Inevitability rhetoric erases the fingerprints of actual power holders

Evidence

The relentless drumbeat of inevitabilist messages presents the new apparatus of ubiquity as the product of technological forces that operate beyond human agency and the choices of communities, an implacable movement that originates outside history and exerts a momentum that in some vague way drives toward the perfection of the species and the planet. The image of technology as an autonomous force with unavoidable actions and consequences has been employed across the centuries to erase the fingerprints of power and absolve it of responsibility. The monster did it, not Victor Frankenstein. However, the ankle bracelet does not monitor the prisoner; the criminal justice system does that. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 703

Categorization

• APHORISMS: ‘The ankle bracelet does not monitor the prisoner; the criminal justice system does that’ is a compact, reusable formulation of attributing agency correctly.
• XREF: Connects directly to work on technological determinism and to sociotechnical critiques like Winner’s ‘Do Artifacts Have Politics?’. — connects to: Inevitabilist rhetoric frames political choices as unopposable historical necessities — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 693; Inevitability rhetoric is a fraud that disables resistance to power — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 704; Neutral scholarship rhetoric often conceals worldly power connections — Edward W. Said, Covering Islam: How the Media and the…, 309 (+2 more)
• ADDENDUM: The ‘monsters made by men but not controllable by them’ framing extends the Frankenstein thread that would pair naturally with the trees-as-infrastructure piece on how built systems outrun their builders.

Broader Connections

• Inevitability rhetoric is a fraud that disables resistance to power #corroborates (0.95) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 704
• Historical inevitability claims overreach; the past never dictates the future #corroborates (0.85)
• The Leader’s power becomes structural necessity rather than personal superiority #expands (0.80)
• Neutral scholarship rhetoric often conceals worldly power connections #corroborates (0.75) — Edward W. Said, Covering Islam, 309