Surveillance capitalism’s first move is seizing behavioral surplus from everyday life
Evidence
The first stage of successful dispossession is initiated by unilateral incursion into undefended space: your laptop, your phone, a web page, the street where you live, an e-mail to your friend, your walk in the park, browsing online for a birthday gift, sharing photos of your kids, your interests and tastes, your digestion, your tears, your attention, your feelings, your face. The incursion is when dispossession operations rely on their virtual capabilities to kidnap behavioral surplus from the nonmarket spaces of everyday life where it lives. The incursion initiates Google’s most basic and prolific form of dispossession: Arendt’s repeated “original sin of simple robbery.” Incursion moves down the road without looking left or right, continuously laying claim to decision rights over whatever is in its path. “I’m taking this,” it says. “These are mine now.” — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 437
Categorization
- DEFINE: Defines ‘incursion’ as the foundational stage of dispossession — the unilateral seizure of decision rights over daily life.
- XREF: Connects to Milgrom’s account of how institutions emerge from information problems — here the inverse: capital expropriates information from unguarded social space. — connects to: Behavioral surplus extraction forms the core logic of surveillance capitalism — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 70; Surveillance capitalism extracts behavioral surplus to predict and modify behavior. — , The Braided Reading EPUB: 5-Year…, 73; Surveillance capitalism converts everyday shared spaces into objects of commercial inspection — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 445 (+5 more)
Broader Connections
- Behavioral surplus extraction forms the core logic of surveillance capitalism
#corroborates(1.00) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 70 - Surveillance capitalism extracts behavioral surplus to predict and modify behavior.
#corroborates(0.85) — , The Braided Reading EPUB, 73