Instrumented workplaces act as testbeds for extending instrumentarian control to all of society

Evidence

Pentland understands his experiments and paid interventions in workplace settings as emblematic of the larger challenges of social relations in an instrumentarian society. Once again we see the intended path from the economic to the social domain. Those instrumented office workers function as living labs for the translation of instrumentarian relations to the wider society. … Like Nadella, Pentland described his aims as developing the social systems that would work along the same lines as the machine systems, using behavioral data flows to judge the “correctness” of action patterns and to intervene when it is necessary to change “bad” action to “correct” action. “If people aren’t interacting correctly and information isn’t spreading correctly,” Pentland warns, “people make bad decisions.… What you’re trying to do is make a human-machine symbiote, where the humans understand more about the network of interactions because of the computers, and the computers are able to understand more about how humans work.” — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1356

Categorization

• XREF: Pentland’s sociometric badges and ‘human-machine symbiote’ connect to Milgrom’s point about monitoring costs and to the reader’s broader interest in surveillance-capitalist methods of social control. — connects to: Instrumentarian society is a planned society enforcing total behavioral control — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1394; Pentland’s firms serve as proving grounds for instrumentarian techniques — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1347; Instrumentarian power arises from converging surveillance capabilities and monetized behavioral surplus — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1214 (+6 more)
• DEFINE: Illustrates how instrumentarian society moves from economic to social domain through behavioral data flows that judge and correct action patterns.

Broader Connections

• Instrumentarian power arises from converging surveillance capabilities and monetized behavioral surplus #expands (0.85) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1214
• Instrumentarian social principles operate as lived facts on current platforms #exemplifies (0.82) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1493
• Instrumentarian power governs through inducement and reinforcement rather than overt coercion #expands (0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1629
• Massive behavioral surveillance is the precondition for instrumentarian power and all its harms #corroborates (0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1558
• Workplace access restrictions function as organizational control over worker attention. #exemplifies (0.80) — Annual Review of Anthropology contributors (⚠ verify author line), The Political Economy of Attention, 32
• Platforms’ initial promise of freedom masks instrumentarian behavioral engineering #corroborates (0.78) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1492
• Disciplines function as machinery for capitalizing and accumulating time #corroborates (0.75) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 239