Surveillance capital derives from the dispossession of human experience
Evidence
Although there is nothing unusual about the prospect of capitalist enterprises seeking every kind of knowledge advantage in a competitive marketplace, the surveillance capitalist capabilities that translate ignorance into knowledge are unprecedented because they rely on the one resource that distinguishes the surveillance capitalists from traditional utopianists: the financial and intellectual capital that permits the actual transformation of the world, materialized in the continuously expanding architectures of Big Other. More astonishing still is that surveillance capital derives from the dispossession of human experience, operationalized in its unilateral and pervasive programs of rendition: our lives are scraped and sold to fund their freedom and our subjugation, their knowledge and our ignorance about what they know. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1583
Categorization
- DEFINE: Names the mechanism distinguishing surveillance capitalists from utopianists: they possess the capital to actually construct Big Other; and defines surveillance value as derived from ‘rendition’ of lived experience.
- XREF: connects to: Surveillance capital now extracts surplus from inner bodily and emotional signals. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 906; Surveillance capitalism threatens human sovereignty over life and authorship of experience — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1650; Surveillance capitalism rewards ‘boundarylessness’ to extract predictive surplus from inner life — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 903 (+3 more)
Broader Connections
- Surveillance capitalism threatens human sovereignty over life and authorship of experience
#expands(0.85) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1650 - Surveillance capitalism rewards ‘boundarylessness’ to extract predictive surplus from inner life
#expands(0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 903 - Surveillance capitalism rests on extreme inequalities of knowledge and power
#expands(0.75) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 45