Surveillance Capitalism

In Part II of her book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, Zuboff (2019) lays out how the advance of surveillance capitalism has unfolded and where it is headed.  In chapters 7 and 8, she makes two very important points—one practical and the other ideological—that necessarily serve as the framework for the advance of surveillance capitalism.  The practical point is this:  the world has become so immersed in the Internet that it will seem as though the Internet has disappeared, to paraphrase the words of Eric Schmidt at Davos; but of course it is only disappearing in the same sense that water disappears to fish who swim in it.  The reality is that everyone will have so thoroughly immersed themselves in the Internet-of-Things (IoT) that they will no longer realize just how dependent upon the Internet and by extension surveillance capitalism they truly are.  It will be just like breathing air to them:  organic, natural, unforced, as though this was simply the way things are and have always been—integrated, connected, everything seen and controlled by an invisible force that links and unites one and all.  That is the practical point.  The ideological point is this:  it requires what Zuboff (2019) terms the “sur-render” of the people to the idea that their behavioral data is itself a commodity that they must willingly give up in exchange for the services that the IoT provides.  One common modern maxim is, “If you don’t know what the product is, you’re the product.”  In the age of surveillance capitalism that is inherently true.  Marx contends that a commodity is a thing that is external to us.  But in the age of surveillance capitalism, we ourselves become the commodity and it is our behavioral data, as Zuboff (2019) explains that is for sale.  Yet, because we become the commodity, we also become the thing of value—just as a slave was a thing of value to the owner; the slave’s humanity was utterly dismissed.  The slave was merely an object; the chains of the slave made it a captive.  Today, it is the chains of IoT that make the modern consumer captive to the surveillance capitalists.  Marx also states that commodities cannot go to market and exchange themselves—yet that is exactly what people do in the age of surveillance capitalism.  Since they themselves are the commodities, they exchange themselves for IoT services and do so willingly.  In short, IoT in the age of surveillance capitalism has stood Marx’s view of capitalism on its head.

Surrender of the Will Marx contends that commodities are things that have no power of their own to resist men who would control them.  Ironically, this thought aligns with what Zuboff (2019) states with regard to the surrender of the individual consumer to surveillance capitalism.  In surrendering of the consumer to the IoT providers, the behavioral data of the person is exchanged and the Internet disappears, as Schmidt states:  the person is given over completely to the Internet.  It is everywhere:  in one’s pocket, in one’s home, in one’s workplace—all-seeing, all-knowing, omnipresent, and all-capable—a technological divinity that sustains and keeps one in existence.  One surrenders to it.  The only difference between what Marx says about the exchange and what Zuboff says about the exchange is that Marx believes the commodity has no will or power of its own.  Zuboff observes that the consumer does have a will and a power of his own, but that he gives up both by entering into the exchange with the IoT providers.

Who then are the owners in the exchange?  In one dystopian way, the machine-driven learning algorithms are the owners of the behavioral data that the consumer gives up.  Zuboff makes that point in her TED Talk, but it is also there in her book:  the machines that provide connectivity become owners in the sense that they learn to predict the behaviors of the consumer and thus they anticipate the needs and desires of the consumer.  That ability to anticipate plays into the hands of digital marketers, and to the degree that cultivation theory applies in this age of digital mass media the outcome is that the purveyors of the IoT not only predict but also program the behavior of the consumer.  It is like luring a fish with a baited hook:  the initial service is the bait; the IoT is the hook, and once hooked the fish is no longer free; its power and will have been exchanged for the morsel of bait.  Once a freely swimming fish in a pool of water (that it did not see, just as today’s IoT user does not “see” the Internet), the fish is now the commodity to be bought and sold on the open market.  The consumer of today is no different.  When Marx was making his assertions about commodities and exchange, he was referring to things and did not anticipate that people would become the things themselves.  Zuboff shows that they are the things today.

Marx’s short-sightedness perhaps was due to his focus on the labor embodied in commodities, i.e., the cost of a commodity stemming from the amount of labor placed into its development for the market.  But as Zuboff shows, such short-sightedness was not unique to Marx.  Even the Aware Home project envisioned the consumer as one who knows and decides—an end in himself rather than the means to an end.  Surveillance capitalism has inverted that:  the consumer is now the means to an end or the consumer is the commodity once he has surrendered himself to the Internet—the water in which the purveyors of IoT fish with baited hooks.

Consumer as Commodity Marx notes that a commodity does appear as a slight, trivial thing that is easily understood.  This indeed is the case as the consumer becomes a commodity, thanks to the advances made by machine learning.  Algorithms can now detect patterns in behavior quickly and efficiently to the extent that the routines and habits of human behavior are known and understood more perfectly by the machines recording and interpreting behavioral data than by the person himself.  A person acts often without thinking about how he is acting.  The machines never stop “thinking,” so to speak and thus are always conscious, always aware, always monitoring and recording and interpreting the behavioral data of the individual.  Once the consumer becomes the commodity, the consumer becomes the slight, trivial thing that is easily understood, as explained by Marx.

