diff --git a/books/sociology/age-of-surveillance-capitalism.md b/books/sociology/age-of-surveillance-capitalism.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..af7522482b3ad747abcea7b02be2b8afacebde1c --- /dev/null +++ b/books/sociology/age-of-surveillance-capitalism.md @@ -0,0 +1,275 @@ +[[!meta title="The Age of Surveillance Capitalism"]] + +## Excerpts + + Just a moment ago, it still seemed reasonable to focus our concerns on the + challenges of an information workplace or an information society. Now the + oldest questions must be addressed to the widest possible frame, which is best + defined as “civilization” or, more specifically, information civilization. Will + this emerging civilization be a place that we can call home? + + [...] + + The sense of home slipping away provokes an unbearable yearning. The + Portuguese have a name for this feeling: saudade, a word said to capture the + homesickness and longing of separation from the homeland among emigrants across + the centuries. Now the disruptions of the twenty-first century have turned + these exquisite anxieties and longings of dislocation into a universal story + that engulfs each one of us.3 + + [...] + + Although the saying tells us “If it’s free, then you are the product,” that + is also incorrect. We are the sources of surveillance capitalism’s crucial + surplus: the objects of a technologically advanced and increasingly inescapable + raw-material-extraction operation. Surveillance capitalism’s actual customers + are the enterprises that trade in its markets for future behavior. + + [...] + + Although the saying tells us “If it’s free, then you are the product,” that + is also incorrect. We are the sources of surveillance capitalism’s crucial + surplus: the objects of a technologically advanced and increasingly inescapable + raw-material-extraction operation. Surveillance capitalism’s actual customers + are the enterprises that trade in its markets for future behavior. + + [...] + + Surveillance capitalism operates through unprecedented asymmetries in + knowledge and the power that accrues to knowledge. Surveillance capitalists + know everything about us, whereas their operations are designed to be + unknowable to us. They accumulate vast domains of new knowledge from us, but + not for us. They predict our futures for the sake of others’ gain, not ours. As + long as surveillance capitalism and its behavioral futures markets are allowed + to thrive, ownership of the new means of behavioral modification eclipses + ownership of the means of production as the fountainhead of capitalist wealth + and power in the twenty-first century. These facts and their consequences for + our individual lives, our societies, our democracies, and our emerging + information civilization are examined in detail in the coming chapters. The + evidence and reasoning employed here suggest that surveillance capitalism is a + rogue force driven by novel economic imperatives that disregard social norms + and nullify the elemental rights associated with individual autonomy that are + essential to the very possibility of a democratic society. Just as industrial + civilization flourished at the expense of nature and now threatens to cost us + the Earth, an information civilization shaped by surveillance capitalism and + its new instrumentarian power will thrive at the expense of human nature and + will threaten to cost us our humanity. The industrial legacy of climate chaos + fills us with dismay, remorse, and fear. As surveillance capitalism becomes the + dominant form of information capitalism in our time, what fresh legacy of + damage and regret will be mourned by future generations? + + [...] + + For now, suffice to say that despite all the futuristic sophistication of + digital innovation, the message of the surveillance capitalist companies barely + differs from the themes once glorified in the motto of the 1933 Chicago World’s + Fair: “Science Finds—Industry Applies—Man Conforms.” + + [...] + + In order to challenge such claims of technological inevitability, we must + establish our bearings. We cannot evaluate the current trajectory of + information civilization without a clear appreciation that technology is not + and never can be a thing in itself, isolated from economics and society. This + means that technological inevitability does not exist. Technologies are always + economic means, not ends in themselves: in modern times, technology’s DNA comes + already patterned by what the sociologist Max Weber called the “economic + orientation.” Economic ends, Weber observed, are always intrinsic to + technology’s development and deployment. “Economic action” determines + objectives, whereas technology provides “appropriate means.” In Weber’s + framing, “The fact that what is called the technological development of modern + times has been so largely oriented economically to profit-making is one of the + fundamental facts of the history of technology.”15 In a modern capitalist + society, technology was, is, and always will be an expression of the economic + objectives that direct it into action. A worthwhile exercise would be to delete + the word “technology” from our vocabularies in order to see how quickly + capitalism’s objectives are exposed. + + [...] + + Surveillance capitalism employs many technologies, but it cannot be equated + with any technology. Its operations