Durchsichtigkeit
Transparency.
Sounds innocuous enough, even desirable. Who does not wish to have daily life smoothed out, obstacles and bottle necks which make realizing our objectives, especially those involved in getting what we need from relationships, — removed? Transparency is a good idea is it not? Transparency is a watchword, a conceptual key to the achievement society in which we presently live. Participation results in transparency, progressive reduction of what is unknown about you and I. Perhaps you suspect that I am referring to Facebook, to Google… How much is known about me from hoovering up of data from the google searches which I have executed over the past five years? What is that information worth, and to whom? How much does Amazon know about me, simply from the types of books which I have purchased over the past two years? Amazon knows a great deal. Such is the bargain we have made…
Actions
become transparent when they subordinate themselves
to a calculable and controllable process.
Things
become transparent when they shed their singularity
and find expression solely in their price.
Images
become transparent when they are deprived of any hermeneutic depth,
even of meaning,
and thus become pornographic.
The positivity of the transparency society
makes it a hell of the same.
…there is something violent
about the word transparency.
Today, transparency is,
accordingly,
an instrument of control and surveillance.
— Excerpt Capitalism and the death drive, Only What is Dead Is Transparent,
by Byung-chul Han p. 33