Fiche de Lecture-"The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power", Zuboff Soshana, 2019

Summary

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power is a non-fiction book, written by the Professor Shoshana Zuboff and published in 2019 by Profile Book; which is about « the darkening of the digital dream and its rapid mutation into a voracious and utterly novel commercial project » (page18) that the author call Surveillance Capitalism (that she started studying in 2006).

For the present reading note, I chose to focus on the Chapter 1 Home or Exile in the digital future, which permitted me to have a clear introduction to the author’s thesis and will by writing her book. The second chapter that I chose is the 13rd: Big other and the rise of instrumentarian power, in order to have an understanding of the « purpose » of the surveillance capitalism, in order to understand why it has been developed. After a presentation of the author, the thesis of the book, I will go on a deep summary of the two chapters, by selecting the main interesting ideas. Secondly, I will provide connections and academic references in order to feed the topic of research we focus on and to cross it with other case studies. Finally, I will conclude by giving my personal concern on the concept and the reality of Surveillance Capitalism.

The author, Shoshana Zuboff, born in 1951, is an American academic, sociologist and professor at the Harvard Business School. Her writings focus on commercial companies operating on the internet and their impact on human societies. She first published a book, in 1988, The Age of the Smart Machine: the future of work and power, which have great impact on our ways of seeing the computerization’s impacts on organizations and work and how and in which ways digital technologies change the work of workers and managers. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, the Fight for a human future at the new frontier of power; a book of 18 chapters and 663 pages, has been considered as one of the top non-fiction books of 2019 by The New Yorker. She introduces the concept of Surveillance Capitalism, which describes an economic system which is centered on the commodification on personal data in order to make profit. Her thesis is the following: in this new system she calls « surveillance capitalism », capitalists rules remain the same (profit maximisation, objective of growth, competitive production) but a new logic of accumulation- that I am gonna synthesize- is appearing. She uses an unusual multi-disciplinary and level methodology, building her research on interviews, calls, speeches, conferences etc. of high-technologies companies programs and policies, primarily in the Sillicon Valley.

Before going deeper on the book analysis, it is crucial to portray the concept of Surveillance Capitalism which is a multi-dimensional notion.

As Zuboff explains, Surveillance capitalism « unilaterally claims human experience as free raw material for translation into behavioral data. Although some of these data are applied to 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 behavioral futures markets» (page 18). She really described it as a new economic order- a capitalism mutation- which is taking place little by little, and that use hidden commercial parti es in order to extract, predict and sales citizens and users’s data. In other words, after being extracted (thought millions of different sensates), our datas are feeding machine intelligence or manufacturing processes which will in turn fabric prediction products « that anticipate our future behaviors and those predictions are traded and monetized in what she calls behavioural futures markets.

In the beginning of Chapter 1, Zuboff is underlining a big paradox : the fact that we, as citizens, we are celebrating a new networked world when it enriches ou prospects and capabilities and our rationalization of the situation, considering that « we have nothing to hide ». For example, she is developing the example of the « Aware Home » or the contemporary version of it which is the « smart-home », valued at $36 billion dollars in 2018 (page 14). This is the idea of turning the home into a « living laboratories » that uses different aware sensors or technologies in order to emphasized the simplicity and sovereignty of individual living in their new secured home. However, in parallel of our ignorance, we are blind about the fact that this same world is creating violence by controlling us, without being even aware of that.

The same Smart-home is collecting so many data and connect it with so many other products in order to make user’s life easier (at least this is how companies are selling it). Indeed, this new storage of datas, which is thus knowledges about citizens’ lives, and thus power for someone (reorientation from knowledge to power in order to automate us, page 18)... but for whom? Google...and new ones (that she calls the Puppet Master).

The author focus her researches on Google, Facebook and Microsoft. Indeed, the book exposes a business models, first used by Google, that underpins deeper the digital world of our century and let appear a new mutation of the capitalism system we are living in. According to the author, « Google is to capitalism surveillance what Ford and General Motors were to corporate capitalism » (p.65), the founders. She codes and depicts deeply a powerful new form of capitalism. However, let us take in mind that surveillance capitalism is not a bunch of technologies; the latter are only means, or « an expression of the economic objectives that direct it into action » (page 31).

