Behavioral engineering once reviled is now openly embraced by tech leadership

Evidence

Seven decades ago, Skinner’s proto-instrumentarian behavioral utopia, Walden Two, was met with revulsion. Today the real thing is inspirational fodder for surveillance capitalist rhetoric as leaders promote the tools and visions that will bring the old professor’s ideas to life… to our lives. The processes of normalization and habituation have begun. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1266

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes this reader’s deep-listening and silence readings about normalization of what was once intolerable. — connects to: Contemporary power struggles now turn on engineered behavior modification, not class relations — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 969; Ed-tech firms openly link behavioral conditioning to profit-making from user action. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 927; Platforms’ initial promise of freedom masks instrumentarian behavioral engineering — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1492 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Facebook engineers openly aspired to map all human behavior #exemplifies (0.90) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1580
• Tech CEOs publicly described total knowledge of users as their ambition #exemplifies (0.90) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1581
• Platforms’ initial promise of freedom masks instrumentarian behavioral engineering #corroborates (0.85) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1492