DOCSLIB.ORG

Privacy Trading in the Surveillance Capitalism Age Viewpoints on ‘Privacy-Preserving’ Societal Value Creation

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Privacy Trading in the Surveillance Capitalism Age Viewpoints on ‘Privacy-Preserving’ Societal Value Creation Privacy Trading in the Surveillance Capitalism Age Viewpoints on ‘Privacy-Preserving’ Societal Value Creation Ranjan Pal, Jon Crowcroft University of Cambridge [email protected],[email protected],[email protected] This article is an editorial note submitted to CCR. It has NOT been peer reviewed. The authors take full responsibility for this article’s technical content. Comments can be posted through CCR Online. ABSTRACT well as the state-of-the-art IoT/CPS systems. All this is made possi- In the modern era of the mobile apps (part of the era of surveil- ble through mobile apps (applications) that enable the functioning lance capitalism, a famously coined term by Shoshana Zuboff), huge of operations in this ecosystem. ln-app advertising is an essential quantities of data about individuals and their activities offer a wave part of this digital ecosystem of free mobile applications, where of opportunities for economic and societal value creation. How- the ecosystem entities comprise the consumers, consumer apps, ever, the current personal data ecosystem is mostly de-regulated, ad-networks, advertisers, and retailers (see Figure 1 for a simplified fragmented, and inefficient. On one hand, end-users are often not representation for the ad-network and advertisers case). In reality, able to control access (either technologically, by policy, or psycho- advertisers and retailers could be directly linked to the consumer logically) to their personal data which results in issues related to apps in sell-buy relationships. As a popular example, Evite.com privacy, personal data ownership, transparency, and value distri- may sell lists of their consumers attending a party in a given loca- bution. On the other hand, this puts the burden of managing and tion directly to advertisers. As another example, the gene testing protecting user data on profit-driven apps and ad-driven entities company 23andMe might sell their clientele information directly to (e.g., an ad-network) at a cost of trust and regulatory accountability. pharmaceutical companies in order for the latter to develop medical Data holders (e.g., apps) may hence take commercial advantage of drugs. As a social objective, a win-win situation among the entities the individuals’ inability to fully anticipate the potential uses of of this ecosystem is desired, where (a) the privacy preferences of their private information, with detrimental effects for social welfare. consumers can be preserved, (b) the free apps can display appropri- As steps to improve social welfare, we comment on the the existence ate targeted consumer ads [21], (c) the ad-networks can publish the and design of efficient consumer-data releasing ecosystems aimed right ads on their billboards, and (d) the advertisers can target as at achieving a maximum social welfare state amongst competing large as possible and more importantly the right set of consumers. data holders. In view of (a) the behavioral assumption that humans The basic requirement for this ‘win-win’ ecosystem to exist in the are ‘compromising’ beings, (b) privacy not being a well-boundaried first place, is the flow of personalized information from thecon- good, and (c) the practical inevitability of inappropriate data leakage sumer to the advertisers via the ad-networks for effective/profitable by data holders upstream in the supply-chain, we showcase the idea ad placements, that subsequently motivate the latter to collect per- of a regulated and radical privacy trading mechanism that preserves sonal data about consumers via apps. The vision and benefits for the heterogeneous privacy preservation constraints (at an aggregate such an ecosystem were laid down by a certain school of infor- consumer, i.e., app, level) upto certain compromise levels, and at mation economists [1][16], in favor of having increased aggregate the same time satisfying commercial requirements of agencies (e.g., societal welfare. More specifically, according to the authors in[1], advertising organizations) that collect and trade client data for in return for personal data, advertisers and marketers will benefit the purpose of behavioral advertising. More specifically, our idea the individuals through monetary compensation (e.g., discounts, merges supply function economics, introduced by Klemperer and Facebook Libre Coins) and intangible