https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeaSxCN2uw8&rel=0
Shoshana Zuboff keynote speech on surveillance capitalism
I come before you today not only as a
thinker a scholar and author but also as
a citizen and a mother over the last two
decades I have observed the birth and
spread of an unprecedented mutation of
capitalism that I call surveillance
capitalism I have voiced concerns about
its implications for our economies for
the prospects of a market democracy for
privacy and indeed for the future of
capitalism itself during these last
seven years of in-depth study I came to
understand that the consequences of
surveillance capitalism reach far beyond
these terrains of the economy the deeper
truth is that surveillance capitalism
promises to transform 21st century
society in ways that are profoundly anti
human and anti-democratic and all for
the sake of surveillance revenues as a
result of these ambitions surveillance
capitalism’s most dangerous threats will
fall heavily on our children who are
already the first to roam its frontiers
while the Titanic power struggles of the
20th century were between industrial
capital and labor the 21st century finds
surveillance capital pitted against the
entirety of our societies right down to
each individual member the competition
for surveillance revenues bears down on
our bodies our children our homes and
our cities challenging human autonomy
and democratic sovereignty and a battle
for power and profit as violent as any
the world has seen surveillance
capitalism cannot be imagined as
something out there in the factories and
offices of an earlier age instead its
aims and effects are here our us
the future that surveillance capitalism
has in store for us enters on slippered
fees like the snake whispering in the
garden it exploits our longed for
liberation from anonymity stress
inequality and institutional
indifference it commands the seductive
first-person voice in the languages of
empowerment personalization and
convenience always pledging that help is
on the way let me tell you friends help
is not on the way but we are we are on
the way to a comprehensive understanding
of surveillance capitalism and its
dangers I have devoted considerable time
to this work of deep naming because I
know that naming is the first step
toward taming interrupting and even
outlawing this rogue capitalism in
favour of the values and freedoms
required to nurture defend and protect
individual autonomy and the democratic
prospect for our families and for the
generations to come my new book the age
of surveillance capitalism examines
three domains first the foundational
mechanisms and economic imperatives of
surveillance capitalism second the
unprecedented form of power set into
motion by these economic imperatives and
third the implications of both of these
for 21st century society in the short
time we have together today I begin at
the beginning with the question what is
surveillance capitalism though my
thoughts must necessarily be brief I
hope that they will stimulate new
conversations and that many of us will
find new ways to work together toward a
digital future that we can call home so
what is surveillance capitalism it has
long been understood that capitalism
evolves by claiming things that exist
outside of
market dynamic and turning them into
market commodities for sale and purchase
in historian carpel Anya’s 1944 grand
narrative of the great transformation to
a self-regulating market economy
he described the origins of this
translation process in three astonishing
and crucial mental inventions that he
called commodity fictions the first was
that human life could be subordinated to
market dynamics and reborn as labour to
be bought and sold the second was that
nature could be translated into the
market and reborn as land or real estate
the third was exchange reborn as money
the age of surveillance capitalism
originates in an even more startling and
audacious mental invention as
surveillance capitalism declares private
human experience as free raw material
for translation into production and
sales once private human experience is
claimed for the market it is translated
into behavioral data for computation and
analysis while some of these data may be
supplied to product or service
improvements the rest are declared as a
proprietary behavioral surplus the
surplus includes data with substantial
predictive value that exceed what is
required for improving products and
services know that when we speak of
behavioral surplus extracted from
private human experience
nothing is exempt these operations began
with behavioral surplus drawn from
online browsing search and social media
behavior but they now encompass every
movement conversation facial expression
sound text an image that is can be or
will be accessible to the always-on
ubiquitous digital extraction
architecture that I call big other in
this digital surround every smart and
connected device interface and touch
point is redefined as a node in the vast
supply network dedicated to relentlessly
tracking hunting inducing and taking
more behavioral surplus the hunt for
surplus is driven by a new competitive
struggle in a world of highly
commoditized products and services
companies now turn to behavioral surplus
