General social knowledge, machines, multitudes. A critical analysis of society 5.0


Abstract

Society 5.0 theorists argue that - through the sustainable use of technology - it is possible to build a society focused on people and their needs. Other lines of research - such as the "acceleratorist" one - call for a more intensive use of technology to free the productive forces. No social transformation, indeed, seems conceivable without the awareness that machines, as cultural products, reproduce existing power relations (2000 billionaires hold the equivalent of the wealth of 4.6 billion people, [Oxfam 2020]). Technological development, therefore, cannot be analysed outside of the historical-cultural coordinates and contradictions that still feed the capitalist system. It would be necessary, instead, activating a process of disindividuation of intelligence (Simondon, 2001), to orient technological processes in an inclusive and multitudinarian sense, incorporating the demand for equality coming from below and from "general social knowledge" (the so-called General Intellect, to put it with the Marx of Grundrisse).