Episode 004: Surveillance
As in “surveillance capitalism.” I’m currently reading Shoshana Zuboff’s book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. It is deeply troubling.
What I find most helpful about Zuboff’s work is that she argues that what we are experiencing in our modern data-mining-without-consent moment is neither inevitable nor a necessary outcome of the technology itself. These are choices made by human beings and corporations.
In other words, we can choose otherwise.
The section I’m currently reading is on all the spying and data collection that the parent company of Google has been doing on all of us. Getting rid of my Gmail accounts has just moved up my priority list.
If you’re interested in a more personal take on “how we got here,” I’d also recommend Anna Wiener’s Uncanny Valley: A Memoir.
In our next episode we’ll discuss why I’m getting rid of my Google Voice number.