Surveillance-based firms acquire machine-intelligence companies to capture behavioral surplus supply routes
Evidence
While financial scholars and investors debated the consequences of these share structures, absolute corporate control enabled the Google and Facebook founders to aggressively pursue acquisitions, establishing an arms race in two critical arenas. State-of-the-art manufacturing depended on machine intelligence, compelling Google and later Facebook to acquire companies and talent representing its disciplines: facial recognition, “deep learning,” augmented reality, and more. But machines are only as smart as the volume of their diet allows. Thus, Google and Facebook vied to become the ubiquitous net positioned to capture the swarming schools of behavioral surplus flowing from every computer-mediated direction. To this end the founders paid outsized premiums for the chance to corner behavioral surplus through acquisitions of an ever-expanding roster of key supply routes. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 326
Categorization
- DEFINE: Explains the ‘extraction imperative’ mechanism driving acquisition sprees.
- XREF: connects to: Behavioral surplus extraction forms the core logic of surveillance capitalism — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 70; Behavioral-prediction markets recruit merchants and insurers into the surveillance economy. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1083; Instrumentarian power arises from converging surveillance capabilities and monetized behavioral surplus — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1214
Broader Connections
- Behavioral surplus extraction forms the core logic of surveillance capitalism
#expands(0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 70 - Instrumentarian power arises from converging surveillance capabilities and monetized behavioral surplus
#complicates(0.78) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1214 - Behavioral-prediction markets recruit merchants and insurers into the surveillance economy.
#expands(0.72) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1083