The Technical Delusion: Electronics, Power, Insanity by Jeffrey Sconce


The Technical Delusion: Electronics, Power, Insanity
Title : The Technical Delusion: Electronics, Power, Insanity
Author :
Rating :
ISBN : 1478001062
ISBN-10 : 9781478001065
Format Type : Paperback
Number of Pages : 448
Publication : Published February 8, 2019

Delusions of electronic persecution have been a preeminent symptom of psychosis for over two hundred years. In The Technical Delusion Jeffrey Sconce traces the history and continuing proliferation of this phenomenon from its origins in Enlightenment anatomy to our era of global interconnectivity. While psychiatrists have typically dismissed such delusions of electronic control as arbitrary or as mere reflections of modern life, Sconce demonstrates a more complex and interdependent history of electronics, power, and insanity. Drawing on a wide array of psychological case studies, literature, court cases, and popular media, Sconce analyzes the material and social processes that have shaped historical delusions of electronic contamination, implantation, telepathy, surveillance, and immersion. From the age of telegraphy to contemporary digitality, the media emerged within such delusions to become the privileged site for imagining the merger of electronic and political power, serving as a paranoid conduit between the body and the body politic. Looking to the future, Sconce argues that this symptom will become increasingly difficult to isolate, especially as remote and often secretive powers work to further integrate bodies, electronics, and information.  

The Technical Delusion: Electronics, Power, Insanity Reviews

  • Jeffrey

    I am giving this book 5 Stars because I wrote it, and it was very hard to write, because I had to read a lot of psychiatric literature, go to a lot of archives, stay inside on days that were often sunny and quite temperate, and hurt my brain by considering many deep and complex issues, especially the historical relationship between electronics, delusions, and psychosis, and then every time I thought I was done, Alex Jones or Trump or DARPA would push the envelope as to what constitutes media(ted) psychosis, and I'd have to regroup and think, "Am I crazy?" Am I the only one who believes everything Baudrillard predicted twenty years ago is coming true?" "Will positivism ever save us from ourselves by providing us with clear, factual, empirical lines to divide fantasy, belief, and delusion?" Worse yet, various algorithms would conspire to suck thoughts out of my brain only to sell them back to me in the form of bargains on Amazon and links to political information that would make me very, very mad. My next book will be about kittens, because they are cute and fluffy and on that we can all agree!

  • Andrew

    The Technical Delusion attempts an analysis of the discursive interrelation between electronic technology, psychiatric practice, and the cultural contingency of schizophrenia. Mr. Sconce relies heavily on, inter alia, Foucault's constructivist view of the self and how it is mediated by, in Foucault's terminology, "biopower." There is a lot to be said here, and much of what the author writes is compelling. But his use of theory is incoherent--so much so that it offers something of a parody of the species of delusion he works to explain.

    At times he deploys the voice of scientific authority to ground his critique in medical facts. Elsewhere, without any theoretical justification, he eschews the possibility that such facts are tractable or even relevant. This suspect admixture of scientific fact, pseudoscientific speculation, and critical theory obscures more than it reveals. It gestures toward insight without offering any.

    Despite the genuine interest provoked by this subject, Mr. Sconce's slapdash appeals to the language of theory--without ever adequately situating his analysis in its content or context--undermines the entire exercise.

  • isaacq

    fascinating stuff! the main narrative here is a deep dive into 200 years of psychotic delusions in the Western world, as influenced by the rapid growth of electronic technology. i won't deny that Sconce lost me whenever he abandoned the storytelling to wax on about philosophy for 10-15 pages... but it was worth struggling through those bits for the astonishing case studies, which are plentiful.

  • PilgrimSouldier33

    Great read. Very illuminating... I originally purchased for the bit on - Targetd Individuals ch. 5. I was reading up on Francis E. Dec - which he covers very well.