Schizoanalysis, technology, and sociality

• Published in: Internet Addiction pp. 23 - 40
• Main Author: Friedman, Emaline
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Routledge 2021
• Edition: 1
• Subjects: Technical Machines; Company Ipo; Collective Individuation; Social Media; Social Machines; Social Reproduction; Contemporary Society; Specific Internet Activities; Capital's Addiction; Libidinal Investments; Critical Psychology; Collective Migration; Primary Access Points; Seminar XIV; Sad Affects; Internet Addiction; Social Factory Thesis; Artificial Intelligence Companies; Addiction Neuroscience; Freud's Drive Theory; Facebook Addiction; Continuous Partial Attention; Human Biological Organism; High Frequency Trading; Unique Reliance
• ISBN: 9780367172916; 9780367172954; 036717295X; 0367172917
• DOI: 10.4324/9780429056055-3

In contrast to the psychological understanding of the Internet as a reified object of addiction to which individuals are vulnerable, Deleuzo-Guattarian schizoanalysis provides a conceptual basis for understanding digital technologies as processes of capitalist social development constitutive of social relations moved continuously by a global collective of users. A reading of the Internet and social media, energized by an interwoven look at the four theses of schizoanalysis, sets up an examination of the processual dynamics of the social media machine as a collective assemblage of enunciation. This assemblage articulates humans and digital technologies together to show how these assemblages individualize users from a constitutive global, collectivity not conscious of the collective power that is the productive force of their desires. This chapter concludes by revisiting the notion of "getting hooked" in terms of the mass migration achieved by net-connected technologies: Online, but also across borders, and into and out of informal, often economic, networks that further enmesh and invest userssocially in digital networks.