When the God Ka acts for us: digital management as twinning our selves
Résumé
The search for digital twins is an ancient practice among both digital and organizational designers. It is grounded into a very old modern philosophy: representationalism. Here, I propose to distinguish two different types of representationalism: cognitive and narrative representationalism. I detail their genealogy and how there are interwoven with the very reconfiguration of scientific management through digitality during and after WWII. I explain how the apocalyptic orientations of post-war management have been preventing employee and customer subjectivation and fosters multiple self-images about us in the world. To discuss the dangers of such managerial processes for our present and our future, I come back to a parallel drawn by Michel Serres: the unexpected proximity between Ka and our philosophies of digitality, particularly artificial intelligence (AI). Maybe our worst nightmare could become our most ordinary experience.