Mutual surveillance becomes the habitat within which social conformity is engineered
Evidence
Pentland understands that Big Other is not only an architecture that monitors and controls things. Big Other’s instrumentation and data flows also make people mutually visible to one another, from the updates on your breakfast to the population flows in cities. Back in 2011, Pentland enthused, “Revolutionary new… infrastructures are providing us with a God’s eye view of ourselves.” The aim is a computer-mediated society where our mutual visibility becomes the habitat in which we attune to one another, producing social patterns based on imitation that can be manipulated for confluence, just as the logic of the machine hive suggests. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1365
Categorization
- XREF: Echoes the ‘machine hive’ logic from Zuboff’s earlier chapters and connects to Goffman on co-presence; also strongly parallels the always-on visibility concerns in surveillance studies. — connects to: Social media surveillance is symmetrical, making watchers desire being watched themselves — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 571; Surveillance harms by invading the self’s space on another’s behalf. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 471; Surveillance capitalism feeds on the social transformations it causes — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1104 (+13 more)
- STORYSTEM: A society where everyone watches everyone and conformity is engineered through visibility and imitation — a near-future setting where social trust has been fully replaced by calibrated mutual surveillance.
Broader Connections
- Surveillance capitalism feeds on the social transformations it causes
#expands(0.85) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1104 - Unpredictable surveillance produces self-surveillance and disempowerment in its targets
#corroborates(0.85) — , Selod, Saher - Forever Suspect_…, 482 - Surveillance platforms weaponize empathy and belonging to herd behavior commercially
#expands(0.82) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1492 - Surveillance capitalism operates through Big Other to engineer behavior rather than souls
#expands(0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1196 - Surveillance capitalism recasts social connectedness as a medium for guaranteed outcomes.
#expands(0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1310 - Behavioral surplus extraction forms the core logic of surveillance capitalism
#expands(0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 70 - Conformity functions as adaptive social coordination, not weakness
#complicates(0.80) - Surveillance capitalism moves from predicting behavior to actively shaping it in real time
#expands(0.78) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 481 - Surveillance capitalism’s behavioral modification creates heteronomous individuals contrary to democratic ideals
#complicates(0.75) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1003 - Anonymity leaves some prosocial residue but surveillance reliably amplifies it
#expands(0.75)