Surveillance Capitalism
Screenshot: The Guardian
I've struck upon another key term today that I think describes what is happening in society at the moment.
The PhD research provides the reader with an ethnographic account and evidence of how networked technologies connected via the Internet which was purported to bring great freedoms for humanity, yet may in fact be the vehicle facilitating the very opposite, the death of privacy. The emergent counter-discourse to that of a western capitalist development and associated paradigm is evident in the discussion chapter of this research, the derivative of immersive and reflection research activities, identification of cultural practices and values that serve as power differentia, cultural phenomena that manifests with the prevalence or absence of things in society. eg. presence of surveillance.
Surveillance capitalism as defined by Professor Shoshana Zuboff may now need to be considered as the largest power broker for society, given the array of machinery that now feeds upon humanity producing terrorism of its own making. At stake is our personal freedom and this surveillance, as evidenced across a range of research activities brings into question the very constitution for a civil and private society. For those wealthy enough, the power to switch off such oversight of their lives means a bought freedom, freedom within constraint.
That freedom is also within the confines of the very same capitalism it sought to escape and so this is why this research explores how identity, power, and whereabouts all contribute to our collective and individual sense of freedom.
