The Invisible Lottery of Technology
“Technology is a double-edged blade, vast as the universe: it cuts and shapes everything so thoroughly that it also cuts and shapes the hand that wields it—and, unless humankind comes to its senses, the human species itself!”
— Nermi Uygur, Çağdaş Ortamda Teknik, p. 18
In Borges’s “The Lottery in Babylon,” an innocent cash lottery gradually turns into an apparatus that distributes every aspect of fate: first monetary rewards and fines, followed by physical punishments, positions of authority, wealth, marriage, and profession. Eventually, a world emerges in which participation is compulsory, the “Company” responsible for the distribution becomes invisible, and the announcement that “this was the result of the draw” replaces justification. Fate is concealed under the guise of “chance”; yet the frequency and scope of this chance have already been determined by invisible parameters. As an invisible and decentralized authority, modern technology determines the individual’s fate through a lottery-like apparatus. At the same time, however, this apparatus creates a dual space in which the subject is both shaped and able to constitute itself by producing possibilities for resistance and reinterpretation.
I. Technology’s Move Beyond Instrumentality
What first distinguishes technology from a mere “tool” is its ability to transform the world into a representable surface and then make that representation manageable. Heidegger’s concept of “Gestell,” or enframing, expresses this process: the world is recorded in measurable, rankable, and categorizable forms, producing a “map of reality.” Without this map, management is impossible.
In Borges’s Babylon, tickets, announcements, and record books construct this surface by defining which outcomes can be “drawn” before the lottery even takes place. Jacques Ellul’s imperative of efficiency enters at this point and rapidly transforms the question “Why?” into “How can it be made more reliable and faster?” The optimization of tools and methods of implementation therefore takes precedence over the questioning of purposes. Over time, both the purpose and the act of questioning it lose their importance; the discussion is reduced to the continuous optimization of tools and methods in pursuit of higher scores.
Deleuze and Guattari’s understanding of the “assemblage” also explains this process: people, rules, systems of timing, spaces, metrics, and rituals come together to form a directing apparatus. Although these elements may appear innocent individually, together they become a functioning machine. Flows are dissolved and reconnected. Deterritorialization refers to the dissolution of old connections, while reterritorialization refers to the reorganization of flows through their attachment to new connections and codes.
In this way, the “parameter” effectively becomes a “decision.” An increase in the frequency of the lottery ties life to shorter cycles of reward and punishment, creating pressure to accelerate. As its scope expands, the space for exceptions narrows, reducing the room in which the individual can breathe outside the system. Changes in ratios alter the social balance between risk-taking and adaptation to the system.
Uygur’s blade—the technological apparatus—does not merely shape the external world. It narrows the subject’s horizon, leads the subject to internalize external rules, and thereby restricts the range of movement of the hand that holds the blade.
II. The Authority of Procedure: Babylon’s Notice Board
Within these apparatuses, authority often appears neither as naked force nor as direct persuasion. When authority operates as the “authority of procedure,” it renders the agent of power invisible and confronts resistance with the question “To whom?” because what stands opposite the individual is not a person, but a protocol.
Practices such as examination, documentation, and normalization, which Foucault examines as techniques of power, do not merely direct the subject from the outside; they constitute the subject from within. The search for justification and the possibility of criticism are thus replaced by the statement “That is how it works,” suppressing the subject’s tendency to question.
In Byung-Chul Han’s analysis, external surveillance is replaced by self-surveillance. Dashboards, targets, and thresholds become an inner voice as the individual internalizes the procedure. Deleuze’s analysis of control societies operates here through the increasing invisibility of hierarchy and the continuity of modulation.
Borges’s notice board is therefore not an act of persuasion, but an announcement of parameters. The “Company” is invisible, yet its settings distribute fate like an unseen hand. The blade thus cuts without revealing its agent, disguising its sharpness as a mere “setting.”
III. Technology’s Narrative: Persona and Shadow
Technology ceases to be merely a matter of measurement and calculation; it constructs a narrative and shapes identities. Within Jung’s archetypal framework, the persona is polished while the shadow grows denser. The system displays the winner and constructs a narrative of “this is chance, this is justice,” while the marks left on the loser’s body and record—punishment, failure, and the label of “inadequacy”—are pushed into the collective shadow.
