GOVERNARE LA VITA ATTRAVERSO I DATI. Per una genealogia della razionalità algoritmica/ Governing life through data. Toward a genealogy of algorithmic rationality

Abstract

The paper revisits Foucault’s notion of governmentality to analyze contemporary forms of algorithmic governance. It argues that digital infrastructures do not replace biopolitics but radicalize it, turning life into a continuous source of data for both control and accumulation. Datafication and predictive modelling reorder procedures of veridiction: “truth” becomes what works operationally within opaque correlational systems. Drawing on Zuboff and post-operaism theories of cognitive capitalism, the paper shows how platforms act as ecosystemic gatekeepers that centralize infrastructures, privatize data, and extract rent from social cooperation. The general intellect is expropriated through algorithmic measures of value, shifting exploitation from labour time to the control of information, attention, and behavioral flows.

Keywords:

Algorithmic Governmentality; Biopolitics; Platforms; Cognitive Capitalism.