Surveillance Capitalism: Really The State's Minions
Is Surveillance Capitalism Really Capitalism At All? (Money image from stevepb via Pixabay.)An article that got me thinking
A good friend pointed me to a very interesting article on Zero Hedge. https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-01-20/goal-automate-us-welcome-age-surveillance-capitalism
On Zero Hedge Tyler Durden is sharing excerpts from an article in The Guardian. Here's the original.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jan/20/shoshana-zuboff-age-of-surveillance-capitalism-google-facebook
Really, if I had the time to do it right, I'd bypass articles covering other articles, including interviews, and simply go read the book to report back on it! For now, I'm going to settle for sharing the thoughts that this article and interview brought out in me.
A conflict of philosophy and values, but...
First of all, in addition to being overtly anti-Catholic, this John Naughton seems to place an awfully high value on the values of "democracy" as some sort of gold standard for civilization. Any proper libertarian will quickly point out how democracy is a system used to grant supposed legitimacy to specific individuals, granting them powers that they inevitably use to pillage and loot a country at a higher rate than any monarch would ever dare. Anybody who is a fan of the constitutional republic as a form of government will just as quickly point out that among 53 prominent documents (The Declaration of Independence, The US Constitution, the constitutions of all 50 states, and the Communist Manifesto) only one of these documents actually promotes "democracy" (you guessed right: it's the Communist Manifesto). So, right off the start I have to observe that the writer's point of view is philosophically and morally against my own, but there is still a lot in this article that stirs thoughts. I'll share some of them here.
Why blame capitalism?
The article's title, as well as the topic book, Shoshana Zuboff'sThe Age of Surveillance Capitalism, reveal a disturbing trend where terrible behaviors are attributed to capitalism and seen as inevitable unless regulations like the utterly horrible GDPR are put in place to save us all. People who think this way believe that governments are here to help and will truly fix "surveillance capitalism." People who think like this don't understand that governments love the panopticon these companies are creating and will only provide a superficial gloss of "we're here to protect your privacy from those evil corporations," while neglecting to share the diabolical reality of their crony capitalist partnerships. Not that I'm a fan of the term "crony capitalism" any more than I'm a fan of the term "surveillance capitalism." Both terms defame the concept of capitalism while describing nothing of the sort. These terms describe crony systems that fit the true definition of fascism. I believe that surveillance capitalism is just the tip of the the surveillance state iceberg. The State has been a willing accomplice and participant in these behaviors from the beginning. I contend that surveillance capitalism wouldn't exist without the State's involvement.
Real capitalism is the answer
The answer to surveillance capitalism is simply more capitalism. The article and Zuboff observe native communities that were taken by surprise and that the public has been in much the same position to be taken advantage of by the State and their Big Data minions. The reason for the imbalance is that the public didn't realize how valuable their behaviors, privacy, and their attention truly were. Value can only be discovered in the marketplace, and people are beginning to wake up to the value that they've been squandering for services and trinkets that don't begin to compensate.
In this next market-based stage, people are looking at technologies including encryption, zero-knowledge systems, and privacy-based blockchains. Such systems are already enabling consumers to control and even market their information, while steering their attention to decentralized systems. Once again, we will see services that charge their customers directly, but will do so at a very low price and will compete to provide the most value and the best experience possible.
Tell us what you think!
Do you think I'm full of it? Please tell me what you think in the comments section below. If you have ideas about how to cater to the emerging marketplace I've described above, please share them with Ethical Developer Group. This is exactly what we are about!
Posted from my blog with SteemPress : https://edgcert.com/2019/01/31/surveillance-capitalism/