benefits (e.g., personalization Meyer, with differential privacy, that, together with their powerful and customization of information content), and price discrimina- theoretical properties, leads to a stable and efficient, i.e., a maximum tion. Furthermore, the authors state that the lack of use of personal social welfare, state, and that too in an algorithmically scalable data will lead to opportunity costs and market inefficiencies. To manner. As part of future research, we also discuss interesting this end, three important questions that draw our attention are: can additional techno-economic challenges related to realizing effective such an ecosystem exist in the digital society?; if yes, then how should privacy trading ecosystems. it be designed?; and what is the implication of such a design to policy, economic science, and technology? CCS CONCEPTS Organization of the Paper - In this note, we first provide arguments for the virtually inevitable need of such ecosystems, despite positive- • Security and Privacy; • Economics; minded barriers put in place to prevent commercial use of personal KEYWORDS data in practice (see Section 2). We then provide an overview of supply function economics as an appropriate tool, that when com- Privacy, Trading, Mobile Apps, Market, Ecosystem, Efficiency bined with differential privacy, can be used to design an ecosystem resulting in stable and efficient economic outcomes from privacy 1 INTRODUCTION trading (see Section 3). Finally, we also discuss interesting additional Mobile technology is a major driving force behind the modern digi- techno-economic challenges related to realizing effective privacy tal society including business small and large, personal lifestyles, as trading ecosystems in practice. ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review Volume 49 Issue 3, July 2019 26 Auction Process risks in holding personal data (e.g., via penalty mechanisms en- Matching b/w CB DH AO1 1 1 Ad- DHs & AOs Network1 forced by GDPR), re-identification by data brokers of data through Consumer Base the connection of disparate datasets, finds an efficient market. This, AO2 despite a plethora of popular anonymization and aggregation tech- CB2 DH2 Ad- niques aimed to prevent personal data breach attempts. Thereby, - Network2 AO3 Data - it is fair to assume that, with a high likelihood, there would be an Holders - Benefit - - $$, Incentive - - $$ Advertising inevitable breach of personal consumer information in general to sat- - - - Organizations - - isfy the economics behind the working of the current ad ecosystem, - - 2 - thereby leading to failing of the privacy-preservation property . CBk-1 DHk-1 Ad- Networkn Some recent studies [17] have stacked up cases against behavioral AOm-1 advertising post GDPR, stating that advertising firms can make Data Release more revenues from traditional advertising channels such as TV CBk DHk AOm and newspapers, compared to online/mobile advertising. However, Applications E-commerce, Healthcare, Transportation, Energy, Smart Homes the firms under question in the studies are big popular ones like NYT, and the same ‘increased revenue’ reasoning cannot be said Figure 1: Illustration of Mobile In-App Ad Ecosystem to hold for small to medium sized firms who rely heavily on be- havioral advertising for generating revenues. Thus, in view of the above mentioned arguments, an ecosystem possessing all the de- 2 LIKELY INEVITABILITY OF DATA RELEASE sired properties (a) - (d) mentioned in Section 1, cannot exist in practice. Mathematically, even for a relaxed version of this ecosys- In this section, we state the likely inevitable need of data release tem, this has been proved by the authors in [19] - their main result ecosystems citing multiple reasons, despite positive-minded barri- being that the standard utilitarian social objective cannot be opti- ers put in place to prevent commercial use of personal data in prac- mized for the case when aggregate consumer privacy preferences, tice. This subsequently calls for putting privacy trading methodolo- represented via the popular differential privacy metric, are ideally gies in place as one possible direction to ensure improved economic homogeneous across the apps. welfare. As section organization, we first discuss the inevitability The Age and Rise Of Surveillance Capitalism - In her recent of data release frameworks in the presence of positive-minded bar- book [25], Shoshana Zuboff states with numerous real-life surveil- riers to commercial use of personal data, thereby paving the way lance examples. since the early 2000’s, of how our daily life ac- for trading of data (privacy). We then brief the reader about the tivities are all recorded, rendered as behavioral data, processed, two-decade old but a newly-coined term, ‘surveillance capitalism’, analysed, bought, bundled, and resold like sub-prime mortgages and how such a capitalism era we are in bolsters the inevitability in a behavioral futures market. The litany of appropriated expe- of data release. Further, we take a quick look into privacy issues riences is repeated so often and so extensively that we become that might arise in the presence of privacy trading itself. Finally, numb, forgetting that this
