Automated personalization exploits economic insecurity to extract surveillance forfeitures

Evidence

Varian casts personalization as a twenty-first-century equivalent of these historical dynamics, the new “necessaries” for the harried masses bent under the weight of stagnant wages, dual-career obligations, indifferent corporations, and austerity’s hollowed-out public institutions. Varian’s bet is that the digital assistant will be so vital a resource in the struggle for effective life that ordinary people will accede to its substantial forfeitures. “There is no putting the genie back in the bottle,” Varian the inevitabilist insists. “Everyone will expect to be tracked and monitored, since the advantages, in terms of convenience, safety, and services, will be so great… continuous monitoring will be the norm.” Everyone, that is, except those wealthy or stubborn enough to achieve effective life without Google’s assistance and thus escape the worst excesses of rendition. As decision rights and self-determination become privileges of the wealthy, what will Varian offer to answer those who clamor for the same? — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 802

Categorization

• XREF: Varian’s ‘genie out of the bottle’ inevitabilism echoes the technological determinism critique; connects to Marxist readings of capitalism’s self-justifying inevitability. — connects to: Surveillance capitalism exploits both extraction and our voluntary surrender via interfaces — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 734; Surveillance capitalism exploits the human hunger for recognition — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 797; Surveillance capitalism constitutes a coup against the people disguised as personalization — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1627 (+3 more)
• SEED: Angle: how Silicon Valley’s ‘inevitability’ rhetoric functions as a depoliticizing move that precludes democratic contestation — compare with climate denial’s fatalism.

Broader Connections

• Surveillance capitalism exploits both extraction and our voluntary surrender via interfaces #expands (0.85) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 734
• Surveillance capitalism constitutes a coup against the people disguised as personalization #corroborates (0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1627
• Surveillance capitalism exploits the human hunger for recognition #qualifies (0.75) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 797
• Randomized attacks double as surveillance instruments on crowds #complicates (0.72) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 673