At the same time, Marx discusses the mystical character of commodities that stems from the human labor tied to them.  The human being, Marx seems to imply, is himself of some sort of mystical character, and once he puts himself via his labor into the harvesting or development of a commodity there is a piece of himself in the thing that is bought and sold on the market.  In this regard, all commodities have a personal value that is perhaps greater than the price placed upon them by the market.  Nonetheless, the market neutralizes that mystical character by fetishizing commodities—and this same thing occurs when the consumer becomes the commodity in the age of surveillance capitalism.  The human being goes into the exchange as a person with a will and power and value of his own, uniquely tied to the fact that he has an inherent worth and value of his own.  But by entering into the exchange, he is divested of that character and becomes just another fish on a hook, another commodity whose behavioral data (his life force according to the market and therefore his inherent value) is rendered by the purveyors of the IoT.

Marx views the dehumanization of labor as an effect of exchange on the market where the human value of the labor disappears in the bartering process.  Zuboff views the dehumanization of the consumer as an effect of exchange in the IoT.  The commoditization of human behavior in the age of surveillance capitalism, in this sense, is perfectly similar to what Marx states in his chapter on Commodities.  The only difference is that whereas Marx sees commodities as things, Zuboff sees people as commodities.  Indeed, the IoT would not work if this were not the case.

Limits to the Similarities There are limitations here.  Zuboff asserts that capitalism’s rendition practices do away with any form of consent.  One cannot opt in or opt out or choose not to participate.  Marx affirms that one can opt out by resisting and indeed by revolutionizing the way society thinks about labor and ownership.  But that is a topic discussed in depth elsewhere by Marx.  In his chapter on Exchange, Marx limits himself to the argument that commodities cannot express their value but relatively in relation to other commodities.  Zuboff suggests that in the age of surveillance capitalism, it is impossible to escape the rendering of behavior into data; one’s value is not determined in relation to other commodities.  Instead, one’s value is determined by the price that a company is willing to place on that data and it is tied to its projected return on advertising spend.  The business of IoT only works so long as the fish remains on the line, in other words.  So long as the human being is caught within the system, it can be milked like a cow—the milk being its behavioral data:  the fish is free to continue to swim, only now it is being tracked and monitored everywhere it goes—and where it goes is largely controlled by the system of surveillance capitalism.

Google analytics conducts the monitoring.  The data is sold to third parties, who know in advance what type of fish the consumer is and what its needs are.  The fish thus soon finds itself navigating a world in which everything around it is completely superficial, much in the way Truman’s world is controlled and manipulated in The Truman Show:  he is unaware that he is the product being sold to viewers, upon which advertisers depend.

Counter-Argument The counter-argument is that the consumer does not give up his will and power in the process of exchange in the age of surveillance capitalism.  The individual remains in possession of his own ability to make choices and decide to what extent he wants to become a commodity.  The person can choose not to participate in this system, and thus the IoT does not really have the hold over him that Zuboff suggests.

But to what extent is this counter-argument convincing?  If the person has a smartphone, his body has been rendered by it.  Geotags are used to track his every movement and as Zuboff notes georeferences are used by retailers to advertise to the individual.  The person is thus being manipulated simply by using a smartphone.  He is not as free and in possession of his own will and power as he supposes.

Yet, the counter-argument can posit that the individual has the ability to ignore the suggestions or even turn off geotracking—but of course most people do not do this, and Zuboff notes as much.  She cites Pew Research, which shows that 90 percent of smartphone users enable tracking, which means roughly 150 million people are now under the control of surveillance capitalism in the US—and willingly so.  If one willingly gives up his own autonomy and independence, is he still autonomous and independent?  Or is he merely another thing being data-mined for the sake of the market? It is quite likely that people do not even realize how many of the apps on their phones are actually tracking their data, listening to their conversations, recording their behavioral data and harvesting it for the sake of profits.  One’s phone seems to know everything these days.  And how many people can do without such an all-knowing technological advancement?  The smartphone makes life so easy, makes purchasing so simple, makes organization so practical.  Who would give up such a wonderful device as this for the sake of knowing that one is free? The counter-argument thus falls flat because if 90 percent of smartphone users are enabling the IoT to gain influence over them, they are surrendering to the age of surveillance capitalism.  When 90 percent of consumers are willing to become commodities, there really is no argument to make that individuals retain their will and power.  Their will and power are broken—surrendered to the IoT.

Zuboff explains:  “Under the regime of surveillance capitalism, individuals do not render their experience out of choice or obligation but rather out of ignorance and the dictatorship of no alternatives” (p.

163).  People do not want to have to struggle on their own; they do not want to have to resort to paper maps to figure out their way.  It is much simpler to turn on GPS and geotracking and allows Google Maps to show the way.  There is, in their minds, no real alternative.  No one is going back to the way things used to be because this would be like going back to a primitive age.  Who wants to be primitive in the 21st century?  What would be the point?  The 21st century is about advancement and technological progress.  Mankind has entered into an almost euphoric age in which people can exchange communications instantly as though they were angels.  There is no more waiting, no more time lost wondering if a message got through.  One person on one side of the world sends a digital message to another on the other side of the world and it is received instantly.

In this environment, people are all too willing to surrender a little bit of themselves for the sake of the service.  They are willing to become commodities.  How is it any skin off their backs?  The exchange is worth it, and in this manner they submit to surveillance capitalism without another thought.  They ignorantly indulge the surveillance capitalists, surrendering their behavioral data without thinking about what it actually means to surrender this information.  They have no more will or power to resist it because they gladly immerse themselves in the IoT.  If they were in the film The Matrix, they would gladly take the blue pill so as to remain in their virtual world where their every desired is catered to them and fulfilled by surveillance capitalists all too eager to prey upon their.