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Surveillance Capitalism and Privacy. Knowledge and Attitudes on Surveillance Capitalism and Online Institutional Privacy Protect
    CORE brought to you by Pobrane z czasopisma Mediatizations Studies http://mediatization.umcs.pl Data: 20/11/2019 22:16:21 MEDIATIZATION STUDIES 2/2018 DOI: 10.17951/ms.2018.2.49-68 GRZEGORZ PTASZEK View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk AGH UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY [email protected] Surveillance capitalism and privacy. Knowledge and attitudes on surveillance capitalism and online institutional privacy protection practices among adolescents in Poland Abstract. The purpose of the study was to determine the level of knowledge and attitudes towards surveillance capitalism and online institutional privacy protection practices among adolescents in Poland (aged 18–19), as well as to determine the relationships between these variables. Surveillance capitalism has emerged as a result of internet users’ activities and involves the collection of all data about these users by different entities for speciic beneits without letting them know about it. The dominantrole in surveillance capitalism is played by hi-tech corporations. The aim of the study was to verify whether knowledge, and what kind of knowledge, on surveillance capitalism translates into practices related to the protection of online institutional privacy. The study was conducted on a sample of 177 adolescents in Poland. The main part of theUMCS questionnaire consisted of two scales: the scale of knowledge and attitudes on surveillance capitalism, and the scale of online institutional privacy protection practices. The results of the study, calculated by statistical methods, showed that although the majority of respondents had average knowledge and attitudes about surveillance capitalism, which may result from insuficient knowledge of the subject matter, this participation in specialized activities/workshops inluences the level of intensiication of online institutional privacy protection practices.
    [Show full text]
  • The Threat of Surveillance Capitalism
    A DESPROPÓSITO Teknokultura. Revista de Cultura Digital y Movimientos Sociales ISSNe: 1549-2230 http://dx.doi.org/10.5209/TEKN.64984 The threat of surveillance capitalism Chris H. Gray1 Recibido: 7 de julio 2019 / Aceptado: 22 de octubre 2019 Open peer reviews Abstract. Using Shoshana Zuboff’s 2019 book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, the essay explores this latest form of capitalism and Zuboff’s claims about its organization. Her arguments are compared and contrasted with David Eggers novel, and the movie that came out of it, called The Circle, as well as other perspectives on capitalism (Marx, Barry Unsworth’s Sacred Hunger) and the current dominance of social media companies (especially Alphabet/Google, Facebook, and Amazon) from Evgeny Morozov, Natasa Dow Schüll, Zeynep Tufekci, Steve Mann and Tim Wu. Zuboff’s description and critique of Surveillance Capitalism is a convincing and important addition to our understanding of the political economy of the early 21st Century and the role of giant monopolistic social media companies in shaping it. Keywords: behavioural surplus; Shoshanna Zuboff; social media. [es] La amenaza del capitalismo de la vigilancia Resumen. A partir del libro de Shoshana Zuboff de 2019, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, el ensayo explora esta última forma de capitalismo y las afirmaciones de Zuboff sobre su organización. Sus argumentos se comparan y contrastan con la novela de David Eggers, y su adaptación a la gran pantalla en la película El Círculo [The Circle], así como otros analistas del capitalismo (Marx, Barry Unsworth’s Sacred Hunger) y, en particular, del dominio actual de las compañías de redes sociales (especialmente Alphabet/Google, Facebook y Amazon) como Evgeny Morozov, Natasa Dow Schüll, Zeynep Tufekci, Steve Mann y Tim Wu.
