Github-Link: https://rawcdn.githack.com/LurdKek/Digital_Culture/cf29342c1f597a5364261923bbc90255b81cb234/Curation2019/index.html
An interpretation of Digital Culture
In contemporary life digital media, and thus digital culture, pervades our modern world in a huge variety of ways. The digital revolution is, to quote New York Times bestseller Jeremy Rifkin (2011), the third industrial revolution. Today digital artefacts and technologies are clearly evident contemporarily and historically. From punch cards and moon-landings, to microchips and ubiquitous computing, digital media has during its upbringing altered and even constituted much of the modern and contemporary way of life for human kind. Following Raymond Williams' (1976) second (out of three) definition of the word culture as a noun describing a certain way of life “whether of a people, a period a group or humanity in general” (Williams, 1976), the culture of the digital is changing many of the traditional ways of living. And now, in the dawning age of the 21st century, the almost ubiquitous, sensing digital artefacts along with the internet, has created new possibilities for a certain type of commercialized culture that has paved the way for a period in human history characterized by a form of “rouge capitalism” framed by social psychologist Shoshana Zuboff (2019) as “Surveillance Capitalism”.
In contemporary life digital media, and thus digital culture, pervades our modern world in a huge variety of ways. The digital revolution is, to quote New York Times bestseller Jeremy Rifkin (2011), the third industrial revolution. Today digital artefacts and technologies are clearly evident contemporarily and historically. From punch cards and moon-landings, to microchips and ubiquitous computing, digital media has during its upbringing altered and even constituted much of the modern and contemporary way of life for human kind. Following Raymond Williams' (1976) second (out of three) definition of the word culture as a noun describing a certain way of life “whether of a people, a period a group or humanity in general” (Williams, 1976), the culture of the digital is changing many of the traditional ways of living. And now, in the dawning age of the 21st century, the almost ubiquitous, sensing digital artefacts along with the internet, has created new possibilities for a certain type of commercialized culture that has paved the way for a period in human history characterized by a form of “rouge capitalism” framed by social psychologist Shoshana Zuboff (2019) as “Surveillance Capitalism”.
The Identity and Signification of Surveillance Capitalism
Following Zuboff, our global society is entering a new stage of consumer-capitalism in which the increasing amount of ubiquitous digital devices and their inherent capabilities to track and record data, combined with the growing ethos of contemporary consumer-capitalism, claims human experience as free raw material. Not only does this new mode of capitalism threaten established democratic institutions but more fundamentally it has begun to challenge “our right to the future tense” through unprecedented means of behavioral modification (Zuboff, 2019). Disguised in the remaining fog of the democratizing ideologies of the early internet, the surveillance-capitalist ideology came “… dressed in the fashions of advocacy and emancipation, appealing to and exploiting contemporary anxieties, while the real action was hidden offstage” (Zuboff, 2019: 14-15) and has made a turn in contemporary capitalism towards what Zuboff terms instrumentarianism: a power that knows and shapes our behaviour toward other’s ends, which does not only feed on labour (as the “old” capitalism did according to Marx) but on every aspect of private human experience. Furthermore, Zuboff goes on to explain how the surveillance done by big data corporations via our digital devices creates an unbalance in power, as those who is doing the surveillance know everything about us while being designed to be unknowable to us; they accumulate data from us but not for us (Zuboff, 2019). Much in the same way that Zuboff explains the asymmetry in power that happens in contemporary digital surveillance, so does Steve Mann, researcher at MIT, also point out this asymmetry in power between the surveillants and surveillees (Mann, Nolan, & Wellman, 2003) (Mann, 2016). Further, Mann states that “There is a kind of irony or hypocrisy in the extensive efforts to keep the all-seeing eye concealed from sight.” (Mann, 2016: 1). In addition to this, Mann goes on to describe the opposite of hypocrisy as integrity, by which Mann refers to a Human Intelligence in which an reciprocal relationship of data-exchange between humans and machines, instead of the “one-way mirror” evident I contemporary surveillance (Mann, 2016). Throughout his work at MIT Media lab, Mann has used performative interventions using wearable devices in order to shed light over and rebalance the power structure between surveillants and surveillees. To reach more integrity in an ever-more surveilled society, Mann proposes a set of alternatives to surveillance that may counter and unveil the imbalance of power in surveillance culture. One of these is the concept of sousveillance where the surveillants are being surveilled, and thus creating a form of mirror-effect against the institutions that surveil the common man (Mann et al., 2003).
