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3.97 AVERAGE
3.97 AVERAGE
https://jamesvirusdiary2020.wordpress.com/2020/03/24/24-march-2020/
1. How does this cultural product reflect some aspect of the human condition?
“Surveillance Capitalism” is somewhat overwritten and under-edited. It’s meticulously sourced and draws from a huge array of sources, from patents filed with the U.S. government to interviews with disillusioned tech bros to conference notes from various techno-utopian gatherings, but Zuboff is somewhat too fond of her own voice to make it a fully immersive read. I’m not sure that a somewhat lyrical, allusive style coupled with interviews and journalism and secondary sources is a weakness in moderation, but by the end of the book I couldn’t stand the ponderousness of her pronouncements about the state of the world and the universe and her burning house and the thickness of the walls in her new house and how much she likes Hannah Arendt.
Still, I’d recommend it. Just skim over the paragraphs when she’s repeating her points and dig into the nitty-gritty of how Silicon Valley is not making the world a better place. I work at a STEM high school teaching social studies and I don’t mind using laptops all day so students can look up primary sources and work collaboratively and do a bunch of things that would be much harder on pencil and paper. I do mind the endless insistence on the value of technology at my school. Most people in computer science are not building robots. They’re coding machine learning to suck data out of searches and social media to sell people stuff. Most engineers who graduate from the two most prestigious colleges in my state are not building bridges. They’re building models to frack oil out of the ground or building missiles or building luxury condos downtown. This isn’t cynicism, its living in the world of neoliberalism without the capacity for critique.
Given these experiences at the school, her distinction between authoritarianism and the Skinnerian Walden Two dystopia that surveillance capitalism will create is 100% on point. Tech utopias are totally non-judgmental, bro. They want your stuff, not your soul. But your soul and its capacity for critique and the basic ability to be an autonomous, self-reflective individual is constantly under pressure in a world that requires constant engagement with digital tools. These tools value speed, engagement, and buying goods and services. These are the metrics of success in a world without privacy or antimonopoly regulations. There is no alternative to a digital capitalism that is built on colonizing your life to monetize it, except withdrawing from the aspects of the world that are being digitized and surveilled, and that will continue to get more difficult as more things become “smart.” Even if the only ideology of surveillance capitalism is a vague neoliberalism and desire to bow down to machine learning, that’s more than enough to hollow you out if you don’t actively fight it.
See you on the other side with my decade-old computer that’s unsupported by recent updates and a flip phone. I’m not dreaming of escaping from this world, but in Zuboff’s words, I’ll keep trying to create as much friction as I can.
2. Does this cultural product make me more or less anxious about the world at present?
MORE
I’ve heard on various podcasts that social media companies should be applauded for their attempts to moderate false coronavirus content and that in this moment they are helping many people to feel more connected and supported. As someone who does not participate in social media outside of virus times, I’m still not participating, and I still feel better about not doing it. After all, if we set the precedent of needing technology companies in these times, especially needing them to give federal or state governments location data to track assholes breaking shelter in place, then we will continue to feel like we need them after this is over. And that’s extremely frightening.
Think small businesses never reopening because Amazon and Postmates and Yelp finally complete their takeover of service jobs. Think location tracking of office drones to make sure they are always optimizing and always staying hygienic. Think a boom in online schools as data “shows” that remote learning “worked” during the virus. And think a level of social isolation that a virus could never do on its own.
1. How does this cultural product reflect some aspect of the human condition?
“Surveillance Capitalism” is somewhat overwritten and under-edited. It’s meticulously sourced and draws from a huge array of sources, from patents filed with the U.S. government to interviews with disillusioned tech bros to conference notes from various techno-utopian gatherings, but Zuboff is somewhat too fond of her own voice to make it a fully immersive read. I’m not sure that a somewhat lyrical, allusive style coupled with interviews and journalism and secondary sources is a weakness in moderation, but by the end of the book I couldn’t stand the ponderousness of her pronouncements about the state of the world and the universe and her burning house and the thickness of the walls in her new house and how much she likes Hannah Arendt.
