Asymmetries of knowledge and power divide humanity into tuners and the tuned

Evidence

Human replenishment from the failures and triumphs of choosing the future in the face of uncertainty gives way to the blankness of perpetual compliance. The word trust lingers, but its referent in human experience dissolves into reminiscence, an archaic footnote to a barely remembered dream of a dream that has long since faded for the sake of a new dictatorship of market reasons. As the dream dies, so too does our sense of astonishment and protest. We grow numb, and our numbness paves the way for more compliance. A pathological division of learning forged by unprecedented asymmetries of knowledge and power fixes us in a new inequality marked by the tuners and the tuned, the herders and herded, the raw material and its miners, the experimenters and their unwitting subjects, those who will the future and those who are shunted toward others’ guaranteed outcomes. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1060

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the contrast pairs — tuners/tuned, herders/herded, experimenters/subjects — that define the new inequality of surveillance capitalism.
• XREF: connects to: Studying other cultures without repression requires rethinking knowledge and power — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 93; The tyrant’s sophism divides humanity into self-transcendence and others’ immanence — Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 103; Possessing inside technical knowledge lets ordinary citizens feel superior to activists — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics: how Americans…, 989 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• The tyrant’s sophism divides humanity into self-transcendence and others’ immanence #epitomizes (0.80) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 103
• Studying other cultures without repression requires rethinking knowledge and power #expands (0.75) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 93