Google Maps marked surveillance’s shift from knowledge to influence and control

Evidence

Street View’s redirection and elaboration announced a critical shift in the orientation and ambition of the surveillance program: it would no longer be only about routes, but about routing. We will examine this new episode of dispossession in the chapters that follow. For now, suffice to say that Street View and the larger project of Google Maps illustrate the new and even more ambitious goals toward which this cycle of dispossession would soon point: the migration from an online data source to a real-world monitor to an advisor to an active shepherd—from knowledge to influence to control. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 480

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes ‘routes’ from ‘routing’ and names the four-stage migration from data source to shepherd as the core trajectory of surveillance capitalism.
• XREF: connects to: Google’s mapping games served as test beds for expanding surveillance capitalism into physical space — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 472; Google’s Street View debut disguised surveillance expansion as friendly privacy respect — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 447; Surveillance capitalism moves from predicting behavior to actively shaping it in real time — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 481

Broader Connections

• Surveillance capitalism moves from predicting behavior to actively shaping it in real time #corroborates (0.85) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 481
• Google’s Street View debut disguised surveillance expansion as friendly privacy respect #exemplifies (0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 447