Byung-Chul Han is arguably the most widely read philosopher today. The subtitle of this book is very significant: "Digitalization and the Crisis of Democracy". Digitalization advances inexorably. We are stunned by communication and information, we feel powerless in the face of the tsunami of data that deploys destructive and deforming forces. Today, digitization also affects the political sphere and causes serious disruptions in the democratic process. Election campaigns are information wars, with all the technical and psychological means imaginable.
For the author, three political regimes can be distinguished that manifest three forms of domination. In the Ancien Régime, domination was made visible almost as a spectacle (the court of kings), with a choreography that also included violence (public executions), while the subjugated were invisible.
In the modern, highly disciplinary regime, the governed are visible and power becomes invisible; it is the surveillance society denounced notably by writers such as Orwell. Today we would be in an information regime, dominated by open networks, which becomes a means of domination, using data as an effective tool for surveillance and control. The paradox is that at this stage people no longer feel watched, but free, and it is this feeling that ensures domination.
In the early days of democracy, the book established the rational discourse of the Enlightenment, essential for democracy. The current media networks undermine rational discourse and generate a decline of the public sphere, producing a "mediocracy". Interesting critical approach to today's society and politics.