industrialization of memory, production of insecurity

From "Beyond the 'Networked Public Sphere': Politics, Participation and Technics in Web 2.0" by Dr. Ben Roberts, University of Bradford (link)

Simondon argues that the rise of the machine tool removes the ability of the skilled worker to differentiate their labor from that of other workers: 'a loss of individuation' which Stiegler sees reproduced at the level of consciousness by the new teletechnologies and their industrialization of memory.

The industrialization of memory -- archiving identity on corporate-owned servers, letting that replace or restructure neurological memory -- opens the self to new forms of manipulation by those corporations, or by the state that controls them. Shifting memory to a quasi-public sphere, having us broadcast it, opens us to new exploitable forms of existential insecurity. Discovering new insecurities to exploit is how consumerism survives. It leaves behind impersonal markets when the anonymity they suggest limits the amount of insecurity available to be put to the use of shaping subjectivity.