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University of California Santa Cruz from Mass Culture To UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA CRUZ FROM MASS CULTURE TO PERSONALIZATION A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in HISTORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS by Lindsay A. Weinberg June 2018 The Dissertation of Lindsay A. Weinberg is approved: ___________________________________ Professor Robert Meister, co-chair ___________________________________ Professor Carla Freccero, co-chair ___________________________________ Professor Warren Sack ___________________________________ Professor Mark Andrejevic _____________________________ Tyrus Miller Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction, p. 1 Chapter One, p. 36 Rethinking the Frankfurt School Chapter Two, p. 118 On the Question of Labor Chapter Three, p. 180 Attention and Design Chapter Four, p. 231 Surveillance and Privacy Conclusion, p. 274 References, p. 283 ! iii LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1. Kelvinator “Automatic Cook” advertisement................................................195 2. Hotpoint All-Electric Kitchen advertisement…............................................196 3. Original advertisement for the Honeywell Kitchen Computer......................199 4. Apple’s “1984” advertisement………………………………………….......202 ! iv Abstract From Mass Culture to Personalization Lindsay Weinberg This dissertation argues that personalization—the web of technologies and cultural practices that generate information about consumers to market goods and services to target audiences—is part of a larger cultural and economic transformation under digital capitalism. Building on the Frankfurt School’s analysis of the mass culture industry, I use immanent critique to highlight the contradictions embedded in the celebratory rhetoric of digital media: its promises of customized, tailored, and interactive content, in contrast to the homogeneity and standardization of mass culture. I draw from Gilles Deleuze’s “Postscript on Societies of Control” to argue that personalization technologies are actually predicated on “dividuation,” the mass collection of data where individual subjects are fragmented into demographic data, preferences, and search habits for predicting future consumer behavior. Through discourse analysis, the study of laws regulating data, the critique of the political economy of personalization, and the study of its popular reception, I demonstrate how personalization aggregates consumer data to assess risk on capitalist investment, reproducing class, race, and gender biases in the distribution of market choices. In contrast to audience theories of labor, originally popularized by Dallas Smythe, this dissertation instead considers user attention to be part of a logistically coordinated digital economy where personalization is laborsaving to the extent that it cuts down on labor and supply costs. By providing an historical account of the rise of ! v personalization as a technology of leisure-time surveillance emerging out of the 19th century revolution in bureaucratic modes of control, I show how capitalism uses media technologies to capture user attention for managing circulation. My analysis of marketing discourse and popular culture illustrates how personalization relies on gendered, racialized visions of technological subservience to conceal its operation as a technique of capital accumulation. Ultimately, this project provides a political framework for redressing the exploitation, unequal distribution of market choices, and pervasive surveillance that personalization entails through a critique of privacy rights discourse in the U.S. and E.U. I build on feminist approaches to political philosophy to argue that the non-sovereignty of the subject under commercial surveillance— dividuation—could also provide the basis for the socialized redistribution of big data profits. ! vi Acknowledgements This dissertation emerged out of a seminar with Professor Robert Meister called “Rethinking Capitalism.” Students were asked to consider the following: to what extent can Marx’s theory of industrial capitalism be applied to 21st century conditions of financialization, and to what degree is it necessary to rethink Marx’s conceptual tools? This question profoundly struck me, so much so that I wanted to commit my dissertation to understanding how commercial surveillance, data collection practices, and subjectivity were part of this larger set of historical transformations. As an advisor, Professor Meister’s generosity with his time and passion for big ideas helped guide me throughout the development of this project. His desire to interrogate foundational concepts of political theory was contagious. Our meetings served as a constant source of inspiration and much of who I am as a thinker can be traced back to those conversations. My thinking is equally indebted to Professor Carla Freccero’s seminar, “Feminist Posthumanisms,” which introduced me to the rich feminist scholarship on subjectivity and technology. This course pushed me to think about the relevance and limits of the Frankfurt School for today, a question that is deeply woven into this project. Professor Freccero read several drafts of this dissertation with tremendous care and a sharply critical eye, and my thinking and writing has improved immeasurably because of her. She is also a brilliant pedagogue, with deep awareness of her students as thinking beings in the world. ! vii Professor Warren Sack’s seminar, “Software Studies,” and his counsel as a reader of this dissertation made certain that I grappled with the intricacies of personalization technologies. He helped me understand what it means to take technology seriously as an object of study. I was inspired to seek out computer scientists and advertisers as a way of grounding my thinking in the concrete lived experiences of those who do the work of personalization. Professor Sack also supported the symposium I helped plan with several graduate students in Film and Digital Media called “War, Security, and Digital Media,” which provided an incredibly generative space for thinking about my work alongside practice-based artists and makers. This dissertation is also heavily inspired by scholarship of Professor Mark Andrejevic, whose work on commercial surveillance is crucial to the ways I think about personalization in relation to alienation and exploitation. I was so energized by a talk he gave at UCSC called “Drone Theory: Automated Data Collection and Processing and the Always-On War” that I immediately began reading all of his books. I feel so fortunate to have him as a reader of this dissertation. UCSC students pushed my thinking and pedagogical practice in ways that will forever inform my teaching and scholarship. I have worked with exceptional students in “Censorship and the Power of Words” and “Surveillance and Society.” Their capacity for critical thought, embrace of tough questions, and connections to their daily practice were a constant source of inspiration to keep reading, thinking, and ! viii writing. Additionally, the pedagogical training and mentorship that I received from the Writing Program have been invaluable as a teacher and practitioner of writing. I am also thankful for the funding support I received from the History of Consciousness Department, the Institute for Humanities Research, and the University of California Humanities Research Institute, which assisted with research expenses and allowed me to balance teaching commitments with time to write. Dear friends have supported me throughout the development of this project, including Christina Neri, Daisy Griggs, Caitlin McNichol, Rashinda Reed, Antonella Aiello, Alex Carson, Lindsay Keebler, and Megan Pittman. Who I am as a thinker and teacher stems from friendships with Surya Parekh, Asad Haider, Stephen David Engel, Gabriel Mindel, Adrian Drummond-Cole, Tim Willcutts, Anthony Breakspear, and the lasting impact of my undergraduate mentors Scott Henkel and Monika Mehta. I am very fortunate to have received Muiris MacGiollabhui’s encouragement during my last year of writing and time on the job market. Without the love and support of Lara Galas throughout my time at UCSC, this project would not have been possible. My family has also offered unwavering support throughout my time as a graduate student, including Mitchell and Barbara Cohn and their kin. I am privileged to say that my brother, father, and grandparents are some of my most valuable interlocutors. Josh Weinberg, Steve Weinberg, Elly Cohn, and Eli Cohn, I am so very grateful for you. This dissertation is dedicated to my mother, Dr. Nina Weinberg. ! ix Introduction “The power of individual targeting—the technology will be so good it will be very hard for people to watch or consume something that has not in some sense been tailored for them." –Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google1 The commercialization of the Internet has gone hand in hand with what Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron call the Californian ideology: the fusion of radical individualism, libertarianism, and neoliberal economics with a technologically deterministic vision of a more perfect future.2 Theoretically, consumers are empowered through increased access to information and market choices. This utopian vision grew out of the 20th century counterculture demand for individual freedom and the critique of alienation and hierarchy.3 However, what resulted from the transition to postindustrial information societies in the United States was not the transcending of capitalist social relationships, but a profound economic crisis
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