Instrumentarian social principles operate as lived facts on current platforms
Evidence
From this vantage point, we see that the full scope of the Facebook operation constitutes a vast experiment in behavior modification designed not only to test the specific capabilities of its tuning mechanisms, as in its official “large-scale experiments,” but also to do so on the broadest possible social and psychological canvas. Most significantly, the applied utopistics of social pressure, its flywheel of social comparison, and the closed loops that bind each user to the group system vividly confirm Pentland’s theoretical rendering of the case. Instrumentarian social principles are evident here, not as hypotheses but as facts, the facts that currently constitute the spaces where our children are meant to “grow up.” — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1493
Categorization
- QUESTION: How exactly does ‘social comparison’ operate as a flywheel in the tuning mechanism? Worth chasing the mechanism further.
- XREF: Directly confirms Pentland’s instrumentarian model from earlier in the book — the theoretical rendering now shown as empirically actual. — connects to: Instrumentarian society is a planned society enforcing total behavioral control — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1394; Instrumented workplaces act as testbeds for extending instrumentarian control to all of society — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1356; Facebook constitutes an active prototype of instrumentarian society, not a future forecast — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1481 (+3 more)
Broader Connections
- Instrumentarian power governs through inducement and reinforcement rather than overt coercion
#expands(0.95) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1629 - Instrumentarian power arises from converging surveillance capabilities and monetized behavioral surplus
#expands(0.90) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1214 - Instrumentarian power differs fundamentally from twentieth-century totalitarianism
#expands(0.85) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1121