Welcome to the surveillance capitalism

From the brave new world of digital technologies as a monster. So, the US drugstore chain Walgreens announced a few days ago, to install in their stores, smart shelves that are equipped with cameras and Sensors, and a customer's personalized advertising play.

Using facial recognition software, the cooling detect wardrobes gender, age of customers, as well as the contents of the vehicle. On the basis of the display data, customers can see whether their brand, sell products and draw conclusions on the buying behavior. By using an Iris Tracking Software, smart cooling system should also be able to capture the direction of view of the customer and to create so-called "heat maps". The customer is staring at the chocolate? Or on the price tag? He remains hesitant in front of the lemonade stand? As long as the customer remains in the Store? Every look, every emotion is registered.

That the customer is the product, is a trend that is emerging in the stationary and in online trade. In branches of the supermarket chain Real and the German Post office was experimented in the year 2017, with facial recognition systems to display customer tailor-made advertising on screens. The privacy club "Digital Courage" was a criminal complaint – with success: The test mode has been set.

"Post-purchase monetization"

Nevertheless, you can't get rid of the suspicion that the use of surveillance technologies tearing in the consumer world will always be new barriers that the outrage decreases with each Time and eventually the fatalism gives way to the practice adapts to the developments.

Bill Baxter, chief technology officer of the electronics manufacturer, Vizio, has just said in an Interview with the Tech Blog "The Verge" that his company's Smart TVs could only offer so cheap, because data and access would be sold to the device. A "Post-purchase monetization". This means that the actual profit will only be earned after the sale of the Smart TV with personalized advertising. The fancy electronics are practically subsidized.

in other words: The cost of the device are not covered by the purchase price, but with the later data delivery. It is a kind of information-based buy, the number of the device with the purchase price and with data packages financed rates. That Vizio had to pay $ 2.2 million penalty because it sold data from millions of users without their consent, not objecting to the Management, apparently. The data analysis is priced into the profit function.

The Harvard-Economist Shoshana Zuboff has described in her work "The age of surveillance capitalism" to more than 700 pages, such as corporations with machine intelligence as a new production process means the excess user data to prediction products. These forecast products can be traded on a new kind of market: the "markets for future behavior". According to Zuboff, flourishing the business mainly because "the behavior of futures markets" run largely regulation-free. Tech companies would operate under the "conditions of relative lawlessness". The question is whether this state of the law was the lack of already in there, or it is generated by the surveillance capitalism.

The data capitalism must produce to survive, always new data and uncertainties. A Kind Of Zombie Economy.

The American media theorist Michael Betancourt has noted in an essay for the journal CTheory ("The Demands of Agnotology:: Surveillance") in the year 2014 the fact that the use of surveillance technologies is related to the "inherent instability of digital capitalism". The dumb characters production due to machines doing more Monitoring is necessary, which produce in turn, so many data, that their Interpretation will be uncertain. The data capitalism must produce to survive, always new data and uncertainties. A Kind Of Zombie Economy. The inherent logic of Expansion of the data capitalism the system is a prerequisite for ensuring that the refining of information is an added value can be achieved. Without the ever-growing archives could not exceed the semiotic production.

Monitoring – here contradicts Betancourt Zuboff – be your own final product. Zuboff claimed that surveillance capitalism is merely a skinning of capitalism, the lines thought the system theoretically in terms of the Codes of capitalism. Betancourt argued that the surveillance capitalism could not be considered in isolation, but also its systemic environmental changes. The ubiquitous Surveillance'm authoritarianism to a "logical Form of this political Economy".

The crucial point is now that the "semiotic dissolution of reality," creating a market, where lack of reality check, no rational decisions can be taken and a diffuse feeling of insecurity makes the demand for Monitoring is becoming bigger and bigger. Monitoring markets prove to be highly dysfunctional, because they are unable to reflect the actual preferences and information. The NSA lawyer Stewart Baker brought this Hyper-real production of meaning once involuntarily to the point, when he said: "the meta-data from the tell absolutely everything about someone's life. If you have enough metadata, you don't need more content." Transferred to the supermarket example, this means: You don't need to fill the fridge with Goods. Basically, it is enough if you feed him with data.

A new security complex

it has been shown, which product is produced if control-freak and greed are bonded together in a star: the total de-subjectivation. There are only meta data, bar codes, serial numbers. Everything is coded on more market-oriented. From another perspective, it must be said that some of the NSA is in every supermarket. This is the Triumph of the surveillance capitalism, or the surveillance state? Military Tracking technology now as a matter of course in the civilian sector and market research operates with the methods of the Anti-terrorist defence. This makes it clear that we have to do it with a new safety complex – but one of the most paranoid System in which every customer, every citizen will appear on the control screen.

The security concept is in focus is actually different. The state is using to train the face recognition systems stations, is to increase the safety in the public space. A company that tracks the viewing behavior of its customers, wants to buy the technology, the security, that its Promotional activities will get caught. With the advent of the Monitoring shows that the spheres of public and private security overlap. The state wants to say with predictive Algorithms from the private sector, crime or social welfare fraud in advance, acts like a gambler – he speculates on the future behavior of its citizens. Where is the next break-in? Where the next case of abuse? The public order is backed up with data.

data crashing a meta-stable order, which always requires more data to stabilize to the System at some point.

the electronics manufacturer repossess meanwhile, the privacy and selling data as credit securitisation. The rights, i.e., what constitutes democracy, and thus become an object of speculation. No one knows how dangerous these bets are on the future. Surveillance capitalism is just a nice formula for a mortgage business with privacy. It will be traded on the futures and digital black markets, millions of data packets and certificates. Who guarantees that the algorithmic credit votes tests? Where to store the scrap papers? When bursts the data bubble? Would buying up of the state as a "buyer of last resort" for the toxic assets? Or he himself is not worthy of more credit because he takes the closeout of its citizens tacitly?

The sociologist Jean Baudrillard, in 2007, passed away, warned in his last Shifting heat out of the speculative "event exchange", in the it could be due to the Overproduction of characters to Crash democratic values such as the truth. Security is in surveillance regimes, a condition that exists only in the models. It ruled the Paranoia. Data crashing a meta-stable order, which always requires more data to stabilize to the System at some point. (Editorial Tamedia)

Created: 07.02.2019, 19:39 PM