5 - Seeing the World

Summary

As suggested throughout this book, digital transformations do not simply make individuals, organizations or societies more transparent. What happens is rather an intensification of the need to manage visibilities – to consider what to make (in)visible and how to guide attention. So far, my main concern has been to suggest what these developments mean for individuals and organizations, but now the focus shifts to broader societal issues. That is, how do hopes about digital transparency and processes of visibility management shape the way we think about societies and political affairs? Looking at such different phenomena as state control, corporate reporting, social editing and attempts to govern future affairs, the chapter offers an account of visibility management as a form of social ordering.

There is an important historical backdrop to this. Transparency is intimately tied to the project of modernity – the hope for technological progress, human perfectability and scientific scrutiny and rationality. But transparency is also an Enlightenment ideal that largely remains unchallenged, despite its limitations and obvious ties to phenomena such as totalitarianism and surveillance.