The more I dig into it, the more clear it is that "ontology of the enemy" by Galison mis-assigns the place of antagonism in cybernetics. Inter-state war a minor factor. Issues like colonialism, mental health, social hygiene, more decisive in development cybernetic method

Besides readings of Bateson, I owe much of this insight to @DanielNemenyi's dissertation "What is an internet" and its elaboration of Alliez's account of "total war" as relevant to cybernetics, such that domestic social programs can be recognised as media-technical antagonism

This reframing has major implications for media theory, Kittler, Virillio, as they define warfare too narrowly, privileging war between states as the generative form of conflict, aggression. But in cybernetics, hospitals, ghettoes, colonies, key in development of data techniques

This is the far-sighted genius of Jen Light's account of cybernetics in "From Warfare to Welfare"; it suggests the decisive "ontology of the enemy" is that which RAND social policy implements in ghettos, public access tv, architecture, etc

Once cybernetics expanded to urban policy, colonialism, mental hospitals, place of race, class, indigenous people, minors, in its theory and method emerges. A new history of digital ontology is suggested, where groups deprived of rights, autonomy by state are key in its POV

As I've Tweeted on other occasions, this analysis dovetails and piggybacks with recent work of @rlemov @morgangames @JoannaRadin; even the links btw Derrida's critiques of cybernetics and of ethnocentrism in Grammatology starts to emerge as part of this critical tradition

In this light, preoccupation of Irigaray, Barthes, Hall, Baudrillard, Kristeva with critiquing (informatic) idea of "code," making it material, contested, invested with gender, race, class, is recognisable as part of STS-type work in data studies, critical information studies