27 May 2026

Prof. Dr. Anna-Verena Nosthoff
Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, DE

Elon Musk describes X as a “cybernetic superintelligence,” Mark Zuckerberg views companies as “learning organisms,” and the inventor of Google Glass says, “Cybernetics is everywhere, like air.” These statements are not coincidental. Anyone who seeks to understand the digital transformation must look at its cybernetic origins. In her lecture, Anna-Verena Nosthoff offers insights into her recent book, “Kybernetik und Kritik. Eine Theorie digitaler Regierungskunst” (Cybernetics and Critique: A Theory of Digital Government; Suhrkamp Verlag), and illustrates its fundamental theses with the current authoritarian shift in Silicon Valley. Indeed, contemporary techno-fascism, as promoted by figures like Musk, can be understood particularly well from the perspective of cybernetic constructs. This brings into focus not only transhumanist cyborg fantasies and solutionist, post-ideological concepts of technology, but also binary and affect-centered concepts of the public sphere and technocratic, information-centered understandings of the state. These topoi find totalitarian parallels in the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency,” in Musk’s decidedly right-wing management of his platform “X,” and also in the current AGI hype. Against this backdrop, contemporary “Muskism” (Lepore) proves to be a simultaneously disruptive and incremental form of digital governance: it is primarily recognizable as cybernetic authoritarianism.

Wednesday, 27 May 2026
18:15–19:45 (CEST)

Flü­gelbau Ost, 2. OG, Raum O 221
Ed­mund-Siemers-Allee 1
20146 Ham­burg

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