THE AGE OF SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM by Shoshana Zuboff (Profile Books 2019)
‘The fight for a human future at the new frontier of power’ – that is the dramatic subtitle of this important study which warns that our very humanity is at stake as a result of fast-moving changes in technology over the last two decades.
Shoshana Zuboff is the Charles Edward Wilson Professor Emerita at Harvard Business School so one would expect that she is not one to exaggerate without good cause. As you read her brilliant and powerfully argued book, you realise she has good reason to express the negative view that surveillance capitalism is “a form of tyranny that feeds on people but is not of the people”.
Some of the invasion of privacy and manipulative actions she documents are probably known to most readers but it is the sheer scope and range of the influence that is so terrifying. The lawless and anti-democratic escalation of surveillance capitalist corporations leads to the chilling realisation that it may already be too late to halt or restrict their influence.
Without any controls or restrictions these bodies can pretty well do as the please and they have taken full advantage of this to infiltrate every aspect of our lives. Practically everyone on the planet is now traceable and trackable. We are all connected whether we like it or not. Opting out is no longer an option.
With the accumulation of vast knowledge we have reached the point where personal information is increasingly used not only to monitor actions but to enforce standards of behaviour. As Zuboff notes, “The more that is known about a person, the easier it is to control him.” She catalogues the ways that “surveillance capitalists’ new instruments will render the entire world’s actions and conditions as behavioural flows.”
We are constantly encouraged to share opinions and information with the quid pro quo being that the applications and features will work for our greater good. The promise is that our lives will become easier, more productive and more comfortable. In reality, the information gathered on such an epic scale is not intended to find solutions to help us nor to resolve problems of poverty, inequality or injustice but is used to maximise the profits of corporations.
George Orwell’s Big Brother in 1984 was the personification of a totalitarianism society that manipulated and dictated the thoughts and actions of its citizens. Zuboff adapts the metaphor to label the 21st Century controlling force “Big Other”. She writes “Instrumentarianism seeks totality as a condition of market dominance, and it relies on its control over the division of learning in society, enabled and enforced by Big Other, to clear its path.”
In other words, digital connection is now a means to others’ commercial ends made possible by a profoundly undemocratic abuse of power. Zuboff reminds us that “there was a time when you searched Google, but now Google searches you.” The information plundered says more about us than we can know about ourselves and consistent with Yuval Noah Harari’s assertion that human beings are now hackable animals.
The promise of a life of freedom and ease is the lure but how can we possibly regard ourselves as free when our thoughts are routinely tapped to find patterns of preference and when we are being herded toward predictable behaviour. Humans learn by empathy but machines learn by analysing data no matter how personal or private. Individuality is a threat to instrumentarian society since “unpredictable behaviour is equivalent to lost revenue.”
This book is a desperate appeal to fight back and mount collective action to resist the “profound psychic numbing” that has enabled corporations to seize control of our hearts and minds so efficiently. In this regard, Zuboff says that the newness of the menace has to be recognized : “We risk catastrophe when we assess new threats through the lens of old experience.”
If you are an optimist there perhaps remains a slim chance that our digital future can be reclaimed as a benefit to, not a curse upon, society but don’t hold your breath! It already seems to me that we are well past the tipping point. Zuboff warns that “power untamed by democracy can only lead to exile and despair” but this statement would also ring true if written in the past tense rather than as warning of the shape of things to come.
She rightly argues that it requires bold new laws and the collective expression of outrage and opposition for the tide to turn. But it’s hard to see where the impetus to such fundamental change will come from. When you travel around and see young and old staring at their devices as if they were life support systems, there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of revolutionary zeal to challenge corporate power.
Education and awareness are key to finding an alternative way of living. The excellent Netflix documentary, The Social Dilemma, shows that Zuboff is by no means alone in realizing the scale of the problem and of the urgent need to act right now.
As an educator herself she is in a position to influence her students and urge them question habits and attitudes they take for granted. In the closing chapter she gives an insight into how to promote a more enlightened and humane approach to technology by revealing some of the things she tells her students: “I tell them that the word ‘search’ has meant a daring existential journey, not a finger tap to already existing answers; that ‘friend’ is an embodied mystery that can be forged only face-to-face and heart-to-heart; and that ‘recognition’ is the glimmer of homecoming we experience in our beloved’s face, not ‘facial recognition’. “
When I read these lines I was moved to tears. What her words encapsulate is the extent to which we have all lost sight of some fundamental values that lie at the heart of any civilised society. ‘No more’ is the declaration Shoshana Zuboff ends with. If her empassioned plea is ignored the fight for a human future will be lost.
