Surveillance capitalism’s defining change operates without violence by displacing the will to will

Evidence

The narratives of Facebook’s experimental maneuvers, Pokémon Go’s prototype of a behavioral-futures-market–dominated society, and the endless examples of digital innovation crushed under the heel of the surveillance creed may be as close as we get to a public announcement of history-illuminating change that moves through us and among us, irreversibly altering life as we have known it. There is no violence here, only the steady displacement of the will to will that has been embodied in self-determination, expressed in the first-person voice, and nourished in the kind of sanctuary that depends upon the possibility of private life and the promise of public freedom. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1212

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘will to will’ and ‘first-person voice’ notions connect to the book’s earlier discussion of psychic numbing and to Zuboff’s account of how the second-person voice of prediction replaces the first-person voice. — connects to: Surveillance capitalism moves from predicting behavior to actively shaping it in real time — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 481