    [Show full text]
  • Surveillance Capitalism - Shoshana Zuboff Wenhao & Sofia & Anvitha
    Surveillance Capitalism - Shoshana Zuboff Wenhao & Sofia & Anvitha Introduction Wenhao Author: Shoshana Zuboff • Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School • Defined the concept of Surveillance Capitalism • International Conference on Information Systems Scholars' 2016 Best Paper Award Image. https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/contributor/shoshana-zuboff/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoshana_Zuboff Intro - “Big Data” Image. https://hackernoon.com/the-3-vs-of-big-data-analytics-1afd59692adb “Big Data”: General Definition • Big Data is also data but with a huge size. • Huge in volume and growing exponentially with time. • Too large and complex that no traditional data management tools are able to store it or process it efficiently. • E.g. Trade data (New York Stock Exchange) Video, photo, messages, comments (Social Media) Snijders, C.; Matzat, U.; Reips, U.-D. (2012). "'Big Data': Big gaps of knowledge in the field of Internet". “Big Data”: Features • Delineated by Constantiou and Kallinikos (2014) • Heterogeneous: high variability of data types • Unstructured: no fixed format • Trans-semiotic: extend beyond alphanumeric systems • Decontextualized: surrounding context removed • Agnostic: may being produced for purposes different from those sought by big data crunching Constantiou, I.D. and Kallinikos, J.(2014). New Games, New Rules: Big data and the changing context of strategy Applications in Daily Life • Media and Entertainment Industry • Collect personal browsing data => Recommendation System • E.g. Spotify, YouTube, Amazon Prime Image. https://medium.com/s/story/spotifys-discover-weekly-how-machine-learning-finds-your-new-music-19a41ab76efe Applications in Daily Life • Health Care via wearable devices • Collect personal health record => Detecting possible diseases • E.g. Apple Watch Image. https://www.macrumors.com/2019/01/08/cook-apple-health-most-important-contribution-to-mankind/ Applications in Daily Life • Advertisement • Collect personal searching data => Personalized advertising • E.g.
    [Show full text]
  • The Law of Informational Capitalism
    AMY KAPCZYNSKI The Law of Informational Capitalism The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power BY SHOSHANA ZUBOFF PUBLICAFFAIRS, 2019 Between Truth and Power: The Legal Constructions of Informational Capitalism BY JULIE E. COHEN OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2019 abstract. Over the past several decades, our capacity to technologically process and ex- change data and information has expanded dramatically. An early sense of optimism about these developments has given way to widespread pessimism, in the wake of a wave of revelations about the extent of digital tracking and manipulation. Shoshana Zuboff’s book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, has been hailed by many as the decisive account of the looming threat of private power in the digital age. While the book offers important insights, Zuboff’s account is too narrow: it fixates on technological threats to our autonomy and obscures the relationship between technology and the problems of monopoly, inequality, and discriminatory hierarchy that threaten our democ- racy. Zuboff’s book also fails to appreciate the critical role that law plays in the construction and persistence of private power. Julie Cohen’s book, Between Truth and Power: The Legal Constructions of Informational Capitalism, gives us a much better framework to comprehend intensifying forms of private power today and the role that law has played in supporting them. Drawing on Cohen’s insights, I construct an account of the “law of informational capitalism,” with particular attention to the law that undergirds platform power. Once we come to see informational capitalism as con- tingent upon specific legal choices, we can begin to consider how democratically to reshape it.
