The panopticon, is a prison design introduced by English philosopher Jeremy Bentham. The panopticon, conceived in the late 18th century, features a circular structure with a central inspection tower surrounded by inmate cells. This design allows for constant potential surveillance of prisoners by a single guard, without the inmates knowing if they are being watched at any given moment.
This concept was later expanded upon by Michel Foucault in his work "Discipline and Punish" (1975), where he used it as a metaphor for modern disciplinary societies and subtle forms of social control. 💭
With the use of AI, we have created a panopticon that represents today's society, with what clearly is Donald Trump's eye surveilling society, we have also represented those in society giving up something that appears to be pieces of paper, those symbolise human data.
Surveillance Capitalism is the term that Shoshana Zuboff uses to describe the current political-economic institutional order that exerts oligopolistic control over most digital information and communication spaces. She first introduced this concept in 2014, with her essay; “A Digital Declaration: Big Data as Surveillance Capitalism”.
What characterizes Surveillance Capitalism?
Today we open a discussion on Surveillance Capitalism because we believe that its characteristics are increasingly prevalent.
Can Surveillance Capitalism be democratic or can it be a threat to Democracy? Zuboff argues the latter.
When thinking about a political economic system such as Surveillance Capitalism we understand that there must be pre-existing conditions for it to happen. Marx would say that Capitalism was built on the basis of primitive accumulation which is the historical process that allows for the preconditions for capitalist production. This process, according to Marx entailed expropriation of land, separation of workers from their means of production and the privatisation of capital and means of production. Marx emphasised (very effusively) that primitive accumulation is a violent process, it is also an ongoing process that structurally continues through each stage of capitalism (Marx, 1867).
We touch on Marx because Marx is always a good perspective to understand all processes of Capitalism and because the pre-existing conditions for Capitalism do not differ much from the pre-existing conditions for Surveillance Capitalism. For Zuboff, what mainly allows for Surveillance Capitalism to happen is the commodification of human behaviour, which includes the massive extraction of human data for revenue, Moreover, when revenue derives from human commodification, economic operations entail accretions of governance functions and impose social harms (Zuboff, 2022).
A marxist would argue that both political-economic systems are violent in their upbringing, and therefore the ongoing process of capitalism is always violent. Zuboff comes to a similar conclusion based on the economic idea that revenue from the commodification of the human results in social harms.
The extreme social harms of Surveillance Capitalism
Sadly, we do not need to look much into what has happened in the past few years to support Zuboff’s argument:
We have spoken about the case of Molly Russell, the 14 year old girl who was exposed to harmful content and took her life in 2017.
Less than a week ago, this BBC article spoke on 4 British families who sued TikTok for the wrongful deaths of their children who died after a viral trend that circulated the platform in 2022.
A few days ago, another article came out that spoke of a 14 year old boy who has been talking to an AI for the past 5 months and whose conversations took a disturbing turn, the AI told him to take his life, with instructions on how to do so. You can read the full article here.
Power, Knowledge, and Governance
In her work, Zuboff delves into more aspects that constitute this institutional order. Other aspects include, concentration of economic power and concentration of governance and social powers. She states that oligopoly in the economic realm results in oligopoly in the societal realm, which is harmful for democracy. Privacy breaches, the rise of AI dominance and epistemic inequality are also expressions of Surveillance Capitalism.
In the paper written in 2022 - Surveillance Capitalism or Democracy? She even argued that the Trump 2016 campaign was another characteristic through remote behavioural actuation.
The main aspect of Surveillance Capitalism, as we explained before, is the commodification of human data, this, according to Zuboff, creates the conditions for remote behavioural actuation, which refers to the ability of influencing and modifying people’s behaviour (Zuboff, 2022).
The past few months and the Trump 2024 presidential election show evidence of this:
- Musk owning the platform X, where information is spread, is an aspect of Surveillance Capitalism. The richest man in the world owning one of the biggest digital platforms and openly supporting Trump’s campaign, then being appointed as head of the U.S Department of Government Efficiency under the Trump administration is a clear form of concentration of economic power and remote behavioural actuation, which consciously or unconsciously influences users’ opinions. Not only did Musk, (whose figure entails concentration of wealth and power) openly support Trump on X during the campaign, but he influenced X’s users through open claims and attacks on Kamala Harris. This is a clear expression of Surveillance Capitalism.
- Another example of Surveillance Capitalism was Meta’s infamous policy changes. Like we would say from the Ethical Alliance, it is an example of another big powerful man exerting control over social powers, and what can or can't be said.
- This brings us to another of Zuboff’s very important points, politics of knowledge in the digital age. She raises questions such as “who knows?” “who decides who knows?” “what knowledge is produced”? “What authority governs distribution”? (Zuboff, 2022)
We ask, why is this big powerful man (Zuckerberg) deciding what can and can't be said? Who agreed? For Zuboff, the Surveillance Capitalist giants answer these questions. I guess our question is answered too.
The Threat - can the Institutionalisation of Surveillance Capitalism produce the deinstitutionalisation of the democratic order?
The main worry about Surveillance Capitalism is its threat to democracy. As Zuboff expresses, its development is undemocratic which aims for a knowledge dominance.
Surveillance Capitalism’s four economic stages are:
1️⃣ The Commodification of Human behaviour
2️⃣ The concentration of computational knowledge production and consumption
3️⃣ Remote behavioural actuation
4️⃣ Systemic dominance.
The democratic order is the only order that poses an existential threat to Surveillance Capitalism and its foundational operations. Like Zuboff states, due to the structural nature of Surveillance Capitalism, regulation of institutionalised processes that are innately catastrophic will not have a positive effect, instead to eliminate the harms of Surveillance Capitalism, we must abolish the early-stage economic operations - the commodification of the human (Zuboff, 2022).
Arguably, this is a similar conception of the economic processes that Marx had. At the beginning, we stated that from a Marxist perspective, primitive accumulation is violent and therefore capitalism will be violent in all its stages, because it is an ongoing, structural process (Marx, 1867).
If we understand Surveillance Capitalism similarly, we can understand that eliminating the later stages of this political economic model such as the social harms will not eliminate the whole system, but one must tackle the first stage of surveillance capitalism.
Considering this, we open the following question:
🤔 Are the EUs regulatory actions an efficient effort to challenge Surveillance Capitalism?
🤔 Is the U.S non-democratic because it is institutionalising Surveillance Capitalism?
🤔 Do you agree with Zuboff that we either have Surveillance Capitalism or Democracy, not both? Or can you explain why both can coexist?
Thank you for reading!
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