as the long sought-after glory road to
higher margins
the result is whole new ecosystems of
behavioral circle suppliers as companies
from every sector seek ways to
participate in this Universal
expropriation of private experience
among these growing stores of
proprietary surplus we find your tears
the clench of his jaw in anger the
secrets of your children that they share
with their dolls our breakfast
conversations and sleep habits the
decibel levels in my living room the
location of the furniture in their home
the thinning treads on your running
shoes your hesitation as you survey the
sweaters laid out on the table in the
shop and the exclamation points that
follow a Facebook post once composed in
innocence and hope these new supply
chains ultimately feed a new means of
production known as machine intelligence
these are the new age factories where
behavioral surplus is fabricated into
what I call prediction products
calculations that anticipate what we
will do now soon and later finally these
prediction products are rapidly swept up
into the life of the market traded in
new
constituted marketplaces for behavioral
predictions that I call behavioral
futures markets surveillance capitalists
have grown immensely wealthy from these
trading operations as many companies are
eager to lay bets on our future behavior
forget the cliche that if it’s free you
are the product you are not the product
but merely the free source of raw
material from which products are made
for sale and purchase i think of
elephants that most majestic of mammals
surveillance capitalism poaches our
behavior for surplus and leaves behind
all the meaning lodged in our bodies our
brains and our beating hearts not unlike
the monstrous slaughter of elephants for
ivory you are not the product you are
the abandoned carcass the product
derives from the surplus that is ripped
from your life what are the origins of
surveillance capitalism surveillance
capitalism is a human creation
it lives in history not in technological
inevitability surveillance capitalism
was pioneered and elaborated through
trial and error at Google in much the
same way that the Ford Motor Company
once discovered the new economics of
mass production or General Motors
discovered the logic of managerial
capitalism surveillance capitalism was
invented as the solution to financial
emergency in the teeth of the dot-com
bust when the fledgling company faced
the loss of investor confidence as
investor pressure mounted Google’s
leaders decided to boost ad revenue by
using their exclusive access to user
data logs in combination with their
already substantial analytical
capabilities and computational power to
fabricate predictions of user
click-through rates
taken as a signal of an as relevance
operationally this meant that Google
would both repurpose it’s growing cache
of behavioral data
now put to work as a behavioral surplus
and develop methods to aggressively seek
new sources of behavioral surplus
according to its own scientists accounts
the company developed new methods of
surplus capture that were prized for
their ability to find data that users
intentionally opted to keep private and
to infer extensive personal information
that users did not or would not provide
now this additional surplus would be
analyzed for predictive patterns that
could match a specific ad with a
specific user these new methods were
invented and deployed from 2001 to 2004
and they were held in the strictest
secrecy only when Google went public in
2004 did the world learn that during
that period
Google’s revenues increased by over
three thousand five hundred percent it
is now clear that this shift in the use
of behavioral data was an historic
turning point behavioral surplus was the
game-changing zero-cost asset that could
be diverted from service improvement
toward a genuine market exchange however
this was not an exchange with users but
rather with other companies who learned
how to make money from low-risk bets on
a user’s future behavior surveillance
capitalism migrated to Facebook with
Google turned Facebook executive Sheryl
Sandberg and quickly rose to become the
default model of information capitalism
attached to nearly every internet
companies start up an app like an
invasive species with no natural
predators its financial prowess quickly
overwhelmed the network’s fear grossly
disfiguring the earlier dream of digital
technology as an empowering an
emancipatory
while online advertisers were the
dominant players in these early
histories of the new behavioral futures
markets surveillance capitalism is no
more restricted to online ad targeting
than mass production was restricted to
the Model T today any actor with an
interest in monetizing probabilistic
information about our behavior can pay
to play in a range of behavioral futures
markets where our futures are told and
sold surveillance capitalism is not
technology while it is impossible to
imagine surveillance capitalism without
the digital it is easy to imagine that
digital without surveillance capitalism
the point cannot be emphasized enough
surveillance capitalism is not
technology digital technologies can take
many forms and have many effects
depending upon the social and economic
logics that bring them to life
