Facebook’s vision subordinates whole societies, not just users, to its predictive embrace

Evidence

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg shares these totalistic ambitions, and he is increasingly frank about “society,” not just the individuals within it, as subordinate to Facebook’s embrace. His “three big company goals” include “connecting everyone; understanding the world; and building the knowledge economy, so that every user will have ‘more tools’ to share ‘different kinds of content.’” Zuckerberg’s keen appreciation of second-modernity instabilities—and the yearning for support and connection that is among its most-vivid features—drives his confidence, just as it did for Google economist Hal Varian. The corporation would know every book, film, and song a person had ever consumed. Predictive models would enable the corporation to “tell you what bar to go to” when you arrive in a strange city. The vision is detailed: when you arrive at the bar, the bartender has your favorite drink waiting, and you’re able to look around the room and identify people just like you. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1279

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Zuboff’s earlier definition of surveillance capitalism and the prediction imperative, plus Hal Varian’s economist role introduced earlier in the book. — connects to: Corporations now command a ‘God view’ of the social world called social caching — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 580; Facebook constitutes an active prototype of instrumentarian society, not a future forecast — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1481; Facebook exposure drives social comparison and envy on an unprecedented scale — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1476 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Facebook constitutes an active prototype of instrumentarian society, not a future forecast #expands (1.00) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1481
• Facebook engineers openly aspired to map all human behavior #corroborates (0.95) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1580
• Facebook builds fabricated social realities that normalize surveillance as interaction. #corroborates (0.90) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 348
• Facebook’s adolescent-designed practices were institutionalized for the whole population #expands (0.85) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1423
• Facebook exposure drives social comparison and envy on an unprecedented scale #complicates (0.70) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1476