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Shoshana Zuboff é um nome que surge amiúde sempre que se fala dos impactos problemáticos das atuais tecnologias de comunicação, nomeadamente as produzidas pelas 4 grandes tecnológicas — GAFA (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon). Tendo lido uma enorme quantidade de coisas boas sobre a autora, que vem com o pedigree da Ivy League, não fiquei depois muito impressionado com o modo como discute a técnica por detrás da tecnologia, parecendo ficar muitas vezes à porta da complexidade desta, focando-se mais nos quadros de impactos macro, muitas vezes desligados da efetiva capacidade das tecnologias. E assim, talvez não seja surpreedente não ter gostado particularmente do seu livro "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism" (2019).

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https://virtual-illusion.blogspot.com/2022/10/regular-o-capitalismo.html

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I learned a lot. I feel a bit overwhelmed. The book is long, nearly 700 pages. It also really made me rethink how much information we give up for the benefit of "ease" in our day-to-day life (Goodreads is a good example of this).

Here are some of my notes and takeaways:

- Surveillance capitalists' no longer rely on people as consumers; instead, they anticipate the behaviour of populations and groups. This results in users (us) becoming sources of raw material for digital age production. So when people say "Twitter's users are its product" - we aren't, really, we are the people who give them the product (raw data). That being said, individual customers do continue to exist, but for the most part, social relations are no longer founded on mutual exchange. Rather, products/services are merely hosts for the parasites that are surveillance capitalists'.

- The idea of radical indifference isn't one I've explored before, so I'm curious to look into that. And how reliant the market is on this indifference, in its control of knowledge/freedom.

- This book definitely answers the question as to why websites like FB, YouTube, and Twitter would never ever ban the explicitly harmful content (threats, alt-right and other hate groups...) because positives and negatives are equivalent on these sites. The product is snaring everyone, doesn't matter what they're doing or who they are.

- In the "information civilization", the aim is not to dominate nature but rather human nature - the focus has shifted from machines that overcome the limits of bodies, to machines that modify the behaviour of individuals in the service of market objectives.

- "We have to have the will and right to answer the questions: who knows? who decides? who decides who decides?" and I appreciated that the author rejects our inability, ensuring us that we still have time to take action.

This book has given me a lot to think about! I do think it's too long for me to say "Hey, give this one a shot" but if you have the chance, give it a read.
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Useful insights and tons of data points, but extremely annoying writing style. Should be a lot shorter.
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