Surveillance Capitalism

Surveillance capitalism is a new form of making economic gains, this makes use of information,

turning it into a valuable commodity; in this case, commodities that rely heavily on mass

surveillance over the internet. It is contrast to the post-fordist practices, where economy is moved

from office towards one that is reliant knowledge, surveillance capitalism is a big data practice

that looks to monetize people's online data. These are often data that's extracted from the same

people that is their target market and monetise the data back to them at a cost (Zuboff, 2014).

Concept of surveillance capitalism

The surveillance of new data has been looked at as a new version of capitalism, this led academic

Shoshana Zuboff to coin the phrase, surveillance capitalism, suggesting that it depends on the

world wide outlook of computer meditation. In her 2015 academic research, Big Other, she

stated that the surveillance capitalism produces a well distributed and non-contested show of

power which she called "big other". The companies that falls under this category include,

Amazon, Apple, Google and the likes. They use a wealth of user's data to actively collect and

control, then they turn it into products and services that has a sweet financial return (Moore,

2016).

Surveillance capitalism may be an unknown threat to many internet users and it is believed to

threaten little kids more than the grown-ups. Holloway (2019) showed in his studies that due to

the fact that children are not supposed to be working, the criticism raised wasn't justify. Children

can basically be used at a cash cow, that many "big other" including Facebook and the likes of

them, already have access to what they need. If at the end of the day and nothing still get to be

done about it.

It needs to be said that the process that was employed to get all the required data isn't newly

adopted, it has been around for a while but, it has just been used to control and monitor internet

users.

Challenge of surveillance capitalism

The challenge of surveillance capitalism is from the point of data collection. It may be viewed

through different perspectives and it will still be looked at from a negative point while it takes a

non-sentimental look to see the positive side to this. Mayer-Schönberger and Cukier (2013), put

data as a very important asset and a vital economic stimulus, which holds the foundation for

many business models that may yet to be model towards. It was just a question of when and not

how that would be done; the question "when" has been answered with now but the full

implementation hasn't been widely used as it was forecasted (Van den Hoven and Rooksby

2008). Some use it albeit in a conventional way of algorithm, which is not really controlling from

the way internet users view that.

Many authors have written against the surveillance capitalism, with some going as far as writing

about social injustice in surveillance capitalism. This might not really move the much but, it is

one of the gap that has been found in it. Transparency should ensure that the total process can be

done with the consent of internet users even though doing that will invalidate the whole

economic gains that the big companies that mine this data are looking to achieve.
References

Holloway, D. (2019). Surveillance Capitalism and Children’s Data: The Internet of toys and
things for children. Media International Australia 2019, 170(1) 27–36.

Mayer-Schönberger, V., and Cukier, K. (2013). Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform
How We Live, Work, and Think. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Moore, M. (2016). Tech Giants and Civic Power. London: Centre for the Study of Media,
Communication and Power. King’s College London.

Van den Hoven, J., and Rooksby, E. (2008). Distributive justice and the value of information: A
(broadly) Rawlsian approach. In Information Technology and Moral Philosophy, edited by
Van den Hoven, J. and J. Weckert, 376-398. Cambridge, UK: University of Cambridge
Press.

Zuboff, S. (2014). The new weapons of mass detection. Frankfurter Allgemeine Feuilleton.
Frankfurt: Fazit Foundation.

Zuboff, S. (2015). Big other: surveillance capitalism and the prospects of an information
civilization. Journal of Information Technology 30: 75–89.