Tech CEOs publicly described total knowledge of users as their ambition

Evidence

As Google’s Eric Schmidt observed in 2010, “You give us more information about you, about your friends, and we can improve the quality of our searches. We don’t need you to type at all. We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re thinking about.” Satya Nadella of Microsoft understands all physical and institutional spaces, people, and social relationships as indexable and searchable: all of it subject to machine reasoning, pattern recognition, prediction, preemption, interruption, and modification. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1581

Categorization

• XREF: Schmidt’s quote resonates with the surveillance-capitalist inversion of Hayek’s division-of-knowledge argument from earlier paragraphs. — connects to: Tech elite treat total connectivity and information as unquestioned articles of faith — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 694; Behavioral engineering once reviled is now openly embraced by tech leadership — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1266; Tech leaders openly claim broad social impact as developers’ mandate. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1295 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Platform executives speak as social theorists to legitimize their data extraction models #expands (0.85) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 426
• Corporate data-as-asset rhetoric reframes untapped user data as a trillion-dollar revenue source #expands (0.75) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 506
• Internet platforms gained unprecedented power to manufacture user behavior #expands (0.75) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 941
• A handful of unelected executives control the world’s information and social connection #expands (0.72) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 406