Machine-enforced unilateral control substitutes for legally binding mutual promises

Evidence

Recall Varian’s assertion that if someone stops making monthly car payments, “Nowadays it’s a lot easier just to instruct the vehicular monitoring system not to allow the car to be started and to signal the location where it can be picked up.” Varian calls this new capability a “new contract form,” when in reality the uncontract abandons the human world of legally binding promises and substitutes instead the positivist calculations of automated machine processes. Without so much as a tip of the cap and a “fare-thee-well,” Varian’s uncontract disposes of several millennia of societal evolution during which Western civilization institutionalized the contract as a grand achievement of shared will. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1047

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the uncontract by contrast with the historical contract’s mutual, legally binding promised exchange.
• XREF: Connects to Milgrom’s law-merchant analysis of how institutionalized promise-keeping made trade possible — the uncontract reverses that entire institutional foundation. — connects to: A commitment mechanism can substitute for trust in transactions — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 897; Enforcing one’s own promises requires a supporting legal or information structure — Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 40; Hostages and shared vulnerability render agreements self-enforcing — Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 313
• SHARE: Narrow enough that someone working specifically on Varian’s ‘new contract form’ claims or on smart-contract critique would care.

Broader Connections

• A commitment mechanism can substitute for trust in transactions #corroborates (0.90) — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 897
• Enforcing one’s own promises requires a supporting legal or information structure #corroborates (0.80) — Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 40
• Hostages and shared vulnerability render agreements self-enforcing #corroborates (0.75) — Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 313