The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff (Part 2)

Part 1 of the book examines the formation and basic logics of surveillance capitalism. Part 2 is appropriately entitled "The Advance of Surveillance Capitalism."

Zuboff begins with surveillance capitalism's second economic imperative--this is the "prediction imperative." In order to foretell future behaviour, surveillance capitalists need better quality of prediction products, which is accomplished by "economies of scope" and "economies of action" (p. 199). Economies of scope refer to the necessity of varied types of behavioural surplus (i.e. not just clicks on Facebook) and the dimension of depth, or data "from intimate patterns of the self" (p. 199). Economies of action refers to something more insidious. It describes the processes involved in shaping behaviour, which is the best way to predict behaviour. Surveillance capitalists actively intervene and "nudge, tune, herd, manipulate, and modify behaviour" (p. 200) for certain outcomes.

In order to achieve economies of scale and economies of action, Zuboff notes that a new era of "surveillance commerce" is initiated: she calls this "the reality business" (p. 200). This is the collection of "machine-based extraction architecture" (e.g. IoT) in the real world that constantly renders behaviour into data and predictions, and through which surveillance capitalists produce guaranteed outcomes. The imperatives of surveillance capitalism fit perfectly with the ideals of ubiquitous computing; through the texts of key figures in the field, Zuboff describes a world where technologies disappear and blend into the fabric of everyday life and an apparatus of ubiquitous sensing produces a digital omniscience.

Zuboff details some of the technologies and methods that are being developed to render our interior selves into raw material by surveillance capitalist firms. Facebook user likes can "automatically and accurately estimate" personal attributes like "sexual orientation, ethnicity, religious and political views, personality traits, intelligence, happiness, use of addictive substances, parental separation, age, and gender" (p. 273). "Affective computing" (p. 281) targets unconscious emotional expressions in the form of facial expressions, vocal tonality, and other such signals to extract higher quality behavioural data.

The transformation to this real world extraction architecture is not just an abstract idea--it comes with concrete consequences. Zuboff delineates three different categories in economies of action, these are tuning, herding, and conditioning. Tuning refers to the use of "subliminal cues designed to subtly shape the flow of behaviour" or can come in the form of manipulations in the "choice architecture" (p. 293) through the "nudge." Herding involves controlling individual behaviour by modifying the environment in which human actions take place. Ubiquitous computing is not only an apparatus for sensing, but also for controlling outcomes. Finally, conditioning refers to Skinner's work in operant conditioning, in which subjects are put under a system of "schedule of reinforcements" (rewards, recognition, praise) to produce certain behaviours reliably. Zuboff returns extensively to Skinner's work in Part 3. One of the examples fhat Zuboff provides is auto insurance. Auto insurers can use the constant flow of data about driving behaviours, our feelings, what we are saying, etc. to price premiums by the millisecond. They are also able to control driving behaviour by using behavioural data and an incentive structure, promoting certain driving behaviours while discouraging others. At the very worst, surveillance capitalists have complete control and can completely shut down vehicular systems, leaving the driver stranded and helpless.
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As Zuboff repeatedly states throughout the book, surveillance capitalism and the current application of technologies is the result of a series of choices--they were not inevitable. The technology and research could have easily been applied to help people and for the betterment of society. Affective computing was originally designed for a medical setting, for the challenges of autistic children (p. 287). The Aware Home project, which was a collaboration of computer scientists and engineers at Georgia Tech, was the source of the original image of the smart home. In this image, behavioural data from ubiquitous computing would be reinvested into the home as a closed loop to improve the lives of the occupants, instead of being sold on behavioural futures markets.

​Economies of scope and economies of action have implications for human subjectivity. Zuboff identifies the "assertion of freedom of will" as an assertion of "the right to the future tense as a condition of a fully human life" (p. 331). While uncertainty is a precondition to human freedom, surveillance capitalists and their techniques of human modification eliminate uncertainty for a world of guaranteed outcomes. Zuboff succintly sums up the development of surveillance capitalism: "... this decade-and-a-half trajectory has taken us from automating information flows about you to automating you" (p. 339). A lot of commentators in the West stoke fear about the dystopian potential of the Chinese social credit system without casting the same critical gaze at the systems being constructed by the profit-driven surveillance capitalists in their own living room.

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