Several times, Zuboff warns the reader on the importance of the subject she focus on by saying that, nowadays, the informations and communications technologies (ICT) are even more widespread than electricity around the planet. She also underlying the book’s interest when she shows the unprecedented nature of this system (p.24-28), which «enabled it to elude systematic contest » (p.24) and the necessity to create new categories and concepts. Indeed, in Chapter 13, she underlines that the instrumentarian power (enabled by surveillance capitalism) is not, as we can think, a new kind of « digital totalitarianism » (page 318) which would bring it closer to an omnipresent Big Brother (and George Orwell’s metaphor) aiming at controlling people’s minds. Rather, she prefers the metaphor of a « non totalitarian Big Other » (page 322) « that bends the new digital apparatus to the interests of the surveillance capitalist project » (page 316), in order to maximize surveillance revenues from behavior modification. In Chapter 13, the author explains that Big Other is just extracting this behavioral surplus, without caring about what we think or feel etc. She explains that « From Big Other’s point of view, we are strictly Other-Ones: organisms that behave »p.319. Or again, Page 323: « Instrumentarian power operates from the vantage point of the Other-One to reduce human persons to the mere animal condition of behavior shorn of reflective meaning ». She compares this extraction to the monstrueuse massacre of elephants for their ivory tusks. It will is thus to fabric and shape, in a predictable way, user’s behaviors, to profitable outcomes, through smart networked devices. But this is an even more perverse domination because « instead of death, torture, reeducation or conversion, instrumentarian effectively exiles us from our own behavior » (page 319). Thus the power is nowadays relying with the ownership of behavioral modification’s means (and not anymore the means of production). And the pernicious nature of this system is describe in chapter 13 when exposing the idea of the new collective order is based on total certainty and citizens’ consent to this (through declaration, self-authorization, signature of the terms of uses etc).

An other main idea is the new configurations between this instrumentarian power with the state power itself. As private sector is developing a lot of techniques in order to collect and process datas and then make their decisions based on it, we also witness a rise of this use of information-intensive strategies by the state power in order to compete with the market capabilities (Chapter 13, Section III, page 323 ). This is the case when it comes to terrorism: intrumentarian power is seen as « the solution » by the states to the threat, through improving means of detection and counterattacking. It is even more striking when it comes to the « China syndrome » (section IV) and the state’s use of the « social credit system » at the core of China’s agenda; a system that, as we know, track the good and bad behavior across citizens’ activities, assigning them rewards and punishments in order to shape intensely their behaviors and all the aspects of their lives. For Zuboff, this is the perfect example of an instrumentarian power, « fed by public and private data sources and controlled by an authoritarian state » and thus, achieving social rather than market outcomes (as we witness in Western World) by using the behavioral surplus. However, for Zuboff, it is pretty the same, as soon as we are also ranked on Facebook, Uber or eBay and she should keep in mind that this is part of the Silicon Valley strategy to « nudge » citizens towards « better behaviors ». She thus warn about the path technology’s similarities taken all over the world and not only on the « other’s ground » as we tend to think where looking at China.

To sum up, Chapter 13 permits to have a good understanding of what is and what is not the surveillance capitalism, comparing and opposing the two species of power : the totalitarianism (of the XXe, Big Brother’s metaphor) and instrumentarianism (enabled by surveillance capitalism, or the Big Other metaphor). The means of power of the first is the administration of terror, the latter uses ownership of the means of behavioral modification ; the transcendant purpose of the first is the perfection of society defined by class or race, the latter aims at automate the market or the society for the certainty of guaranteed outcomes; the foundational mechanisms of the first is arbitrary terror and murder, the matter uses the dispossession of behavioral surplus for computation control and prediction. This draws the unprecedented situation regarding the surveillance capitalism, which make this book a real necessity.

Finally, I would like to finish the chapters summary by quoting an importance sentence of the end of Chapter 13: « The price we pay is not with our bodies but with our freedom » (page 334).

