Incremental normalization erodes perception of surveillance’s expanding scope
Evidence
Our sensibilities grow numb to the monstrosity of Big Other as its features are developed, tested, elaborated, and normalized. We become deaf to the lullaby of walls. Hiding from the machines and their masters drifts from the obsessions of the vanguard to a normal theme of social discourse and eventually our conversations around the dinner table. Each step down this path occurs as if in the fog of war: scattered fragments and incidents that appear abruptly and often in obscurity. There is little room to perceive the pattern, let alone its origins and meaning. Nonetheless, each deletion of the possibility of sanctuary leaves a void that is seamlessly and soundlessly filled by the new conditions of instrumentarian power. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1568
Categorization
- DEEPTHINKING: The fog-of-war dynamic — violations arriving as scattered fragments so the pattern stays invisible — is a genuinely paradigm-shifting account of how surveillance normalization works psychologically.
- XREF: connects to: Surveillance architecture requires perceptual asymmetry between observer and observed — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 526; The American War on Terror normalized pervasive state surveillance well beyond Orwell’s imaginings — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 261; Unpredictable surveillance produces self-surveillance and disempowerment in its targets — , Selod, Saher - Forever Suspect_…, 482
Broader Connections
- Surveillance architecture requires perceptual asymmetry between observer and observed
#expands(0.85) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 526 - The American War on Terror normalized pervasive state surveillance well beyond Orwell’s imaginings
#exemplifies(0.82) — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 261 - Unpredictable surveillance produces self-surveillance and disempowerment in its targets
#corroborates(0.78) — , Selod, Saher - Forever Suspect_…, 482