surveillance capitalism relies on
algorithms and sensors machine
intelligence and platforms but it is not
the same as any of those an x-ray
reveals bone and muscle but not the soft
tissue that binds them technology is the
bone and muscle here but surveillance
capitalism is the soft tissue that binds
the elements and directs them into
action it is the shadow that falls over
the digital the hidden variable that
explains how this once emancipatory
project transformed people and society
into raw material for others economic
gain surveillance capitalism is not a
corporation just as surveillance
capitalism is not technology it can no
longer be thought of as restricted to
individual companies or even to the
internet sector surveillance capitalism
has spread to nearly every form of
economic activity insurance health
retail finance entertainment
transportation education just to name a
few and it includes a vast range of
products and services what began as a
solution to financial emergency in 2001
is now a burgeoning surveillance based
economic order a surveillance economy
this is how in our own lifetimes we
observe capitalism shifting under our
gaze once profits from products and
services and profits from speculation
and now profits from surveillance
how does surveillance capitalism evolve
the accumulation of behavioral surplus
is the master motion around which the
competitive dynamics of surveillance
capitalism crystallized and this is
where we begin to understand some of its
most startling and unprecedented
imperatives everything begins with
economies of scale which defines what I
call the extraction imperative machine
learning demands volume and the quality
of its results improve as it moves
toward totality as competition for
prediction products intensifies
eventually it becomes clear that volume
is not enough surveillance capitalists
are compelled to search out ever more
predictive sources of behavioral surplus
I call this the prediction imperative
this imperative demands economies of
scope as well as scale machine learning
needs volume but also variety driving
supply operations offline into the world
that we call reality but also deeper
into our intimate experience our voices
our faces our personalities and emotions
as the competitive dynamics of surplus
of
I continue to evolve eventually even
economies of scope are not sufficient
surveillance capitalists discover that
the most predictive behavioral surplus
comes from actually intervening in the
state of play in order to nudge coax
tune and herd human behavior toward
profitable outcomes the idea now is not
only to know our behavior but also to
shape our behavior in ways that
approximate guaranteed commercial
results this new level of competitive
intensity introduces what I call
economies of action it is no longer
enough to automate information flows
about us the goal now is to automate us
in this phase the means of production
are subordinated to an increasingly
complex and comprehensive means of
behavioural modification in which big
other that digital surround is called
into action as a seamless environment of
reinforcement to shape the behaviors of
individuals groups and populations these
processes are meticulously designed to
produce ignorant in their targets by
circumventing individual awareness and
thus eliminating any possibility of
self-determination as one data scientist
explain to me quote we can engineer the
context around a particular behavior and
force change that way we are learning
how to write the music and then we let
the music make them dance examples are
all around us in my book I write about
the gentle herding of innocent Pokemon
go players to eat drink and purchase in
the restaurant bars and fast-food joints
and shops that
pay to play in its behavioral futures
markets or the ruthless expropriation of
surplus from facebook profiles for the
purposes of shaping individual behavior
whether its buying pimple cream at 5:45
p.m. on Friday prompted by social
anxiety or clicking YES on an offer of
new running shoes as the endorphins
raced through your brain after your long
Sunday morning run or voting today as a
result of social comparison dynamics
systematically engineered by Facebook’s
researchers the facts of behavioural
modification as a commercial imperative
finally strip away the illusion that the
networked form has some kind of
indigenous moral content that being
connected is somehow intrinsically
pro-social innately inclusive or
naturally tending toward the
democratization of knowledge instead
digital connection is now a brazen means
to others market ends this power to
shape behavior for others profit is
entirely self authorizing it has no
foundation in democratic or moral
legitimacy as it usurps decision rights
and erodes the processes of individual
autonomy that are essential to the
function of a democratic society the
message here is simple once I was mine
now I am theirs
in result new inequalities arise
surveillance capitalism introduces
wholly new forms of social inequality it
operates through unprecedented
asymmetries and knowledge and the power
that accrues to such knowledge they know
everything about us while their
operations are designed to be unknowable
to us surveillance capitalists
