Lecture 11 - Zuboff, Surveillance Capitalism and Digital Freedom

Posthumanism and Technology

This week I want to primarily explain how Zuboff charts how the insights of behaviourist psychology were radicalised into surveillance capitalism. Specifically, I look at how Zuboff critiques B.F Skinner’s behaviourism, the psychological method through which leading technology companies have since extrapolated means of behaviour modification and a politics of absolute social control. Secondly, I look at the what Zuboff has to say about ‘digital nudging,’ or the means of exercising power by corporations, governments over their populations by technical suggestion, subliminal prodding, through ‘reading’ the inner moods and desires of citizens ,and bending them towards ‘optimum’ outcomes. Outcomes which preclude deviance, dissent and resistance. While this does sound akin to the paranoid ‘mind control’ of a bad sci-fi movie. Zuboff’s point is more subtle, as the mind does not really come into the equation at all. The nudging occurs before the mind even has a chance to assess the way it is being influenced and is thus inherently pre-conceptual. Finally, I will look at what Zuboff has to say about the nature of freedom, and the ways it can be reanimated and returned to public discourse to ‘disrupt’ the logic of surveillance capitalism.

These lectures are brought to you by Staffordshire University's Philosophy team. Come study on our MA in Continental Philosophy via this link. Or, join our MA in Philosophy of Nature, Information and Technology via this link. Find out more about me here. [January and September intakes available - F/T and P/T]