Knowledge, authority, and power form a nested hierarchy of questions

Evidence

Any consideration of the division of learning must resolve these dilemmas expressed in three essential questions. The first question is “Who knows?” This is a question about the distribution of knowledge and whether one is included or excluded from the opportunity to learn. The second question is “Who decides?” This is a question about authority: which people, institutions, or processes determine who is included in learning, what they are able to learn, and how they are able to act on their knowledge. What is the legitimate basis of that authority? The third question is “Who decides who decides?” This is a question about power. What is the source of power that undergirds the authority to share or withhold knowledge? — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 569

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘who decides who decides’ nesting echoes the hierarchy-of-thought and meta-governance questions found throughout surveillance-capitalism literature and in Zuboff’s own earlier framing of instrumentarian power. — connects to: The examination fuses power relations with knowledge relations into one mechanism — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 284; Institutional allocation of rule-making duty depends on the type of question at stake — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in…, 4174
• DEFINE: Provides a clean three-level conceptual ladder: knowledge distribution (who knows), authority (who decides), power (who decides who decides) — useful for any analysis of organizational or platform governance.

Broader Connections

• The examination fuses power relations with knowledge relations into one mechanism #exemplifies (0.85) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 284