué algunas formas de vigilancia son más eficaces que otras. Las luchas políticas y la moda empresarial del Big Data ocultan cuán inútiles han sido hasta ahora, y cómo los diferentes "datos" de cualquier tipo se encuentran en información procesable (inteligencia). Incluso entonces, la acción no promete eficacia. Potencialidades (affordances), agencias, arquitecturas de red, la semántica y la economía política determinan la comunicación y el control efectivo. Consideremos el caso especial de la neurociencia, que está a punto de hacer viable la lectura de la mente y el control del pensamiento. El conocimiento específico y riguroso es mucho más potente y peligroso que los datos de cualquier tamaño o información, sin importar su origen.

Big Data is control. Consider Technological "watching" (veillance). Whether it is lists of banned books, files and interrogation reports on arrested people, or algorithms searching massive databases, it isn't about voyeurism, but instrumentalist power. Established distinctions between data, information, and knowledge from computer science are a helpful sorting device for understanding why some forms of Big Data are more effective for control than others. Political struggles and corporate hype over veillance Big Data obscures how unuseful it has been so far, and how different "data" of any sort is from actionable information (intelligence). Even then, action doesn't promise effectiveness. Affordances, agency, network architectures, semantics and the political economy determine effective communication and control. Thls is clear from the role of Big Data in neuroscience, which is making great instrumentalist progress. Specific, rigorous knowledge is much more powerful, and dangerous, than data of any size or information, no matter its origin. ; La "mirada" tecnológica (vigilancia) está vinculada al control. Ya se trate de listas de libros prohibidos, expedientes o informes de interrogatorios a personas arrestadas, o algoritmos de búsqueda bases de datos masivas, no se trata de voyeurismo, sino de poder instrumentista. Establecer distinciones entre datos, información y conocimiento en las ciencias de la computación será un dispositivo de clasificación útil para entender por qué algunas formas de vigilancia son más eficaces que otras. Las luchas políticas y la moda empresarial del Big Data ocultan cuán inútiles han sido hasta ahora, y cómo los diferentes "datos" de cualquier tipo se encuentran en información procesable (inteligencia). Incluso entonces, la acción no promete eficacia. Potencialidades (affordances), agencias, arquitecturas de red, la semántica y la economía política determinan la comunicación y el control efectivo. Consideremos el caso especial de la neurociencia, que está a punto de hacer viable la lectura de la mente y el control del pensamiento. El conocimiento específico y riguroso es mucho más potente y peligroso que los datos de cualquier tamaño o información, sin importar su origen.

The centrality of human-machine weapon systems is a key aspect of postmodern war. Since 1939 such systems have proliferated while improved interfaces have led to several types of actual cyborg soldiers. As the crisis of postmodern war deepens it is producing a series of quite different militarized bodies. Cyborgs proliferate in type so it is no surprise that we have pilot-cyborgs and teleoperators, info-cyborgs (from political operatives to clerks and including all the servants of the computers and weapons systems), and various fighting cyborg soldiers and sailors. There has also been a resurgence of a type of irregular warrior that many commentators describe as bestial. It is not a coincidence that while humanity is on the verge of producing real posthumans (quite possibly for military applications) so-called ‘prehuman’ types of war have broken out across the globe. War is based on bodies and its skewed logics have driven many cyborgian developments. Now, both war and our cyborg society are involved in a linked crisis fuelled by the relentless march of technoscience that has made modern war impossible and posthumans probable. The future of the human, and of a multitude of potential posthumanities, will largely be determined by how this crisis is resolved.

There are important differences in how information technology is used in military and social-movement cultures. Militaries use social media in the Human Terrain model and security-police mode for quantifying and controlling social space, in order to meet low-intensity, counterinsurgency, and regime-maintenance goals (or for recruitment and public relations). For social-movement cultures, such as secular Egyptian revolutionaries, 15M (Los Indignados), and Idle No More, social media is an integral part of life; it is context. Unlike these horizontalist movements, military institutions are based on a hierarchical structure that precludes social media from becoming part of their organizational and decision-making culture. For them, social media constitute part of civil society, a commons both virtual and physical. The synergy between computer networks and decentralized social movements is clear when military, social-movement, and network theories and practices are compared. These differences are manifested in asymmetrical relationships to "veillance," alternative modes of producing social technologies (especially protocols), contrasting theories of power, and opposing conceptions of morality and efficacy. The differences are more than a matter of how the affordances of information technologies match with the different technocultures. Horizontalist social movements incorporate new information technologies into their praxis as self-control, while militaries seek to subsume them into the existing hierarchical control paradigms.