Following Zuboff, our global society is entering a new stage of consumer-capitalism in which the increasing amount of ubiquitous digital devices and their inherent capabilities to track and record data, combined with the growing ethos of contemporary consumer-capitalism, claims human experience as free raw material. Not only does this new mode of capitalism threaten established democratic institutions but more fundamentally it has begun to challenge “our right to the future tense” through unprecedented means of behavioral modification (Zuboff, 2019). Disguised in the remaining fog of the democratizing ideologies of the early internet, the surveillance-capitalist ideology came “… dressed in the fashions of advocacy and emancipation, appealing to and exploiting contemporary anxieties, while the real action was hidden offstage” (Zuboff, 2019: 14-15) and has made a turn in contemporary capitalism towards what Zuboff terms instrumentarianism: a power that knows and shapes our behaviour toward other’s ends, which does not only feed on labour (as the “old” capitalism did according to Marx) but on every aspect of private human experience. Furthermore, Zuboff goes on to explain how the surveillance done by big data corporations via our digital devices creates an unbalance in power, as those who is doing the surveillance know everything about us while being designed to be unknowable to us; they accumulate data from us but not for us (Zuboff, 2019). Much in the same way that Zuboff explains the asymmetry in power that happens in contemporary digital surveillance, so does Steve Mann, researcher at MIT, also point out this asymmetry in power between the surveillants and surveillees (Mann, Nolan, & Wellman, 2003) (Mann, 2016). Further, Mann states that “There is a kind of irony or hypocrisy in the extensive efforts to keep the all-seeing eye concealed from sight.” (Mann, 2016: 1). In addition to this, Mann goes on to describe the opposite of hypocrisy as integrity, by which Mann refers to a Human Intelligence in which an reciprocal relationship of data-exchange between humans and machines, instead of the “one-way mirror” evident I contemporary surveillance (Mann, 2016). Throughout his work at MIT Media lab, Mann has used performative interventions using wearable devices in order to shed light over and rebalance the power structure between surveillants and surveillees. To reach more integrity in an ever-more surveilled society, Mann proposes a set of alternatives to surveillance that may counter and unveil the imbalance of power in surveillance culture. One of these is the concept of sousveillance where the surveillants are being surveilled, and thus creating a form of mirror-effect against the institutions that surveil the common man (Mann et al., 2003).
The Connection to Google
The Internet has gone centralized, and instead of increased democracy and freely shared information and knowledge for public gains, the Internet has been taken over big corporations, individuals and institutions such as Facebook, Amazon and Google (Introna & Nissenbaum, 2000). To explain a bit further: “… commercial interests were woven into the very fiber of the modern media networks through legislation, market mechanisms, and the like” and “The American media system is spinning out of control in a hyper-commercialized frenzy” as Introna & Nissenbaum argued back in 2000 by paraphrasing and putting the words of McChesney into a new context of the internet (Introna & Nissenbaum, 2000: 169 [McChesney, 1995]). In their article “Shaping the web: Why politics of search engines matters” Introna & Nissenbaum describes the competing interests between the centralized commercial and the decentralized public and how search engines “constitute a particularly telling venue for this competition” as they index the web and through this indexation grants a “powerful source of access” to an otherwise crowded internet. In other words: Search engines determines what the internet consists of, for those who uses that search engine (Introna & Nissenbaum, 2000). Today Google has taken over the market as the one search engine for most common people using the internet. But contrary to Introna & Nissenbaum’s claim that commercial interests have been entangled into the internet through legislation – which might hold true for many aspects of modern consumer capitalism on the internet - this is not the case directly for surveillance capitalism. To paraphrase Zuboff, Google and its surveillance capitalistic modus operandi came “… like an invasive species in a landscape free of natural predators.” (Zuboff, 2019: 14). In other words, it is quite the contrary to what Introna & Nissenbaum argues counts for the rest of the commercialized internet. Rather than legislation towards an interest in surveillance capitalism, it was the lack of legislation, or regulation, for something unprecedented, that let data-surveillance of Google and Facebook and others spin off uncontrolled (Zuboff, 2019).