    [Show full text]
  • Shoshana Zuboff: Secrets of Surveillance Capitalism
    Shoshana Zuboff: Secrets of Surveillance Capitalism https://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/debatten/the-digital-debate/shos... 03.03.2016 - Aktualisiert: 05.03.2016, 13:23 Uhr https://www.faz.net/-hzi-8eaf4 Google as a Fortune Teller Governmental control is nothing compared to what Google is up to. The company is creating a wholly new genus of capitalism, a systemic coherent new logic of accumulation we should call surveillance capitalism. Is there nothing we can do?surveillance capitalism Von SHOSHANA ZUBOFF © ddp images The assault we face is driven by the exceptional appetites of a wholly new genus of capitalism: surveillance capitalism. Google surpassed Apple as the world’s most highly valued company in January for the first time since 2010. (Back then each company was worth less than 200 billion. Now each is valued at well over 500 billion.) While Google’s new lead lasted only a few days, the company’s success has implications for everyone who lives within the reach of the Internet. Why? Because Google is ground zero for a wholly new subspecies of capitalism in which profits derive from the unilateral surveillance and modification of human behavior. This is a new surveillance capitalism that is unimaginable outside the inscrutable high velocity circuits of Google’s digital universe, whose signature feature is the Internet and its successors. While the world is riveted by the showdown between Apple and the FBI, the real truth is that the surveillance capabilities being developed by surveillance capitalists are the envy of every state security agency. What are the secrets of this new capitalism, how do they produce such staggering wealth, and how can we protect ourselves from its invasive power? (German Version: „Wie wir Sklaven von Google wurden“ von Shoshana Zuboff) “Most Americans realize that there are two groups of people who are monitored regularly as they move about the country.
    [Show full text]
  • Surveillance Capitalism
    Journal of Technology Law & Policy Volume 25 Issue 1 Article 3 Surveillance Capitalism William Hamilton Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/jtlp Part of the Privacy Law Commons, and the Science and Technology Law Commons Recommended Citation Hamilton, William () "Surveillance Capitalism," Journal of Technology Law & Policy: Vol. 25 : Iss. 1 , Article 3. Available at: https://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/jtlp/vol25/iss1/3 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by UF Law Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal of Technology Law & Policy by an authorized editor of UF Law Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM William Hamilton* In 2019, Harvard Business School Professor Shoshana Zuboff published The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power.1 What I hope to accomplish in this short presentation is to unpack some of the salient themes of this interesting, important book. I believe her book will lend context and urgency to this conference. Her book is a combination of excellent research, journalism, and scholarship. It is also a call, a plea, a supplication. Thus, the sub-title, The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, presages an unrelenting critical study of the deployment of a new economic power in the early 21st century. However, a word of warning and a plea from me for indulgence. Surveillance Capitalism is a tour de force consisting of 525 pages of relatively small font text and over 100 pages of even smaller font footnotes.
    [Show full text]
  • Review of Zuboff Surveillance Capitalism Reviews
    NMS0010.1177/14614448211019021new media & societyBook Review Essay 1019021book-review2021 Book Review Essay new media & society 1 –13 Blurring genres and violating © The Author(s) 2021 Article reuse guidelines: guild norms: A review sagepub.com/journals-permissions https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448211019021DOI: 10.1177/14614448211019021 of reviews of The Age of journals.sagepub.com/home/nms Surveillance Capitalism Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for Human Futures at the New Frontier of Power. PublicAffairs: New York, 2019; 704 pp.; ISBN 9781541758001, $22.99 (pbk). Reviewed by: Sue Curry Jansen and Jefferson Pooley , Muhlenberg College, USA The digital realm—in particular the world of algorithms and machine learning—is illeg- ible. Even the engineers working on the complex, self-adaptive models that governs our online experience profess a measure of incomprehension: Some describe the output of advanced machine learning as a new form of “alchemy” (Hutson, 2018). This inscruta- bility is at root a political problem. Because digital technologies now pervade and medi- ate contemporary life, the preservation of democracy requires public accountability of their operations and operators. In her magisterial 2019 The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for Human Futures at the New Frontier of Power, Shoshana Zuboff makes a valiant effort to grasp— in holistic terms—the digital economy and its philosophical, social, and communicative ramifications. In the process, she also reflects on the challenges that her own project pose. They include the proprietary character of the data held by Google, Facebook, and others as well as the sheer scale and (to some degree) self-transforming designs of their systems, which make monitoring their operations a challenge.
