New economic order

In the Age of Surveillance Capitalism, Shoshana Zuboff defines Surveillance Capitalism as a new economic order that claims human experiences as free raw material for hidden commercial practices of extraction prediction and sales. She, begins her story visiting a paper milling town in the 1980s where a plant manager ruminated on the difference between you working for a robot and a robot working for you.

The moment became a touch stone for Zuboff’s career in academia as along with a “Home Aware” project at the beginning of the century. The basic assumption of the project’s scientists and engineers was that the data being generated as part of system would be owned by the people who lived in the house.

It’s a far remove, she notes from the Smart Home as it is promoted today, where Nest and other arrays of thermostatic sensors eagerly harvest individuals’ data to sell advertising and to feed predictive models.

Zuboff is dealing with history and the biggest questions. She is dealing from a strong point: the existential question of whether a society will produce masters and slaves is played out again and again through time. It is going to take effort but I am looking forward to her analysis of the battle going on in this regard today. - Jack Vaughan