accumulate vast domains of new knowledge
from us but that knowledge is not for us
they predict our futures but for the
sake of others gain as long as
surveillance capitalism and it’s
behavioral futures markets are allowed
to thrive
ownership of the new means of behavioral
modification eclipses ownership of the
means of production as the Fountainhead
of capitalist wealth and power in the
21st century how do they get away with
it
despite surveillance capitalism’s
domination of the digital media and its
illegitimate power to take private
experience and to shape human behavior
most people find it difficult to
withdraw and many ponder if it is even
possible in my book I explore 16 reasons
why this is the case and I’ll focus on
just two here above all surveillance
capitalism succeeds because it leaves us
no choice
dependency and no exit are the fulcrums
upon which its success is balanced we
are trapped in an involuntary merger of
personal necessity and economic
extraction as the same channels that we
rely upon for daily logistics social
interaction work education health care
access to products and services and much
more now double as supply chain
operations for surveillance capitalism’s
surplus flows the result is that
effective social participate
leads through the means of behavioral
modification eroding the choice
mechanisms that once adhered to the
private realm exit voice and loyalty
there can be no exit from processes that
are intentionally designed to bypass
individual awareness and produce
ignorant especially when these are the
very same processes upon which we must
depend for effective daily life beyond
exit users lack meaningful channels for
voice loyalty is nothing but an empty
suit participation is better explained
in terms of necessity dependency
helplessness resignation the foreclosure
of alternatives and enforced ignorant
user dependency is thus a classic
Faustian pact in which our felt needs
for effective life vie against the
inclination to resist surveillance
capitalism’s bold incursions this
conflict produces a psychic numbing that
enorus to the realities of being tracked
parsed mind and modified it disposes us
to rationalize the situation in resigned
cynicism to shelter behind defense
mechanisms like the infamous formulation
I have nothing to hide or to find other
ways to stick our heads in the sand out
of frustration and helplessness in this
way
surveillance capitalism imposes a
fundamentally illegitimate choice that
21st century individuals should not have
to make and its normalization leaves us
dancing in our chains where it is all
too easy to forget that anyone who has
nothing to hide is nothing
surveillance capitalism is a human thing
it is not inevitable it is a human
creation that attempts to hide in the
Trojan horse of technological
determinism and so many other unjust
creations have done in the past and so
it is important to know that every
doctrine of inevitability carries a
weaponized virus of moral nihilism
programmed to target human agency and
delete resistance and creativity from
the text of human possibility
inevitability rhetoric is designed to
render us helpless and passive in the
face of implacable forces that
supposedly are and must be indifferent
to the merely human the hope of an
inevitability rhetoric is that we will
succumb to the naturalistic fallacy that
because surveillance capitalists are
successful their rules must obviously be
right and good do not be fooled
surveillance capitalism and its
technologies of digital dispossession
are not inevitable they are not good
simply because they succeed they have no
right to an uncontested life of their
own outside our group outside our
democracy we are at the very beginning
of this journey not the end the
mass-production
era was only partially about machines
and factories methods of production and
management it was also shaped by the
gradual development of new forms of
collective action along with political
and societal institutions including new
legislative and regulatory regimes that
amplified capitalism’s pro-social
dynamics and tamed its raw excesses
surveillance capitalism was born in the
social and born in history and it is
there that it will be contested and
transformed life in the year 2040 will
depend upon
new forms of collective action and new
institutional responses that are
specific to our time to our challenges
and our conditions of existence these
developments have not yet occurred or
even been imagined but we will look back
to this time to our time as the
beginning a colleague at a symposium
once criticized Hana Arendt for allowing
her values to creep into her analysis of
totalitarianism I’ve always loved her
response and in closing I’d like to
share it with you quote if I describe
these conditions without permitting my
indignation to interfere then I have
lifted this particular phenomenon out of
its context in human society and have
thereby robbed it of part of its nature
deprived it of one of its most important
inherent qualities so it is for me and
perhaps for you the bare facts of
surveillance capitalism necessarily
aroused my indignation because they
demean human dignity the fight for a
human future begins with our indignity
if the digital future is to be our home
then it is we who must make it so