may employ platforms, but these operations + are not the same as platforms. It employs machine intelligence, but it cannot + be reduced to those machines. It produces and relies on algorithms, but it is + not the same as algorithms. Surveillance capitalism’s unique economic + imperatives are the puppet masters that hide behind the curtain orienting the + machines and summoning them to action. These imperatives, to indulge another + metaphor, are like the body’s soft tissues that cannot be seen in an X-ray but + do the real work of binding muscle and bone. We are not alone in falling prey + to the technology illusion. It is an enduring theme of social thought, as old + as the Trojan horse. Despite this, each generation stumbles into the quicksand + of forgetting that technology is an expression of other interests. In modern + times this means the interests of capital, and in our time it is surveillance + capital that commands the digital milieu and directs our trajectory toward the + future. Our aim in this book is to discern the laws of surveillance capitalism + that animate today’s exotic Trojan horses, returning us to age-old questions as + they bear down on our lives, our societies, and our civilization. + + [...] + + We have stood at this kind of precipice before. “We’ve stumbled along for a + while, trying to run a new civilization in old ways, but we’ve got to start to + make this world over.” It was 1912 when Thomas Edison laid out his vision for a + new industrial civilization in a letter to Henry Ford. Edison worried that + industrialism’s potential to serve the progress of humanity would be thwarted + by the stubborn power of the robber barons and the monopolist economics that + ruled their kingdoms. He decried the “wastefulness” and “cruelty” of US + capitalism: “Our production, our factory laws, our charities, our relations + between capital and labor, our distribution—all wrong, out of gear.” Both + Edison and Ford understood that the modern industrial civilization for which + they harbored such hope was careening toward a darkness marked by misery for + the many and prosperity for the few. + + [...] + + Most important for our conversation, Edison and Ford understood that the + moral life of industrial civilization would be shaped by the practices of + capitalism that rose to dominance in their time. They believed that America, + and eventually the world, would have to fashion a new, more rational capitalism + in order to avert a future of misery and conflict. Everything, as Edison + suggested, would have to be reinvented: new technologies, yes, but these would + have to reflect new ways of understanding and fulfilling people’s needs; a new + economic model that could turn those new practices into profit; and a new + social contract that could sustain it all. A new century had dawned, but the + evolution of capitalism, like the churning of civilizations, did not obey the + calendar or the clock. It was 1912, and still the nineteenth century refused to + relinquish its claim on the twentieth. + + [...] + + I describe the “collision” between the centuries-old historical processes + of individualization that shape our experience as self-determining individuals + and the harsh social habitat produced by a decades-old regime of neoliberal + market economics in which our sense of self-worth and needs for + self-determination are routinely thwarted. The pain and frustration of this + contradiction are the condition that sent us careening toward the internet for + sustenance and ultimately bent us to surveillance capitalism’s draconian quid + pro quo. + + [...] + + The youngest members of our societies already experience many of these + destructive dynamics in their attachment to social media, the first global + experiment in the human hive. I consider the implications of these developments + for a second elemental right: the right to sanctuary. The human need for a + space of inviolable refuge has persisted in civilized societies from ancient + times but is now under attack as surveillance capital creates a world of “no + exit” with profound implications for the human future at this new frontier of + power. + + [...] + + The Apple inversion depended on a few key elements. Digitalization made it + possible to rescue valued assets—in this case, songs—from the institutional + spaces in which they were trapped. The costly institutional procedures that + Sloan had described were eliminated in favor of a direct route to listeners. In + the case of the CD, for example, Apple bypassed the physical production of the + product along with its packaging, inventory, storage, marketing, + transportation, distribution, and physical retailing. The combination of the + iTunes platform and the iPod device made it possible for listeners to + continuously reconfigure their songs at will. No two iPods were the same, and + an iPod one week was different from the same iPod another week, as listeners + decided and re-decided the dynamic pattern. It was an excruciating development + for the music industry and its satellites—retailers, marketers, etc.