Still, I’d recommend it. Just skim over the paragraphs when she’s repeating her points and dig into the nitty-gritty of how Silicon Valley is not making the world a better place. I work at a STEM high school teaching social studies and I don’t mind using laptops all day so students can look up primary sources and work collaboratively and do a bunch of things that would be much harder on pencil and paper. I do mind the endless insistence on the value of technology at my school. Most people in computer science are not building robots. They’re coding machine learning to suck data out of searches and social media to sell people stuff. Most engineers who graduate from the two most prestigious colleges in my state are not building bridges. They’re building models to frack oil out of the ground or building missiles or building luxury condos downtown. This isn’t cynicism, its living in the world of neoliberalism without the capacity for critique.
Given these experiences at the school, her distinction between authoritarianism and the Skinnerian Walden Two dystopia that surveillance capitalism will create is 100% on point. Tech utopias are totally non-judgmental, bro. They want your stuff, not your soul. But your soul and its capacity for critique and the basic ability to be an autonomous, self-reflective individual is constantly under pressure in a world that requires constant engagement with digital tools. These tools value speed, engagement, and buying goods and services. These are the metrics of success in a world without privacy or antimonopoly regulations. There is no alternative to a digital capitalism that is built on colonizing your life to monetize it, except withdrawing from the aspects of the world that are being digitized and surveilled, and that will continue to get more difficult as more things become “smart.” Even if the only ideology of surveillance capitalism is a vague neoliberalism and desire to bow down to machine learning, that’s more than enough to hollow you out if you don’t actively fight it.
See you on the other side with my decade-old computer that’s unsupported by recent updates and a flip phone. I’m not dreaming of escaping from this world, but in Zuboff’s words, I’ll keep trying to create as much friction as I can.
2. Does this cultural product make me more or less anxious about the world at present?
MORE
I’ve heard on various podcasts that social media companies should be applauded for their attempts to moderate false coronavirus content and that in this moment they are helping many people to feel more connected and supported. As someone who does not participate in social media outside of virus times, I’m still not participating, and I still feel better about not doing it. After all, if we set the precedent of needing technology companies in these times, especially needing them to give federal or state governments location data to track assholes breaking shelter in place, then we will continue to feel like we need them after this is over. And that’s extremely frightening.
Think small businesses never reopening because Amazon and Postmates and Yelp finally complete their takeover of service jobs. Think location tracking of office drones to make sure they are always optimizing and always staying hygienic. Think a boom in online schools as data “shows” that remote learning “worked” during the virus. And think a level of social isolation that a virus could never do on its own.
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
As one might guess from the title, this book takes the dimmest possible view of the tech industry as currently constructed. It's a compelling and useful case, even if it overindulges in its own academic jargon and seems at time weirdly unaware of the industry is it comparing to the 21st century version of totalitarianism.
Early in the book, Zuboff makes the important point that surveillance capitalism is not technology, but a business model. It requires technology to exist, but technology doesn't need surveillance capitalism. Instead, Google and Facebook found out that they could harvest "behavioral surplus" -- information that the use of their products created -- and turn it into a wholly new form of currency. Soon the entire economy followed in their footsteps, until today we are required to subject ourselves to commercial surveillance as a part of any economic interaction. "The very idea of a functional, effective, affordable product or service as a sufficient basis for economy exchange is dying," as she writes.
Zuboff notes that many eras of capitalism have been built on the discovery of an un-mined form of raw material that can be claimed at no cost and built into enormous empires. European imperialists sailed across the sea and claimed land without having to pay for it. Tech companies figured out ways to collect proprietary troves of personal data. Zuboff doesn't really bother even to frame this in the usual way, as an exchange, where users receive useful services in exchange for sharing this data. In her mind, any gains are so small they're not worth mentioning in comparison to what has been given up.
If she glosses over the benefits of tech platforms, Zuboff also can get a bit carried away with downsides. The book suffers from her inability to pick the best examples to make her main point, which is that the collection of personal data leads to irresistible behavior modification and the loss of autonomy. One of Zuboff's two main illustrations is Pokemon Go, a fad from a few years back. She then attacks it with ominous and dense academic prose.
Here she is describing how the ability of businesses to pay to promote their locations in the game is dystopian mind-control. "The game had demonstrated that it was possible to achieve economies of action on a global scale while simultaneously directing specific individual actions towards precise local market opportunities where high bidders enjoy an ever-closer approximation of guaranteed outcomes."
