Why are We Not More Worried About Surveillance Capitalism
Most stories of my life at this moment in time begin with the statement “Yesterday, I was watching a video on”. So, yesterday I was watching a video on TikTok and it was all about surveillance capitalism. Specifically, the video focused on the research and writing from Professor Shoshanna Zuboff’s book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power.
In the book, Zuboff gives an extensive definition of surveillance capitalism, but simply stated, the term can be used to describe an economic model which is based on the commodification of personal information and data. Regardless of whether you know the terminology, practices like data mining have made surveillance capitalism common knowledge to the public. However, what isn’t always common knowledge is the effects and future possibilities that an economy engaged in surveillance capitalism will bring.
Specifically, the video I was watching referenced Facebook’s experimentation with the newsfeed in order to manipulate the emotions and behaviors of its users, and I couldn’t help but be reminded that this commonly used example is now almost a decade old. In…