—but it was + exactly what the new listeners wanted. + + [...] + + The implication is that new market forms are most productive when they are + shaped by an allegiance to the actual demands and mentalities of people. The + great sociologist Emile Durkheim made this point at the dawn of the twentieth + century, and his insight will be a touchstone for us throughout this book. + Observing the dramatic upheavals of industrialization in his time—factories, + specialization, the complex division of labor—Durkheim understood that although + economists could describe these developments, they could not grasp their cause. + He argued that these sweeping changes were “caused” by the changing needs of + people and that economists were (and remain) systematically blind to these + social facts: The division of labor appears to us otherwise than it does to + economists. For them, it essentially consists in greater production. For us, + this greater productivity is only a necessary consequence, a repercussion of + the phenomenon. If we specialize, it is not to produce more, but it is to + enable us to live in the new conditions of existence that have been made for + us.7 + + [...] + + The sociologist identified the perennial human quest to live effectively in + our “conditions of existence” as the invisible causal power that summons the + division of labor, technologies, work organization, capitalism, and ultimately + civilization itself. Each is forged in the same crucible of human need that is + produced by what Durkheim called the always intensifying “violence of the + struggle” for effective life: “If work becomes more divided,” it is because the + “struggle for existence is more acute.” + + [...] + + What are these modernities and how do they matter to our story? The advent + of the individual as the locus of moral agency and choice initially occurred in + the West, where the conditions for this emergence first took hold. First let’s + establish that the concept of “individualization” should not be confused with + the neoliberal ideology of “individualism” that shifts all responsibility for + success or failure to a mythical, atomized, isolated individual, doomed to a + life of perpetual competition and disconnected from relationships, community, + and society. Neither does it refer to the psychological process of + “individuation” that is associated with the lifelong exploration of + self-development. Instead, individualization is a consequence of long-term + processes of modernization.10 + + [...] + + The Spanish poet Antonio Machado captured the exhilaration and daring of + these first-modernity individuals in his famous song: “Traveler, there is no + road; the road is made as you go.” This is what “search” has meant: a journey + of exploration and self-creation, not an instant swipe to already composed + answers. + + [...] + + Socialization and adaptation were the materials of a psychology and + sociology that regarded the nuclear family as the “factory” for the “production + of personalities” ready-made for conformity to the social norms of mass + society.12 Those “factories” also produced a great deal of pain: the feminine + mystique, closeted homosexuals, church-going atheists, and back-alley + abortions. Eventually, though, they even produced people like you and me. + + + [...] + + The free-market creed originated in Europe as a sweeping defense against + the threat of totalitarian and communist collectivist ideologies. It aimed to + revive acceptance of a self-regulating market as a natural force of such + complexity and perfection that it demanded radical freedom from all forms of + state oversight. Hayek explained the necessity of absolute individual and + collective submission to the exacting disciplines of the market as an + unknowable “extended order” that supersedes the legitimate political authority + vested in the state: “Modern economics explains how such an extended order… + constitutes an information-gathering process… that no central planning agency, + let alone any individual, could know as a whole, possess, or control.…”22 Hayek + and his ideological brethren insisted on a capitalism stripped down to its raw + core, unimpeded by any other force and impervious to any external authority. + Inequality of wealth and rights was accepted and even celebrated as a necessary + feature of a successful market system and as a force for progress.23 Hayek’s + ideology provided the intellectual superstructure and legitimation for a new + theory of the firm that became another crucial antecedent to the surveillance + capitalist corporation: its structure, moral content, and relationship to + society. + + [...] + + In 1976 Jensen and Meckling published a landmark article in which they + reinterpreted the manager as a sort of parasite feeding off the host of + ownership: unavoidable, perhaps, but nonetheless an obstacle to shareholder + wealth. + + [...] + + In the “crisis of democracy” zeitgeist, the neoliberal vision and its + reversion to market metrics was deeply attractive to politicians and policy + makers, both as the means to evade political ownership of tough economic + choices and because it promised to impose a new kind of order where disorder + was feared.25 The absolute authority of market forces would be enshrined as the + ultimate source of imperative control, displacing democratic contest and + deliberation with an ideology of atomized individuals sentenced to perpetual + competition for scarce resources. The disciplines of competitive markets + promised to quiet unruly individuals and even transform them back into subjects + too preoccupied with survival to complain.