The subtleties of Power in Images and Algorithms

Abstract

The article starts from Foucault’s reflection, ‘where there is power, there is resistance’, to investigate the  validity of this axiom in contemporary times, in which  modalities of power that are exercised through images  and algorithms are widespread and even encouraged in societies. The text builds a picture of the modalities of  power over the centuries, starting with the physical  punishments of the monarchical era, passing through disciplinary techniques, biopolitical strategies of  government, the society of spectacle and the role of images, the power of consumption under  neoliberalism,  the societies of control described by Deleuze, the instrumental power of large technology  companies that transform human behavior into  profitable digital data, culminating with the current  power of artificial intelligences (AI) and their autonomous learning technologies, which begin to  mediate various everyday relationships and have the  potential to remove the human being from social actions in different fields: individual, family, market,  government, among others. It is argued that the evolution of the modalities of power follows the path of  efficiency, subtlety and entertainment, being more and more accepted and less and less combated. Finally, the  article reflects on the possibilities of contemporary resistances and the construction of collectivities in an  individualistic world, taken by images in all instances of  existence and mediated by programming codes.