Término de un estado pasado: "Había

As the previous part highlighted, digital technologies such as computers are a spatial medium. They construct virtual spaces. Unlike physical spaces, they are not defined through tangible objects such as walls, fences or similar but through distinct characteristics (Manovich, 2001 and Murray, 2012) that define their design but also subsequently user interactions. Scripted objects commonly experienced as graphical representations on digital interface allow a user to navigate space, access information but also input and create information. They are, therefore, distinct from physical spaces, which are produced and modified by specific culture of individuals and groups sharing physical contexts such as prison classrooms. Virtual and physical interactional spaces subsequently differ.

4.2.1. The virtual and the real

The idea of the virtual, however, is far more than a technological or communicational term. Deleuze defined the virtual an aspect of reality that is ideal but nonetheless real. Therefore, prison service orders and instructions are

idealisations of prison reality. Similarly, Berthier (2004) argued the virtual is an ‘ideal-real’ referring predominantly to digital objects and spaces such as virtual reality and databases. It is not necessarily real (material) but possesses actual not potential qualities. Therefore, digital spaces are idealisations or as Baudrillard (1994) argued substitutions and simulations of physical reality a hyper-reality or simulacrum that we are in danger to take as reality. For Poster (1995) virtual reality is a “dangerous term as it suggests that reality may be multiple or take many forms”. Most importantly, “it changes the things that it treats, transforming the identity of originals and referentialities” (p.30). According to this, reality takes on multiple forms (reduction and use in different spaces) with virtual entities or virtualities representing idealised realities often through processes of reduction.

4.2.1. Virtual spaces of communication

Virtual spaces of communication are not an invention of the 20th century nor do they exists primarily in the digital realm. They came into being with the emergence of writing and inscription technologies as a medium of communication and have changed over time. As McLuhan (1964) pointed out man adapted to ‘the line, the continuum… [as] the organizing principle of life’. However, writing is more than the extension of the human eye (ibid). It creates its own (virtual) spaces defined through the rules of writing itself (alphabets, language, standards), the inscription technologies used but also the rules, standards and measurements of reporting and manifesting the social in for instance static documents before the introduction of digital technologies and communication structures in the 20th century. Hence, as Bolter (2001) argued cultural and technical dimensions cannot be separated, they constitute technology together (p. 19). Postman (1993) furthered this argument, suggesting that each communication technology (including digital communication technologies) has altered human reality in a specific way. As outlined above

computer technology possesses distinct affordances and characteristics that shape interactions and human reality by transforming, altering and even overtaking human actions and relations. The emergence of digital technologies and specifically digital networks shape and characterise society in the information age (Castells, 1996). Those technologies as McLuhan (1964) and Castells (1996) argued affected specifically space, time and structure of human activities.

Digital networks enable the flow of information between spaces in real time through formatted communication tools such as databases or websites that can be accessed through electronic interfaces as any time and any place. ‘Relationships no longer depend on embodied persons being co-present with each other’ (Lyon in Lyon, ed. P.18) but being connected through digital networks. Castells (1996) defined ‘a network [as] a set of interconnected nodes’ (ibid, p. 470). Nodes are points of intersections depending on the concrete network that range from stock exchange markets to councils of ministers and television systems (ibid) but also include the penal justice system (Franko-Aas, 2005) and its various administration networks and educational provisions in settings such as the prison. ‘Networks are open structures, able to expand without limits, integrating new nodes as able as they are able to communicate within the network, namely as long as they share the same communication codes (for example, values or performance goals)’ (Castells 1996, p.470). According to McLuhan (1964) ‘both time (as measured visually and segmentally) and space (as uniform, pictorial, and enclosed) disappear in the electronic age of instant information’ (p. 152) ending ‘space as the as the main factor in social arrangements’ (p.94). Poster (2006) argued that ‘society is a now a double movement: one of individuals and institutions, another of information flows’ (p.65). Therefore, prisons are material reality and context for embodied experiences of individuals but also consist of virtual spaces allowing interactions with immaterial

information flows to monitor and control its interconnected trajectories (security, rehabilitation and economy).

However, as Franko-Aas (2005) argued, ‘information is not simply, not even primarily an objectivated piece of scientific knowledge, but rather a tool for governance’ (p.50). Garland (2001) pointed at the ‘systemisation of criminal justice – using information technology, operational models, and computerised data processing’ (p.115) starting in the 1980s and 1990s in the UK. ‘This systemisation has allowed a greater measure of central planning and control to occur, and has enhanced government’s capacity to pursue system-wide policy objectives’ (ibid). ‘New information, and especially communication technologies and improved transportation, have enabled many things to be done at a distance in the past half century’ (Lyon in Lyon, ed., 2003, p.18). This governing-at-a-distance (Garland, 2001) as discussed in chapter 2 uses distinct virtual spaces of communication to monitor, assess and account for prison performances but also to control the individuals within: prisoners and prison staff ‘to focus decision-making and target interventions’ (p.116). For that, ‘contemporary governmental strategies are intricately connected with various knowledge systems […] [and] the need to know the objects that are being governed’ (Franko-Aas, 2005, p.50-51). Within prison education the objects to be controlled include educational levels but also attendance records. Although Franko-Aas (2005) analysed sentencing information systems similarities can be drawn to any other information systems. Firstly, the choice of information is a political decision. As chapter 2 highlighted, criminogenic needs are the very problems to be addressed to rehabilitate offenders. Secondly, the methods to collect and circulate information are of utmost importance. ‘Information needs to be produced and circulated; it needs a technological, organisational and economic infrastructure that enables its survival’ (ibid, p.51). As discussed in chapter 2 prisons

have three distinct trajectories that intertwine. The economic, security and rehabilitative trajectories require and produce specific information flows ensuring the survival of an individual prison, its services and provision. Those information flows are captured and disseminated in distinct technological artefacts. The next section, therefore, discusses the very distinct characteristics of databases as ‘the key category of culture’ (Manovich, 2001) that shape the production and circulation of information via information networks.

4.3. Procedural technologies