    [Show full text]
  • Defending Freedom in the Era of Surveillance Capitalism By: Franck Stéphane Ndzomga, IÉSEG School of Management, Master in Business Analysis and Consulting Candidate
    Defending Freedom in the Era of Surveillance Capitalism By: Franck Stéphane Ndzomga, IÉSEG School of Management, Master in Business Analysis and Consulting Candidate Defending Freedom in the Era of pants died from syphilis and related Surveillance Capitalism complications after enduring symptoms as skin ulcers, bone deterioration, liver inflation and In 1932, the southeastern Alabama county of even dementia before death. 40 spouses were Macon became the spectator of a study diagnosed with syphilis and it was passed to 19 officially known as the “Tuskegee Study of children during the study. It was only in 1972, Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male”. Started after news articles condemning the study were before the existence of any known treatment of published that its advisory panel recognized the syphilis, the study, conducted by the Public Tuskegee study as “ethically unjustified” Health Service with the support of the Tuskegee because the knowledge gained was not Institute, intended to record the natural history worth the risks the study imposed to its of syphilis to justify the necessity of treatment subjects. This led to the end of the study the programs for blacks. Initially, 600 black men subsequent month. In 1974, study participants were recruited (399 with Syphilis and 201 free of and their families received a $10 million out of the disease). To lure them into accepting to court settlement and lifetime medical benefits participate in the study, researchers told these after winning a class-action lawsuit. men they were being treated for “bad blood”, a catchall expression used at the time for a The Tuskegee study, as well as other infamous variety of ailments including syphilis, anemia experiments, teach us that conducting experi- and fatigue.
    [Show full text]
  • Assaults on Privacy in America by Jonathan Shaw
    o people behave differently when they think they bases its surveillance on this fact. It wants people to self-censor, be- are being watched? When former National Security cause it knows it can’t stop everybody. The idea is that if you don’t Agency contractor Edward Snowden revealed the mass know where the line is, and the penalty for crossing it is severe, surveillance of American citizens in June 2013, the ques- you will stay far away from it. Basic human conditioning.” The ef- Dtion suddenly grew in importance. Can the behavior of an entire fectiveness of surveillance at preventing crime or terrorism can be population, even in a modern democracy, be changed by awareness debated, but “if your goal is to control a population,” Schneier says, of surveillance? And what are the effects of other kinds of privacy “mass surveillance is awesome.” invasions? That’s a problem, he continues, because “privacy is necessary Jon Penney was nearing the end of a fellowship at Harvard Law for human progress. A few years ago we approved gay marriage in School’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society in 2013, and all 50 states” (see “How Same-Sex Marriage Came to Be,” March- he realized that Snowden’s disclosures presented an opportunity to April 2013, page 30). “That went from ‘It’ll never happen’ to inevi- study their effect on Americans’ online behavior. During research at table, with almost no intervening middle ground.” But to get from Oxford the following year, Penney documented a sudden decline in immoral and illegal to both moral and legal, he explains, interven- Wikipedia searches for certain terrorism-related keywords: Al Qa- ing steps are needed: “It’s done by a few; it’s a counterculture; it’s eda, Hezbollah, dirty bomb, chemical weapon, and jihad, for example.
    [Show full text]
  • The Age of Surveillance Capitalism - a Review Essay Whitehead, Mark
    Aberystwyth University The Age of Surveillance Capitalism - A Review Essay Whitehead, Mark Published in: Antipode Publication date: 2019 Citation for published version (APA): Whitehead, M. (2019). The Age of Surveillance Capitalism - A Review Essay. Antipode, 1. General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the Aberystwyth Research Portal (the Institutional Repository) are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the Aberystwyth Research Portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the Aberystwyth Research Portal Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. tel: +44 1970 62 2400 email: [email protected] Download date: 25. Sep. 2021 Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, London: Profile Books, 2019. ISBN: 9781781256848 (cloth); ISBN: 9781781256855 (paper); ISBN: 9781782832744 (ebook) Some books feel like they may be significant, others have a distinctly epochal feel. Shoshana Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism is certainly in the latter category. While conscious of the twin dangers of hyperbole and prediction, I suspect that Zuboff’s monograph will come to be seen as one of the most significant publications in the social sciences in the first decades of the 21st century.
