Surveillance Economy
Challenges to Humanity from a Digital Future
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Tech companies like Google and Facebook have not only changed the world we live in but also the fundamentals of our economy. They collect so much of our personal and behavioural data at the lowest possible cost and turn it into profits for themselves that this business behavior has fueled an entire digital economy ecosystem. Should we cut ties with such companies?? or CAN WE??
Listen to this IRL podcast
where Shoshana Zuboff describes what all this means for us. She discusses why and how the surveillance market is a hugely profitable one and how those that wield the tools to accomplish this today will be the weilders of powers in the future world.
Surveillance Capitalism is the new front of capitalism. The more and better an enterprise predicts, controls our behaviour and extracts behavioural data the more profits it will make. When the tech giant Google started on its surviellance journey in 2001 its net revenue was US$86million which by the end of year 2002 rose to US$347million , in 2003 its became US$1.5billion and was US$3.5Billion in 2004. No wonder other key players like Facebook and Microsoft also felt the need to claim their share of this digital gold rush. It is the scope of mega profits that give rise to invasive and imperialist companies.
Read Shoshana Zuboff's masterwork The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
Watch her speak about how important is residual data(apart from the info we share intentionally) for the tech biggies that each of us generate on the digital domain.
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