Utopian techno rhetoric is strategic propaganda that legitimates surveillance capitalism’s drive toward totality

Evidence

As Nadella and other surveillance capitalists spin their utopian dreams, the surveillance capitalists fail to mention that the magical age they envision comes at a price: Big Other must expand toward totality as it deletes all boundaries and overwhelms every source of friction in the service of its economic imperatives. All power yearns toward totality, and only authority stands in the way: democratic institutions; laws; regulations; rights and obligations; private governance rules and contracts; the normal market constraints exercised by consumers, competitors, and employees; civil society; the political authority of the people; and the moral authority of individual human beings who have their bearings. … Instrumentarian power, like the apprentice’s broom, has flourished in the sorcerer’s absence with little authority to check its action, and the surveillance capitalists’ appetite for totality has grown with this success. The utopian rhetoric of a magical age has been critical to this progress. The notion that Big Other will solve all of humanity’s problems while empowering each individual is usually dismissed as mere “techno utopianism,” but it would be a mistake for us to ignore this rhetoric without examining its purpose. Such discourse is no mere hogwash. It is the minesweeper that precedes the foot soldiers and the canny diplomat sent ahead to disarm the enemy and smooth the way for a quiet surrender. The promise of a magical age plays a critical strategic role, simultaneously distracting us from and legitimating surveillance capitalism’s totalistic ambitions that necessarily include “people” as a “first class object.” — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1284

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the strategic function of techno-utopian rhetoric as minesweeper/diplomat, not mere hype.
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that utopian rhetoric is not delusion but tactical legitimation for totalistic power reframes how to read CEO pronouncements; dense and field-shifting.
• XREF: connects to: Technocratic illusion legitimizes depoliticization by presenting policy as mere administration — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2699; Smart-city narratives mask extractive data capitalism by rendering the unconnected invisible. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 460; Inevitabilism is a rhetorical cover for contingent capitalist choices driving surveillance. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 709 (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Surveillance capitalism’s inevitabilist ideology presents its power as natural like a glacier #expands (0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1258
• Surveillance capitalism may realize Skinner’s utopia in service of profit #qualifies (0.75) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1188
• Believing surveillance capitalism is inevitable is itself a form of capitulation #expands (0.72) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1652