Surveillance Capitalism
“Surveillance capitalism unilaterally claims human experiences as free raw material for translation into behavioral data. Although some of these data are applied for service improvement, the rest are declared as a proprietary behavioral surplus, fed into advanced manufacturing processes known as ‘machine intelligence’, and fabricated into prediction products that anticipate what you will do now, soon, and later. Finally, these prediction products are traded in a new kind of marketplace that I call behavioural futures markets. Surveillance capitalists have grown immensely wealthy from these trading operations, for many companies are willing to lay bets on our future behaviour.”[1]
It separates society into two parts: The Watcher and the Watched.
Surveillance capitalism asserts that surveillance is the business model of the internet[2] The capitalist market motivates companies to collect more and more data in order to grow even larger, make more revenue, etc. Simply asking corporations to stop or cut surveillance is akin to asking a human to stop drinking water. Corporations have been built upon a system where they need surveillance in order to survive.
Contents
History
Marx
Shoshanna Zuboff
Shoshana Zuboff is credited as coining the term “surveillance capitalism” in 2014 and has since written an entire book on the subject, entitled The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power[3]. In it, she explains surveillance capitalism as the spawn of capitalism and technology, motivated by social logic that corporations always need more money and growth.
![Shoshanna Zuboff [4]](/index.php/File:Zuboff.jpg)
Ethical Issues
Privacy Concerns
As default people don’t have privacy or aren’t aware of their level of privacy Opaque technology
Freedom of Choice
Choices are manipulated by the interests of private corporations Methods that extract or infer data even when users say “no” [5]
Democracy
Information and data is power! Watchers have far more power than the watched because of the sheer amount of data they have on anyone and everyone. There exists such little regulation on Watchers, they go roughty unchecked and are allowed to operate on a policy of “act now, apologize later”.
See Also
Surveillance Choice architecture
References
- ↑ Zuboff, Shoshana. “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism.” PublicAffairs, 15 Jan. 2019, https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Age_of_Surveillance_Capitalism.html?id=Lr4IDAAAQBAJ&source=kp_book_description.
- ↑ Rashid, Fahmida. “China 'Surveillance is the Business Model of the Internet: Bruce Schneier'.” Schneier on Security, 9 Apr. 2014, https://www.schneier.com/news/archives/2014/04/surveillance_is_the.html.
- ↑ Zuboff, Shoshana. “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism.” PublicAffairs, 15 Jan. 2019, https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Age_of_Surveillance_Capitalism.html?id=Lr4IDAAAQBAJ&source=kp_book_description.
- ↑ Intelligence Squared, 30 Aug. 2019, https://twitter.com/intelligence2/status/1167455794566225920
- ↑ 'The goal is to automate us': welcome to the age of surveillance capitalism .” The Guardian, 20 Jan. 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jan/20/shoshana-zuboff-age-of-surveillance-capitalism-google-facebook.
