Surveillance capitalism’s core activities proceed by misrepresenting extraction as something else

Evidence

The vast and varied ground campaign already underway turns the prediction imperative into concrete activity. In pursuit of economies of scope, a wave of novel machine processes are honed for extraction, rendering people and things as behavioral data. For the sake of economies of action, the apparatus learns to interrupt the flow of personal experience in order to influence, modify, and direct our behavior, guided by the plans and interests of self-authorizing commercial actors and the buzzing market cosmos in which they participate. In nearly every case the agents of institutionalization present their novel practices as if they are one thing, when they are, in fact, something altogether different. The realpolitik of commercial surveillance operations is concealed offstage while the chorus of actors singing and dancing under the spotlights holds our attention and sometimes even our enthusiasm. They sweat under the stage lights for the sake of one aim: that we fail to notice the answers or, better yet, forget to ask the questions: Who knows? Who decides? Who decides who decides? — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 722

Categorization

• DEFINE: Concisely distills the two operative mechanisms of surveillance capitalism — economies of scope (extraction) and economies of action (influence) — and names the theatrical concealment that drives institutionalization.
• DEEPTHINKING: The ‘Who knows? Who decides? Who decides who decides?’ cascade is a compact epistemological question about the recursive delegation of power that resists easy summary — one of the book’s most densely packed formulations.
• APHORISMS: The three-part question — who knows, who decides, who decides who decides — functions as a durable test for interrogating any concentration of institutional power.
• SEED: The stagecraft metaphor — the apparatus performing one thing while being another — could anchor an essay on how institutions theatrically channel our attention away from their actual operations.
• XREF: connects to: Behavioral surplus extraction forms the core logic of surveillance capitalism — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 70; Institutionalization made surveillance capitalism’s practices appear necessary and inevitable — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 388; Rendition is the first operational step of surveillance capitalism’s dispossession project — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 754 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Behavioral surplus extraction forms the core logic of surveillance capitalism #expands (0.85) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 70
• Institutionalization made surveillance capitalism’s practices appear necessary and inevitable #complicates (0.75) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 388