Cybernetics

Abstract David Foster Wallace's unfinished novel The Pale King considers the IRS’s usage of the fictional ANADA (Audit-No Audit Discriminant Algorithm) as a tool for maximizing profit and increasing taxpayer compliance using the threat of information-based surveillance. Despite being a government entity, the novel’s IRS begins to increasingly resemble a for-profit corporation, … [Read more...] about “Profits as the Telos”: The Logic of Reaganomics and Wallace’s Technologies of Efficiency