    [Show full text]
  • Three Disruptive Models of New Spatial Planning: “Attention”, “Surveillance” Or “Sustainable” Capitalisms?
    Journal of Open Innovation: Technology, Market, and Complexity Article Three Disruptive Models of New Spatial Planning: “Attention”, “Surveillance” or “Sustainable” Capitalisms? Philip Cooke Mohn Center for Innovation & Regional Development, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, 5020 Bergen, Norway; [email protected] Abstract: This paper compares and contrasts three disruptive models of potential and actual new kinds of spatial planning. These include “seasteading”, “smart neighbourhoods” and “renewable spatial systems”. Each is labelled with distinctive discursive titles, respectively: “Attention Capi- talism”; “Surveillance Capitalism” and “Sustainable Capitalism” denoting the different lineaments of each, although they all have their origins in the Silicon Valley techno-entrepreneurial milieu. In each case, while the path dependences of trajectories have diverged the progenitors were often erstwhile business partners at the outset. The paper is interested in qualitative methodology and proposes “pattern recognition” as a means to disclose the deep psychological, sociological, political and economic levels that inform the surface appearances and functions of the diverse spatial plan- ning modes and designs that have been advanced or inferred from empirically observable initiator practice. “Dark Triad” analysis is entailed in actualising psychological deep structures. Each of the three models is discussed and the lineaments of their initiators’ ideas are disclosed. Each “school” has a designated mentor(s), respectively: academic B. J. Fogg and venture capitalist Peter Thiel for “Attention Capitalism”, “smart city” planner Dan Doctoroff for “Surveillance Capitalism” and “renewable energineer” and Elon Musk for “Sustainable Capitalism”, the eventual winner of this existential “dark versus light triad” urban planning contest. Citation: Cooke, P. Three Disruptive Keywords: attention; surveillance; sustainable cities; dark triad; light triad; gigaproject Models of New Spatial Planning: “Attention”, “Surveillance” or “Sustainable” Capitalisms? .
    [Show full text]
  • Problems with Surveillance Capitalism and Possible Alternatives for IT Infrastructure
    The High Cost of Free Services: Problems with Surveillance Capitalism and Possible Alternatives for IT Infrastructure Marvin Landwehr Alan Borning Volker Wulf University of Siegen University of Washington University of Siegen Siegen, Germany Seattle, Washington, USA Siegen, Germany [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] ABSTRACT ACM Reference Format: A large portion of the software side of our information technology Marvin Landwehr, Alan Borning, and Volker Wulf. 2019. The High Cost of Free Services: Problems with Surveillance Capitalism and Possible Alter- infrastructure, including web search, email, social media, transporta- natives for IT Infrastructure. In Proceedings of Fifth Workshop on Com- tion information, and much more, is provided “free” to the end users, puting within Limits (LIMITS’19). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 10 pages. although the corporations that provide this are often enormously https://doi.org/10.1145/3338103.3338106 profitable. The business model involves customized advertising and behavior manipulation, powered by intensive gathering and cross-correlation of personal information. Significant other parts 1 SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM of our IT infrastructure use fees-for-service but still involve inten- In the aftermath of the dot-com-bubble, the surviving IT compa- sive information gathering and behavior manipulation. There are nies had to find business models that would continue providing a significant indirect costs of these business models, including lossof growing return to their venture capital funders. In order to keep privacy, supporting surveillance by both corporations and the state, increasing the user base, it was essential for free services to con- automated manipulations of behavior, undermining the democratic tinue to be free of charge for the end users.
    [Show full text]