Physical assets are becoming tradeable commodities in real-time digital markets

Evidence

In place of “policy” or a “social contract,” it is capitalism, and increasingly surveillance capitalism, that shapes the action. New behavioral futures markets and “targeted applications” are eagerly awaited. As Microsoft’s director of the machine intelligence platform for integrating and analyzing data from the “internet of things” says, “The part that’s equally cool and creepy is what happens after everybody and their competitor gets on board with smart devices: a big secondary market for data… a secondary revenue source.” These markets, he explains, are “just like Google or Facebook’s” markets for targeted advertising.” An IBM report concurs: “Thanks to the internet of things, physical assets are turning into participants in real-time global digital markets. The countless types of assets around us will become as easily indexed, searched and traded as any online commodity.… We call this the ‘liquification of the physical world.’” — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 653

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines IBM’s phrase ‘liquification of the physical world’ — a key concept for the expansion of behavioral futures markets.
• XREF: Connects to the book’s prediction markets and ‘rendition’ framework; also resonates with financialization of everything. — connects to: The Internet of Things extends capital extraction into post-purchase consumption — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 49; Platforms divide into asset-owning product platforms and asset-outsourcing lean platforms — Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, 64; Customers become tradeable assets under cartel allocation agreements (+1 more)
• ADDENDUM: The ‘secondary market for data’ logic parallels the grafting/trees article’s theme of living infrastructure being converted into extractive commodities.
• SEED: Angle: the ‘liquification of the physical world’ as a staged definitional triumph — how IBM’s marketing vocabulary pre-empts any public debate about whether physical space should become tradeable.

Broader Connections

• Customers become tradeable assets under cartel allocation agreements #exemplifies (0.82)
• Becoming an asset exceeds property relations and needs separation from socio-material context #expands (0.75) — Paul Langley, Assets and Assetization in…, 27