> Big Other: Surveillance Capitalism and the Prospects of an Information > Civilization > > Shoshana Zuboff, Berkman Center for Internet & Society; Harvard > Business School > > April 4, 2015 > > Abstract: > This article describes an emergent logic of accumulation in the > networked sphere, ‘surveillance capitalism,’ and considers its > implications for ‘information civilization.’ Google is to surveillance > capitalism what General Motors was to managerial capitalism. Therefore > the institutionalizing practices and operational assumptions of Google > Inc. are the primary lens for this analysis as they are rendered in > two recent articles authored by Google Chief Economist Hal Varian. > > Varian asserts four uses that follow from computer-mediated > transactions: ‘data extraction and analysis,’ ‘new contractual forms > due to better monitoring,’ ‘personalization and customization,’ and > ‘continuous experiments.’ > > An examination of the nature and consequences of these uses sheds > light on the implicit logic of surveillance capitalism and the global > architecture of computer mediation upon which it depends. This > architecture produces a distributed and largely uncontested new > expression of power that I christen: ‘Big Other.’ It is constituted by > unexpected and often illegible mechanisms of extraction, > commodification, and control that effectively exile persons from their > own behavior while producing new markets of behavioral prediction and > modification. Surveillance capitalism challenges democratic norms and > departs in key ways from the centuries long evolution of market > capitalism. > > Number of Pages in PDF File: 15 > > Keywords: surveillance capitalism, big data, Google, information > society, privacy, internet of everything
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2594754
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