The Internet has gone centralized, and instead of increased democracy and freely shared information and knowledge for public gains, the Internet has been taken over big corporations, individuals and institutions such as Facebook, Amazon and Google (Introna & Nissenbaum, 2000). To explain a bit further: “… commercial interests were woven into the very fiber of the modern media networks through legislation, market mechanisms, and the like” and “The American media system is spinning out of control in a hyper-commercialized frenzy” as Introna & Nissenbaum argued back in 2000 by paraphrasing and putting the words of McChesney into a new context of the internet (Introna & Nissenbaum, 2000: 169 [McChesney, 1995]). In their article “Shaping the web: Why politics of search engines matters” Introna & Nissenbaum describes the competing interests between the centralized commercial and the decentralized public and how search engines “constitute a particularly telling venue for this competition” as they index the web and through this indexation grants a “powerful source of access” to an otherwise crowded internet. In other words: Search engines determines what the internet consists of, for those who uses that search engine (Introna & Nissenbaum, 2000). Today Google has taken over the market as the one search engine for most common people using the internet. But contrary to Introna & Nissenbaum’s claim that commercial interests have been entangled into the internet through legislation – which might hold true for many aspects of modern consumer capitalism on the internet - this is not the case directly for surveillance capitalism. To paraphrase Zuboff, Google and its surveillance capitalistic modus operandi came “… like an invasive species in a landscape free of natural predators.” (Zuboff, 2019: 14). In other words, it is quite the contrary to what Introna & Nissenbaum argues counts for the rest of the commercialized internet. Rather than legislation towards an interest in surveillance capitalism, it was the lack of legislation, or regulation, for something unprecedented, that let data-surveillance of Google and Facebook and others spin off uncontrolled (Zuboff, 2019).
The relation to digital technologies
Introna & Nissembaum describe one of the defining characteristics of search engines as having to convey certainty for the seeker. The better the search engine, the better the certainty for the seeker finding what is sought (Introna & Nissenbaum, 2000). Google initially used the need for certainty when using search-engines as an explanation for their tracking of people’s online roaming, and thus became “first movers” and inventors of the architecture behind surveillance capitalism. But this is a false reality told by Google as, to quote Zuboff, “in truth, search engines do not retain [our data], but surveillance capitalism does” (Zuboff, 2019). The fact that search-engines doesn’t need extensive amounts of knowledge about their user’s whereabouts on the internet, in order to produce a satisfactory result for the seeker is also evidenced by Reneé Ridgway. In her article “against a personalization fo the self” Ridgway describes an experiment in which she uses Google on both a standard browser as well as the anonymous Tor-browser. The result of her experiment showed, that there weren’t any remarkable differences in useful search-results when using Google versus Tor (Ridgway, 2017).
Introna & Nissembaum describe one of the defining characteristics of search engines as having to convey certainty for the seeker. The better the search engine, the better the certainty for the seeker finding what is sought (Introna & Nissenbaum, 2000). Google initially used the need for certainty when using search-engines as an explanation for their tracking of people’s online roaming, and thus became “first movers” and inventors of the architecture behind surveillance capitalism. But this is a false reality told by Google as, to quote Zuboff, “in truth, search engines do not retain [our data], but surveillance capitalism does” (Zuboff, 2019). The fact that search-engines doesn’t need extensive amounts of knowledge about their user’s whereabouts on the internet, in order to produce a satisfactory result for the seeker is also evidenced by Reneé Ridgway. In her article “against a personalization fo the self” Ridgway describes an experiment in which she uses Google on both a standard browser as well as the anonymous Tor-browser. The result of her experiment showed, that there weren’t any remarkable differences in useful search-results when using Google versus Tor (Ridgway, 2017).
