Surveillance capitalism’s prediction imperative modifies behavior using secret means beyond awareness.
Evidence
Now the story of surveillance capitalism moves in this new direction. In Part II, I invite you to rekindle your sense of astonishment as we follow the trail of this second economic imperative defined by the prediction of human behavior. The prediction imperative enlarges the complexity of surplus operations as economies of scale are joined by economies of scope and economies of action. These new disciplines drive surveillance capitalism far into the intimate reaches of our daily lives and deep into our personalities and our emotions. Ultimately, they compel the development of highly inventive but resolutely secret new means to interrupt and modify our behavior for the sake of surveillance revenues. These operations challenge our elemental right to the future tense, which is the right to act free of the influence of illegitimate forces that operate outside our awareness to influence, modify, and condition our behavior. We grow numb to these incursions and the ways in which they deform our lives. We succumb to the drumbeat of inevitability, but nothing here is inevitable. Astonishment is lost but can be found again. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 612
Digital technology, to sum up Shoshana Zuboff’s (2019) recent groundbreaking work, is being increasingly weaponized as an instrument of global surveillance and control for the benefit of an elite group of hyper-capitalists. In her book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, Zuboff describes this weaponization as indicative of a new economic stage of technological development that she calls “surveillance capitalism,” where predicting and modifying human behavior via digital technologies are key strategies for producing revenue and market control. — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 515
Categorization
- DEFINE: Defines the prediction imperative and introduces the ‘right to the future tense’ as the fundamental right at stake.
- corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 612; James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed:…, 515
- XREF: connects to: Walmart’s power operates through securitization linking financial risk management to surveillance — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 558; Surveillance capitalism moves from predicting behavior to actively shaping it in real time — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 481; New surveillance technologies are deliberately disguised in familiar forms to ease adoption. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 488 (+7 more)
Broader Connections
- Surveillance capitalism extracts behavioral surplus to predict and modify behavior.
#corroborates(0.92) — , The Braided Reading EPUB, 73 - Surveillance capitalism operates through Big Other to engineer behavior rather than souls
#expands(0.82) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1196 - Surveillance capitalism aims to produce guaranteed outcomes rather than impose behavioral norms
#qualifies(0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 629 - Surveillance capitalism may realize Skinner’s utopia in service of profit
#expands(0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1188