Big Other: Surveillance Capitalism and the Prospects of an Information Civilization

Journal of Information Technology (2015) 30, 75–89. doi:10.1057/jit.2015.5

15 Pages Posted: 17 Apr 2015

See all articles by Shoshana Zuboff

Shoshana Zuboff

Harvard Business School; Harvard Kennedy School, Carr Center for Human Rights Policy

Date Written: April 4, 2015

Abstract

This article describes an emergent logic of accumulation in the networked sphere, ‘surveillance capitalism,’ and considers its implications for ‘information civilization.’ Google is to surveillance capitalism what General Motors was to managerial capitalism. Therefore the institutionalizing practices and operational assumptions of Google Inc. are the primary lens for this analysis as they are rendered in two recent articles authored by Google Chief Economist Hal Varian. Varian asserts four uses that follow from computer-mediated transactions: ‘data extraction and analysis,’ ‘new contractual forms due to better monitoring,’ ‘personalization and customization,’ and ‘continuous experiments.’ An examination of the nature and consequences of these uses sheds light on the implicit logic of surveillance capitalism and the global architecture of computer mediation upon which it depends. This architecture produces a distributed and largely uncontested new expression of power that I christen: ‘Big Other.’ It is constituted by unexpected and often illegible mechanisms of extraction, commodification, and control that effectively exile persons from their own behavior while producing new markets of behavioral prediction and modification. Surveillance capitalism challenges democratic norms and departs in key ways from the centuries long evolution of market capitalism.

Keywords: surveillance capitalism, big data, Google, information society, privacy, internet of everything

JEL Classification: L2, O3, P1, Z, M, K, A13

Suggested Citation

Zuboff, Shoshana, Big Other: Surveillance Capitalism and the Prospects of an Information Civilization (April 4, 2015). Journal of Information Technology (2015) 30, 75–89. doi:10.1057/jit.2015.5, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2594754

Shoshana Zuboff (Contact Author)

Harvard Business School

Soldiers Field Road
Boston, MA 02163
United States

HOME PAGE: http://shoshanazuboff.com

Harvard Kennedy School, Carr Center for Human Rights Policy

Littauer-G-11G
Cambridge, MA 02138
United States

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