Economies of action get institutionalized into automated algorithms that modify behavior

Evidence

The experiment succeeded by producing social cues that “suggested” or “primed” users in ways that tuned their real-world behavior toward a specific set of actions determined by the “experimenters.” In this process of experimentation, economies of action are discovered, honed, and ultimately institutionalized in software programs and their algorithms that function automatically, continuously, ubiquitously, and pervasively to achieve economies of action. Facebook’s surplus is aimed at solving one problem: how and when to intervene in the state of play that is your daily life in order to modify your behavior and thus sharply increase the predictability of your actions now, soon, and later. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 939

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘economies of action’ as the institutionalization of behavioral experimentation into automated, pervasive software.
• XREF: connects to: Economic sociology should study what makes calculative action possible, not irrational intrusion — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial…, 65; Economics operates through material devices and algorithms as much as beliefs. — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial…, 95; Cybernetics framed global economy as price-driven feedback among guided agents — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the…, 832 (+22 more)

Broader Connections

• Platforms extract behavioral surplus from human activity to predict and modify it. #expands (0.85) — , The Braided Reading EPUB, 809
• Behavior-change techniques have migrated from face-to-face to automated digital tools at scale #corroborates (0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 2444
• Rule-based machine ethics produce unintended emergent consequences #complicates (0.72) — , The Braided Reading EPUB, 1591