Among the various descriptors of capitalism – global, late-stage, Marxist and others – the term “surveillance capitalism” has gotten less traction than most.
That may be a little surprising, and it may not stay that way much longer.
Its meaning is a little nebulous, but it relates to how information, especially personal and insider information, has become a major commodity – and some would argue, in terms of expansion of market share in the American economy over the last generation, the leading sector of the economy.
An entry in Wikipedia offers this viewpoint:
Capitalism has become focused on expanding the proportion of social life that is open to data collection and data processing.[3] This may come with significant implications for vulnerability and control of society as well as for privacy. However, increased data collection may also have various advantages for individuals and society such as self-optimization (Quantified Self),[3] societal optimizations (such as by smart cities) and new or optimized services (including various web applications). Still, collecting and processing data in the context of capitalism’s core profit-making motive might present an inherent danger.
The term seems to have come from a social psychologist, Shoshana Zuboff, who has written a book called The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, which argues (among other things) “that surveillance capitalism has usurped so many of our rights in these domains is a scandalous abuse of digital capabilities and their once grand promise to democratize knowledge.”
The concept, if not the specific term, has been getting steadily more attention. Much of the value of many of America’s fastest-growing big companies – Facebook, Amazon, and Twitter among them – lies not in the advertising or services they sell but in the information they harvest from (often unwitting) users of their services. Enormous amounts of information have been collected by businesses, probably far in excess of the (often more controversial) government collection of information.
The subject is ripe for political discussion. And the term is ripe for broader usage.
The data collection we should be concerned about is at a level LOWER than what we can see. This essentially means that it exists beneath the service level. Mail, Storage, these are services, and are no longer where collection efforts are focused. The algorithms are working at a platform level, monitoring behavior patterns that we implement autonomously. Google doesn’t want your waking thoughts, they want your subconscious habit and muscle memory. (linux email group)
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