The experiment made by Ridgway also goes on to prove, that it is not the technology of search-engines themselves that is at fault for the increase of digital surveillance, but rather the discursive materiality of the design and design choices (Teymur, 1981) of contemporary digital media that is at fault. In other words, it is not what technologies is out there, but how they are used or misused by people. Even though surveillance capitalism could not exist without the excessive amount of portable, sensing digital devices apparent today, it does not mean that surveillance capitalism is inevitable (Zuboff, 2019)(Ridgway, 2017). Mapping of the world… and the human Like the indexing of the internet done by Google (and other Silicon Valley corps) by using crawlers is an assertion of power, surveillance and control comparative to maids in the courts around royal medieval Europe, or “Office addresses” in the 17th and 18th century (Ridgway, 2017). And like Google and Surveillance Capitalism is making power-moves of indexing the web, so is neo-colonial methods of mapping and indexing grasping into the physical world, including human culture, also done by surveillance capitalists. Just like the old colonial empires used cartography to display their power over vast stretches of land, so does Google demonstrate their power of surveillance on earth, as it is the case with Google maps; indexing all streets, forests and museums, and turning them into commercialized hubs instead of cultural places of historical and cultural interest (Juarez, 2017). How the world is mapped Signifies it in a certain way.
Methodology
Based on “The circuit of Culture” the curation attempts to answer (at least partly) the question “What are some of the most important objects that partake in defining Surveillance Capitalism, either historically or contemporarily?”. Thus, I am using Curating to unveil a relationship of social and technological relations that take place in making the culture (Tyżlik-carver, 2019) of surveillance capitalism. While many other objects could have been included, this curation is an attempt to map out some of the most important objects that holds a crucial role in relation to the circuit of culture.
Based on “The circuit of Culture” the curation attempts to answer (at least partly) the question “What are some of the most important objects that partake in defining Surveillance Capitalism, either historically or contemporarily?”. Thus, I am using Curating to unveil a relationship of social and technological relations that take place in making the culture (Tyżlik-carver, 2019) of surveillance capitalism. While many other objects could have been included, this curation is an attempt to map out some of the most important objects that holds a crucial role in relation to the circuit of culture.
The Curation and objects
The Curation of the objects will be in the form of an online graph-table made using html and p5.js. Each object has been placed according to two parameters:
1. The x-axis displays the degree of privacy<- or ->surveillance for the given object.
2. The y-axis displays the objects materiality ranging from physical (being in the physical world) <- to -> ethereal (being software).
The Curation of the objects will be in the form of an online graph-table made using html and p5.js. Each object has been placed according to two parameters:
1. The x-axis displays the degree of privacy<- or ->surveillance for the given object.
2. The y-axis displays the objects materiality ranging from physical (being in the physical world) <- to -> ethereal (being software).
Furthermore, as a comment on the need for more privacy on the internet, each object in the table will be grayed. Only when a viewer is actively hovering the mouse over the greyed-out object, an icon of the actual object will be revealed along with a description.
Googleplex:
Representing Google, their headquarters Googleplex, located in the new power-center of the digital world Silicon Valley. It represents a large part of the Production and Legislation of surveillance capitalism. From their headquarters in Googleplex, Google CEOs, software-architects and deep learning algorithms plays a major role in forming the Identity of the contemporary consumer, as well as in creating the policies for their search-engine and other artefacts of digital culture they produce, and thereby also the regulation and signification of the contemporary digital milieu. Further, Google is both the inventor of as well as one of the main actors in the extraction of our behavioral data, as well as playing a major role in the signification of the internet, by determining what and how their search-engines index and curate information on the internet.