Pokemon Go is not dystopian mind-control. But YouTube and Facebook may be! Yet Zuboff doesn't even seem aware of how content recommendation algorithms drive people towards conspiracy theories and extreme content because the computers learn that this is what keep people engaged with the content for the longest. This is totally what she's talking about when she goes about "radical indifference" -- the tendency of tech platforms to control people's behavior without caring what they're actually doing.
These shortcomings are frustrating given that 1) this is a long-ass book, and 2) a lot of what she's getting at has real merit. Wading through the book's excesses is worth it, though, because the framework of a really scary argument is all here. Among Zuboff's many analogies, the one that lingered with me what her comparison of surveillance capitalism to industrial capitalism. In industrial capitalism, great economic fortunes were made at the expense of fundamental damage to the environment. With surveillance capitalism, the pollution is damaging human nature instead.
Early in the book, Zuboff makes the important point that surveillance capitalism is not technology, but a business model. It requires technology to exist, but technology doesn't need surveillance capitalism. Instead, Google and Facebook found out that they could harvest "behavioral surplus" -- information that the use of their products created -- and turn it into a wholly new form of currency. Soon the entire economy followed in their footsteps, until today we are required to subject ourselves to commercial surveillance as a part of any economic interaction. "The very idea of a functional, effective, affordable product or service as a sufficient basis for economy exchange is dying," as she writes.
Zuboff notes that many eras of capitalism have been built on the discovery of an un-mined form of raw material that can be claimed at no cost and built into enormous empires. European imperialists sailed across the sea and claimed land without having to pay for it. Tech companies figured out ways to collect proprietary troves of personal data. Zuboff doesn't really bother even to frame this in the usual way, as an exchange, where users receive useful services in exchange for sharing this data. In her mind, any gains are so small they're not worth mentioning in comparison to what has been given up.
If she glosses over the benefits of tech platforms, Zuboff also can get a bit carried away with downsides. The book suffers from her inability to pick the best examples to make her main point, which is that the collection of personal data leads to irresistible behavior modification and the loss of autonomy. One of Zuboff's two main illustrations is Pokemon Go, a fad from a few years back. She then attacks it with ominous and dense academic prose.
Here she is describing how the ability of businesses to pay to promote their locations in the game is dystopian mind-control. "The game had demonstrated that it was possible to achieve economies of action on a global scale while simultaneously directing specific individual actions towards precise local market opportunities where high bidders enjoy an ever-closer approximation of guaranteed outcomes."
Pokemon Go is not dystopian mind-control. But YouTube and Facebook may be! Yet Zuboff doesn't even seem aware of how content recommendation algorithms drive people towards conspiracy theories and extreme content because the computers learn that this is what keep people engaged with the content for the longest. This is totally what she's talking about when she goes about "radical indifference" -- the tendency of tech platforms to control people's behavior without caring what they're actually doing.
These shortcomings are frustrating given that 1) this is a long-ass book, and 2) a lot of what she's getting at has real merit. Wading through the book's excesses is worth it, though, because the framework of a really scary argument is all here. Among Zuboff's many analogies, the one that lingered with me what her comparison of surveillance capitalism to industrial capitalism. In industrial capitalism, great economic fortunes were made at the expense of fundamental damage to the environment. With surveillance capitalism, the pollution is damaging human nature instead.
A must read.
Not least because it breaks down some of the commonly held myths surrounding this age of technology. The human cost is high and to the very least we should be informed about what it entails.
Not least because it breaks down some of the commonly held myths surrounding this age of technology. The human cost is high and to the very least we should be informed about what it entails.
informative
medium-paced
Did not finish it. I may pick it up at a later date.
Insightful. More than a little assumptive of the reader's values. I think she does an excellent job coining language and establishing a memorable and useful framework to analyze the direction many companies are moving. The prescriptive sections get tedious by the end.
Fascinating book that clearly reveals and explains complex ideas and principles that form the foundation of our present moment of crisis in the tech economy. It is also profoundly and dangerously wrong in incredibly important ways. Extremely well worth reading in a room where you won’t break anything if you throw it in frustration.