CONCEPT
Signature vs. Password
Deleuze's compressed formula for the transition from disciplinary to control societies — from a world where power needed to know who you are to a world where power only needs to know what you can access.
In a single sentence of the Postscript, Deleuze distinguished two modes through which power addresses its subjects: the signature, characteristic of disciplinary societies, and the password or code, characteristic of control societies. The signature identifies a unique person — it is personal, bound to a body, inscribed in registers that locate each individual within a mass. The password grants or denies access — it is impersonal, numerical, transferable, and it can be changed, revoked, or hacked without reference to the person behind it. The shift from signature to password marks the transition from identity-based governance to access-based governance, and names the architecture of power that organizes the AI age.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The signature presupposed the individual as its reference. It was the graphical trace of a unique hand, bound to a specific body, difficult to forge and personally inscribed in every instance of its use. Banks, contracts, legal documents, and