Representing Google, their headquarters Googleplex, located in the new power-center of the digital world Silicon Valley. It represents a large part of the Production and Legislation of surveillance capitalism. From their headquarters in Googleplex, Google CEOs, software-architects and deep learning algorithms plays a major role in forming the Identity of the contemporary consumer, as well as in creating the policies for their search-engine and other artefacts of digital culture they produce, and thereby also the regulation and signification of the contemporary digital milieu. Further, Google is both the inventor of as well as one of the main actors in the extraction of our behavioral data, as well as playing a major role in the signification of the internet, by determining what and how their search-engines index and curate information on the internet.
iPod:
According to Zuboff, the iPod marked a distinct turn in the Identity of the consumer:
“Apple was among the first to experience explosive commercial success by tapping into a new society of individuals and their demand for individualized consumption [and] offered the tools to shift the focus of consumption from the mass to the individual” (Zuboff, 2019: 35). The iPod conveyed a distinct feature of new media compared to old (mass) media: The individualization of the consumer. A shift in the Identity of the consumer made possible by the ephemerality of digital media, fitting in the fluidity of modern contemporary society. Surveillance capitalism has been allowed to set its roots under the veil of this new consumer-paradigm (Zuboff, 2019). Furthermore, it also hints to the notion of “personalized media” that empowers personalized crisis, rather than distanced catastrophe, as was the case with old mass-media such as tv and radio (Hui Kyong Chun, 2011).
According to Zuboff, the iPod marked a distinct turn in the Identity of the consumer:
“Apple was among the first to experience explosive commercial success by tapping into a new society of individuals and their demand for individualized consumption [and] offered the tools to shift the focus of consumption from the mass to the individual” (Zuboff, 2019: 35). The iPod conveyed a distinct feature of new media compared to old (mass) media: The individualization of the consumer. A shift in the Identity of the consumer made possible by the ephemerality of digital media, fitting in the fluidity of modern contemporary society. Surveillance capitalism has been allowed to set its roots under the veil of this new consumer-paradigm (Zuboff, 2019). Furthermore, it also hints to the notion of “personalized media” that empowers personalized crisis, rather than distanced catastrophe, as was the case with old mass-media such as tv and radio (Hui Kyong Chun, 2011).
Zamona:
A critical design mimicking a personal “Amazon” assistant, which automatically buys Christmas presents from the owner to his friends and family, by using collected data from recorded conversations on social media and in real life. Zamona is placed in the curation as it represents a dark future, in which the Identity of the consumer has been reduced to psychic numbed consumer, letting their Identities and ‘future tenses’ (Zuboff, 2019) being decided for them, by capitalist algorithms.
A critical design mimicking a personal “Amazon” assistant, which automatically buys Christmas presents from the owner to his friends and family, by using collected data from recorded conversations on social media and in real life. Zamona is placed in the curation as it represents a dark future, in which the Identity of the consumer has been reduced to psychic numbed consumer, letting their Identities and ‘future tenses’ (Zuboff, 2019) being decided for them, by capitalist algorithms.
Pokémon Go:
Pokémon Go represents the Signification of the gaming industry becoming yet another commodity under the surveillance capitalist agenda. By luring its players, through gamified mechanics, to places of commercial interest, it has become like the ‘Google Addwords’ ported from the closed ecosystem of the internet and into the real world! In other words, it is a real-life clickthrough; the sign of surveillance capitalism reaching in to our physical reality. Thus, Pokémon go signifies, through its mapping of the world, commercial interests, making its user a consumer.
Pokémon Go represents the Signification of the gaming industry becoming yet another commodity under the surveillance capitalist agenda. By luring its players, through gamified mechanics, to places of commercial interest, it has become like the ‘Google Addwords’ ported from the closed ecosystem of the internet and into the real world! In other words, it is a real-life clickthrough; the sign of surveillance capitalism reaching in to our physical reality. Thus, Pokémon go signifies, through its mapping of the world, commercial interests, making its user a consumer.
ACM CFP 2005 Conference Bag:
The ACM CFP 2005 conference bag represents the idea of decentralized surveillance, where the individual is in control of the video recording of other people. It is put in the curation as it represents the identity of user’s that take part against imbalanced power structure of surveillance capitalism. A comment on the need for a rebalancing of power in surveillance culture, as proposed by Steve Mann.
