Personalization euphemistically extends dispossession from web crawling to self crawling

Evidence

“Personalization” is once again the euphemism that spearheads this generation of prediction products manufactured from the raw materials of the self. These innovations extend the logic of earlier iterations of dispossession: from web crawling to reality crawling to life crawling to self crawling. As has been the case in each iteration, insights and techniques once intended to illuminate and enrich quickly disappear into the magnetic field of the commercial surveillance project, only to reappear later as ever more cunning methods of supply, manufacture, and sales. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 846

Categorization

• DEFINE: A tidy escalation ladder (web to reality to life to self crawling) that defines each generation of behavioral-surplus extraction.
• ADDENDUM: The dispossession-by-euphemism pattern parallels how tamarisk air-conditioning, bark cloth, and other ‘benign’ techniques in the trees essay got absorbed into commercial infrastructure.
• XREF: connects to: Data extraction infrastructures deform the self that autonomy and freedom depend on — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 148; Framing technology as autonomous disguises who profits from data extraction — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 511; The Quantified Self movement concedes individual property rights in data — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 519 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Data extraction infrastructures deform the self that autonomy and freedom depend on #expands (0.78) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 148
• Personal branding online creates performative doppelgangers demanding constant attention #exemplifies (0.75) — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 32
• Framing technology as autonomous disguises who profits from data extraction #corroborates (0.72) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 511
• The Quantified Self movement concedes individual property rights in data #qualifies (0.70) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 519