Deterritorializing Utopia: The Possibility of Techno-Utopias in Societies of Control

The literature on technology, both broadly and in public administration, crafts its visions of utopia out of modern assumptions of the Enlightenment. The move into postmodernity has resulted in the emergence of conditions under which the deployment of technology results in paradoxes that simultaneously increase and reduce freedom. The use of technology, whether to improve centralized coordination and create efficient systems free of human messiness or to mitigate probabilistic risk in complex systems, both controls and frees those within the system. A Deleuzian notion of technology, informed by Foucault’s ideas of heterotopias and care of the self, both describes this emerging structure of control and opens up the possibility of a deployment of technology that opens space for action that fits the anti-essentialist aspects of pragmatism and extends the progressive possibilities of democratic practice.