JN: In this story of conquest and appropriation, the term “digital natives” takes on a new meaning…
Shoshana Zuboff: Yes, “digital natives” is a tragically ironic phrase.
I am fascinated by the structure of colonial conquest, especially the
first Spaniards who stumbled into the Caribbean islands. Historians
call it the “conquest pattern”, which unfolds in three phases:
legalistic measures to provide the invasion with a gloss of
justification, a declaration of territorial claims, and the founding of
a town to legitimate the declaration. Back then Columbus simply
declared the islands as the territory of the Spanish monarchy and the
pope.
The sailors could not have imagined that they were writing the first
draft of a pattern that would echo across space and time to a digital
21st century. The first surveillance capitalists also conquered by
declaration. They simply declared our private experience to be theirs
for the taking, for translation into data for their private ownership
and their proprietary knowledge. They relied on misdirection and
rhetorical camouflage, with secret declarations that we could neither
understand nor contest.
Google began by unilaterally declaring that the world wide web was its
to take for its search engine. Surveillance capitalism originated in a
second declaration that claimed our private experience for its revenues
that flow from telling and selling our fortunes to other businesses. In
both cases, it took without asking. Page [Larry, Google co-founder]
foresaw that surplus operations would move beyond the online milieu to
the real world, where data on human experience would be free for the
taking. As it turns out his vision perfectly reflected the history of
capitalism, marked by taking things that live outside the market sphere
and declaring their new life as market commodities.
We were caught off guard by surveillance capitalism because there was
no way that we could have imagined its action, any more than the early
peoples of the Caribbean could have foreseen the rivers of blood that
would flow from their hospitality toward the sailors who appeared out
of thin air waving the banner of the Spanish monarchs. Like the
Caribbean people, we faced something truly unprecedented.
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