Massive behavioral surveillance is the precondition for instrumentarian power and all its harms
Evidence
“No exit” is the necessary condition for Big Other to flourish, and its flourishing is the necessary condition for all that is meant to follow: the tides of behavioral surplus and their transformation into revenue, the certainty that will meet every market player with guaranteed outcomes, the bypass of trust in favor of the uncontract’s radical indifference, the paradise of effortless connection that exploits the needs of harried second-modernity individuals and transforms their lives into the means to others’ ends, the plundering of the self, the extinction of autonomous moral judgment for the sake of frictionless control, the actuation and modification that quietly drains the will to will, the forfeit of your voice in the first person in favor of others’ plans, the destruction of the social relations and politics of the old and slow and still-unfulfilled ideals of self-determining citizens bound to the legitimate authority of democratic governance. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1558
Categorization
- DEEPTHINKING: The whole edifice of surveillance capitalism is here compressed into one causal chain ending in the destruction of democratic self-determination—a dense synthesis worth sitting with.
- XREF: connects to: Instrumentarian power arises from converging surveillance capabilities and monetized behavioral surplus — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1214; 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 (+3 more)
Broader Connections
- Surveillance capitalism continuously intensifies the means of behavioral modification
#corroborates(0.90) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 37 - Instrumentarian power governs through inducement and reinforcement rather than overt coercion
#expands(0.85) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1629 - Surveillance capitalism’s behavioral modification now targets everyone rather than just captives
#corroborates(0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1025