Shoshana zuboff, a professor at harvard business school, has coined the phrases “surveillance capitalism” and “surveillance economy”. In her new book, she defines surveillance capitalism as. The unilateral claiming of private human experience as free raw material for translation. Into behavioral data. In normal english, this means that your personal, private, and behavioral. Data can be used as a resource for companies to make money from. These data are then computed and packaged as prediction products and sold into behavioral. Futures markets — business customers with a commercial interest. In knowing what we will do now, soon, and later.
This economic logic has now spread beyond the tech companies to new surveillance
Based ecosystems in virtually every economic sector, from insurance to automobiles to health, education, finance, to every product described as “smart” and every service described as “personalized.” by now it’s very difficult to participate effectively in society without interfacing with these same channels that are supply chains for surveillance capitalism’s data flows.
She gives three ways, or ‘arenas’ to change list of phone number this dynamic. First, we need a sea change in public opinion. This begins with the power of naming. It means awakening to a sense of indignation and outrage. We say, “no.” we say, “this is not ok.”
Second, we need to muster the resources of our democratic institutions in the form of law and regulation. These include, but also move beyond, privacy and antitrust laws. We also need to develop new laws and regulatory institutions that specifically address the mechanisms and imperatives of surveillance capitalism.
A third arena relates to the opportunity for competitive solutions
Every survey of internet users has shown that once people become aware of surveillance capitalists’ backstage practices, they reject them. That IG Users points to a disconnect between supply and demand: a market failure. So once again we see a historic opportunity for an alliance of companies to find an alternative ecosystem — one that returns us to the earlier promise of the digital age as an era of empowerment and the democratization of knowledge.
Surveillance capitalism has the potential to fundamentally change who we are. Left to their own devices, the data harvesters will continue to take in vast amounts of our personal information, with or without our consent. They are forced to follow the profit motive to its ultimate destination. The time to start setting limits and finding solutions is now.