The ACM CFP 2005 conference bag represents the idea of decentralized surveillance, where the individual is in control of the video recording of other people. It is put in the curation as it represents the identity of user’s that take part against imbalanced power structure of surveillance capitalism. A comment on the need for a rebalancing of power in surveillance culture, as proposed by Steve Mann.
The Facebook/Google Container:
An add-on for the web-browser Firefox, that contains trackers of Facebook and Google within a “closed space”. Like with the ACM CFP Conference bag, The Facebook/Google container function as a non-official Regulation of the surveillance that happens when using Facebook or Google. A “vigilante” regulation of the workings of surveillance capitalism and part of the Identity and Signification of the anti-culture of surveillance capitalism.
An add-on for the web-browser Firefox, that contains trackers of Facebook and Google within a “closed space”. Like with the ACM CFP Conference bag, The Facebook/Google container function as a non-official Regulation of the surveillance that happens when using Facebook or Google. A “vigilante” regulation of the workings of surveillance capitalism and part of the Identity and Signification of the anti-culture of surveillance capitalism.
Literature:
- Hui Kyong Chun, W. (2011). Crisis, Crisis, Crisis, or Sovereignty and Networks. Theory, Culture & Society, 28(6), 91–112. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276411418490
- Introna, L. D., & Nissenbaum, H. (2000). Shaping the Web : Why the Politics of Search Engines Matters. The Information Society, 200.
- Jeremy Rifkin. (2011). The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World (p. 270). p. 270. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
- Juarez, G. (2017). Intercolonial-Technogalactic. In Reverse Hallucinations in the Archipilago (1st ed., pp. 152–169). Berlin, DE: K. Verlag Press.
- Mann, S. (2016). Surveillance ( oversight ), Sousveillance ( undersight ), and Metaveillance ( seeing sight itself ). https://doi.org/10.1109/CVPRW.2016.177
- Mann, S., Nolan, J., & Wellman, B. (2003). Sousveillance : Inventing and Using Wearable Computing Devices for Data Collection in Surveillance Environments ∗. Surveillance & Society, 1(3), 331–355.
- Ridgway, R. (2017). Against a personalisation of the self. Ephemera, 17(2), 377–397.
- Teymur, N. (1981). The Materiality of Design. BLOCK, 1(5), 18.
- Tyżlik-carver, M. (2019). | curator | cura ng | the curatorial | not-just-art cura ng A genealogy of posthuman cura ng. Springerin, 2017(1), 1–5.
- Williams, R. (1976). Raymond Williams (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
- Zuboff, S. (2019). The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (1st ed.). New York: PublicAffairs.
- Hui Kyong Chun, W. (2011). Crisis, Crisis, Crisis, or Sovereignty and Networks. Theory, Culture & Society, 28(6), 91–112. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276411418490
- Introna, L. D., & Nissenbaum, H. (2000). Shaping the Web : Why the Politics of Search Engines Matters. The Information Society, 200.
- Jeremy Rifkin. (2011). The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World (p. 270). p. 270. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
- Juarez, G. (2017). Intercolonial-Technogalactic. In Reverse Hallucinations in the Archipilago (1st ed., pp. 152–169). Berlin, DE: K. Verlag Press.
- Mann, S. (2016). Surveillance ( oversight ), Sousveillance ( undersight ), and Metaveillance ( seeing sight itself ). https://doi.org/10.1109/CVPRW.2016.177
- Mann, S., Nolan, J., & Wellman, B. (2003). Sousveillance : Inventing and Using Wearable Computing Devices for Data Collection in Surveillance Environments ∗. Surveillance & Society, 1(3), 331–355.
- Ridgway, R. (2017). Against a personalisation of the self. Ephemera, 17(2), 377–397.
- Teymur, N. (1981). The Materiality of Design. BLOCK, 1(5), 18.
- Tyżlik-carver, M. (2019). | curator | cura ng | the curatorial | not-just-art cura ng A genealogy of posthuman cura ng. Springerin, 2017(1), 1–5.
- Williams, R. (1976). Raymond Williams (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
- Zuboff, S. (2019). The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (1st ed.). New York: PublicAffairs.