Comments on related topics, connections to other case studies or academic references

The first related controversy that comes to mind regarding the surveillance economy is the Snowden (see Olivier Stone movie, 2016) affair in 2013, when he made public top-secret information from the NSA regarding the capture of phone call metadata and a whole system of internet surveillance in the US, revealing the unsuspected extent of cyber-surveillance on a global level. 5 years later, the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal refers to the personal data of 87 million Facebook users that the company Cambridge Analytica (CA) exploited (cf Trump Election) and which was used to influence voting intentions in favor of politicians who retained the services of CA and in particular a software platform called "Ripon" created by AggregateIQ. According to a former employee: « Without Cambridge Analytica, there would have been no Brexit ».

In the same way, the shock-documentary "Behind Our Smoke Screens" (Jeff Orlowski) warns on the "digital dummies" that are social networks : certainly a bit crude, the film has the merit of putting a real image on these "Behavioral Surpluses" that Zuboff talks about. We can quickly see the danger of this system when the flows of social networks lock us into ideological bubbles, accentuate the confinement of extreme right-wing ideals and the dissemination of conspiracy theories and the support of groups such as the flat- earthers and white supremacists.

Also, the article of Jardar “Østbø, Hybrid surveillance capitalism :Uber’s model for Russia’s modernization” (1) , the author expands Zuboff’s theory by identifying a new model for Russia’s modernization. Indeed, the author studies the transition of Sberkonf, a Russian bank, onto a state-owned tech company that compete and performs state actions, through an ever-increasing people’s behavior modifications and impose liberals solutions in leading spheres (bringing anything but democracy).

Finally, I would like to underline a very interesting podcast named « Nos Cerveaux sous contrôle» (2), from David Colon, part of the podcast « Sismique »5, which, according to me, echoes to Surveillance Capitalism. It helped me to better understand the techniques of propaganda and mass manipulation and it develops the approach on persuasive technology used by the tech-industry. Tristan Harris, who works as a design ethicist for Google, said: « We, in the technology industry, have created tools to destabilize and erode the fabric of societies in every country in the world ». It is an interesting reference to warn that weaknesses in human psychology can be exploited by MAMAs (Meta-Amazon- Microsoft-Alphabet).

Personal opinion and concern for this kind of issues and concepts

I chose this topic because it seems to me that it is a reality that we are all half aware of, because we see signs of it every day -just by opening instagram and seeing a proposal to advertise a discounted Easyjet ticket to Amsterdam, whereas we were talking about a memory in our student residence when we lived in Amsterdam with Lily, 10 minutes before- we don not realize the extent and the unprecedentedness of this growing system. It is a subject that interests me particularly because I wonder every day about this slip of governments towards an unprecedented ultraliberal policy. The Capitalism's proponents claim that it promotes freedom. But we witness the total opposite: the gradual privatization of public infrastructure, the tendency to treat any social element as a business, or the use of the "new management techniques » which raises an automated technocracy... In France, the case of Linky electrical counter or l’Éspace Numérique Santé proposed by the government is a clear prove that government is totally ready to be a facilitator of this new system.

For me, this book intersects well with the techno-critical french philosopher Eric Sadin’s trilogy of books, which question philosophical concept of reality, judgement and action destabilized by an invisible hand -made up of artificial intelligence- which represents an anti humanist attacks and the new human condition at the technological era.I am really asking myself how far will we go in transmuting humans into numbers ? How far will we go in reducing the human experience to a computer game?

In my opinion, this topic raises serious ethical questions about our identity and capacity for action and free will as human beings. And, finally, let us remind us that Primo Levi wrote that "every era has its own fascism ».

(1) Jardar Østbø (2021) Hybrid surveillance capitalism: Sber’s model for Russia’s modernization, Post-Soviet Affairs, 37:5,https://www-tandfonline-com.acces-distant.sciencespo.fr/doi/pdf/ 10.1080/1060586X.2021.1966216?needAccess=true

(2) #85-Nos cerveaux sous contrôle- David Colon, 2 mars 2022, https://www.sismique.fr/post/85- nos-cerveaux-sous-controle-david-colon