Surveillance capitalists dismissed privacy objections as habitual aversion to innovation

Evidence

Google continued to tough it out, waiting for habituation to kick in. That June it announced that Glass would offer the Livestream video-sharing app, enabling Glass users to stream everything around them to the internet in real time. When asked about these controversial and intrusive capabilities in the hands of any owner of the device, Livestream’s CEO reckoned, “Google is ultimately in charge of… setting the rules.” Sergey Brin made it clear that any resistance would be categorically rejected when he told the Wall Street Journal, “People always have a natural aversion to innovation.” — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 490

Categorization

• DEFINE: Brin’s dismissal of resistance as ‘natural aversion to innovation’ exemplifies the rhetorical move of reframing public objection as psychological defect rather than legitimate protest.
• XREF: connects to: Surveillance capitalism treats social trust as unnecessary friction to be eliminated — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1058; Surveillance capitalists exclude individuals because awareness is friction against knowledge production — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1027; Surveillance firms fight privacy law because regulation threatens behavioral surplus extraction — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 337

Broader Connections

• Surveillance capitalism treats social trust as unnecessary friction to be eliminated #complicates (0.72) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1058