Treating humans as a swarm is the foundation of instrumentarian society.

Evidence

The God view persuades him that assessing human action really is comparable to counting beavers: “We can observe humans in just the same way we observe apes or bees and derive rules of behavior, reaction, and learning.” In all of these populations, the collective exerts pressure on each organism to go with the flow, stay with the herd, return to the hive, and take flight with the flock. Idea flows mimic the pattern of the machine hive, the edge conflates with the hub, identity yields to and synchrony, the parts dissolve in the whole. … I believe that we can we think of each stream of ideas as a swarm or collective intelligence, flowing through time, with all the humans in it learning from each other’s experiences in order to jointly discover the patterns of preferences and habits of action that best suit the surrounding physical and social environment. This is counter to the way most modern Westerners understand themselves, which is as rational individuals, people who know what they want and who decide for themselves what actions to take in order to accomplish their goals. … This shift from society to swarm and from individuals to organisms is the cornerstone upon which the structure of an instrumentarian society rests. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1391

Categorization

• XREF: Challenges the rational-individual model of economics broadly; resonates with critiques of behavioral economics and with the author’s argument against behaviorism. — connects to: Instrumentarian society is a planned society enforcing total behavioral control — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1394; Instrumentarian society reduces individuals to collective herd-like existence with no exit — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1699; Instrumentarian power governs through inducement and reinforcement rather than overt coercion — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1629 (+2 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The swarm-versus-individual shift as the cornerstone of instrumentarian society is a genuinely paradigm-level reframing tying governance to a social ontology.

Broader Connections

• Instrumentarian society reduces individuals to collective herd-like existence with no exit #expands (0.85) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1699
• Instrumentarian society is a planned society enforcing total behavioral control #expands (0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1394
• Instrumentarian power arises from converging surveillance capabilities and monetized behavioral surplus #expands (0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1214
• Instrumentarian power governs through inducement and reinforcement rather than overt coercion #expands (0.75) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1629
• Instrumentarianism’s observational viewpoint originates in radical behaviorism’s view of humans as controlled organisms #corroborates (0.70) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1143