This creates the illusion that the distribution is neutral and technical. The outcome becomes moralized; success and failure are explained in terms of whether the individual deserves them. Failure appears not as the result of systemic parameters, but as a personal defect.
This process feeds the mechanism that Han calls the “violence of positivity,” transforming the call “You can” into the command “You must.” The individual lives as though compelled to buy more tickets, participate more frequently, and be better “prepared.”
In this process, which recalls Nietzsche’s ascetic ideal, submission is elevated into a virtue through the narrative of “fair chance.” The will to power ceases to be a creative force and becomes an effort to adapt to the scoreboard. Creative power is thereby reduced to the reactive language of probability tables.
The same cut produces both the radiance of the persona and the wound of the shadow. As the blade shapes the object, it also shapes the hand that holds it; technology narrows the subject’s horizon of decision and range of movement. While organizing data, technology also shapes the self.
IV. Colonization
Once technology crosses a certain threshold, it changes not only outcomes but also the language of decisions. As Habermas explains through his distinction between lifeworld and system, the logic of measurement and ranking overtakes critical thought, transforming the question “Why?” into the acceptance that “This is the procedure.” This change in language colonizes everyday speech.
In “The Lottery in Babylon,” people organize their applications, meetings, and ways of taking risks according to lottery periods, while institutions design their processes to conform to the lottery. Relationships become embedded in the vocabulary of chance. As the lottery colonizes individual lives, the procedure becomes normalized and is maintained through universal acceptance.
Nevertheless, cracks remain within this transformation of language. Small notes that rewrite the announcements, local agreements allowing exceptions, and networks of compensation can create openings within the system. From the perspective of Foucauldian counter-conduct and Deleuze and Guattari’s lines of flight, these micro-actions slow the rhythm, rebalance the ratios, and open the parameters to criticism.
The blade does not cut in only one direction; its weight can be redistributed.
V. The Politics of the Pharmakon
The answer to the question “What is to be done?” is not to demonize technology, but to design its sharpness, which carries both harm and possibility. Foucauldian counter-practices can be developed by making metrics and protocols visible and opening paths for objection and criticism.
Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s approach to flows, speed brakes, lanes for exceptions, and alternative flows can be designed to break unidirectional capture. In this way, the one-way operation of the apparatus of control can be challenged.
In “The Lottery in Babylon,” the politics of the pharmakon does not call for the complete abolition of the lottery, but for its integration into a regulated, transparent, and contestable framework. The “machine of fate” thereby ceases to be arbitrary and becomes a publicly accountable policy of distribution. Chance is not eliminated; it is connected to a politics of fair distribution.
Borges’s lottery demonstrates how the means becomes an end, while Uygur’s blade shows why this transformation becomes a cut “vast as the universe.” Technology is not merely an intermediary of decisions, but an apparatus that constructs the horizon within which decisions are made. The neutrality of chance is produced through the rules of distribution; the light of opportunity and the shadow of exhaustion emerge from the same parameters.
The correct question is therefore not “Is it good or bad?” but “Which parameter cuts whose life, in what way, and at what speed?” The answer lies in the combination of three principles: visibility and justification, control over speed and ratios, and windows for criticism and exceptions.
When structured according to these principles, technology ceases to be merely a functioning mechanism; it offers the possibility of consciously constructing a shared life without surrendering it to an absolute order. Technology thereby ceases to be an invisible blade that cuts and shapes both our hands and our sense of justice.
References
- Borges, Jorge Luis. “The Lottery in Babylon.”
- Deleuze, Gilles. “Postscript on the Societies of Control.”
- Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia.
- Derrida, Jacques. “Plato’s Pharmacy.” Dissemination.
- Ellul, Jacques. The Technological Society.
- Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison.
- Foucault, Michel. Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977–1978.
- Habermas, Jürgen. The Theory of Communicative Action, Volume Two: Lifeworld and System.
- Han, Byung-Chul. Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power.
- Han, Byung-Chul. The Burnout Society.
- Heidegger, Martin. “The Question Concerning Technology.”
- Jung, C. G. Two Essays on Analytical Psychology.
- Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Genealogy of Morality.
- Uygur, Nermi. Çağdaş Ortamda Teknik.
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