Civilization’s foundational elements are being digitized and governed by intelligent algorithms

Evidence

The result is that both the world and our lives are pervasively rendered as information. Whether you are complaining about your acne or engaging in political debate on Facebook, searching for a recipe or sensitive health information on Google, ordering laundry soap or taking photos of your nine-year-old, smiling or thinking angry thoughts, watching TV or doing wheelies in the parking lot, all of it is raw material for this burgeoning text. Information scholar Martin Hilbert and his colleagues observe that even the foundational elements of civilization, including “language, cultural assets, traditions, institutions, rules, and laws… are currently being digitized, and for the first time, explicitly put into visible code,” then returned to society through the filter of “intelligent algorithms” deployed to govern a rapidly multiplying range of commercial, governmental, and social functions. The essential questions confront us at every turn: Who knows? Who decides? Who decides who decides? — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 575

Categorization

• QUESTION: Hilbert’s claim that rules, laws, and traditions being put into visible code for the first time warrants chasing the original research.
• DEFINE: Introduces the core surveillance-capitalism question of epistemic authority: Who knows, who decides, who decides who decides.
• XREF: connects to: Dataism elevates algorithmic power above the older ecological view of life — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 605; AI is increasingly being integrated into everyday tasks. — Joanna Stern, I Am Not a Robot- My Year Using AI to…, 711; AI-generated content can overwrite the living memory of indigenous communities. — , The Braided Reading EPUB: 5-Year…, 1123 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Dataism elevates algorithmic power above the older ecological view of life #expands (0.85) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 605
• AI is increasingly being integrated into everyday tasks. #exemplifies (0.80) — Joanna Stern, I Am Not a Robot- My Year Using AI to…, 711
• Economies of action get institutionalized into automated algorithms that modify behavior #expands (0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 939
• AI-generated content can overwrite the living memory of indigenous communities. #exemplifies (0.78) — , The Braided Reading EPUB, 1123
• Civilization progresses by replacing imitative learning with rational domination #contradicts (0.72) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 810