Tetra - Surveillance Capitalism by Zuboff, Shoshana

By giving access to our personal informations and sharing our statuts in real time, we contribute in the building of the information era, a space where privacy and choice might become a thing of the past. The logic of surveillance influenced human behavior on unseen levels, creating a new cast of citizen submerged by automaticity, but also gave the opportunity for new business models to emerge. 

By accessing and accumulating the continuous flow of information of the population, Google and its analyst made themselves necessities in a world driven by productive efficiency. As the meaning of reality is switching to ‘reality mining’, continuous monitoring and monetization of behavior, how can we shed light on their mechanism and arm ourselves to keep up with this growing invisible network?

V.A.P.C - Week 14 - Resistance

Shoshana Zuboff’s article warns readers of the dangers regarding surveillance and how companies exploit it. Corporations such as Google obtain data from people via search engines, government databases, sensors and surveillance cameras, among many other methods. Said data is then sold to advertisers and other interested parties without the users’ consent. Worse yet, the information obtained is enough to craft a profile of an individual. Oftentimes the reason why so much information is collected is because the average person is oblivious to the consequences of sharing personal data. It is feared that should this type of scrutiny linger and grow, then it might become powerful enough to be ingrained within society and control the behavior of every single person in touch with technology. It would be to the point where people would give up their own privacy just to obtain the right to drive a car or to be provided with shelter. Despite these fears and concerns, is resisting this type of information gathering feasible? The tools and services available by using Google are useful to the point where most would be unwilling to give up their accounts due to the ease of accessibility that is provided. In addition, despite protests against data-stealing corporations, the latter are adamant to continue their activities; this is likely due to the fines and troubles related to the companies’ actions being negligible. However, despite these cynical odds, if news of these injustices continue to spread, then there might be hope for significant and positive changes regarding privacy.

Week 13 - BIG OTHER - 2ESDAYS

In our discussion, we noted that this article is very well-written on addressing the problem of privacy and surveillance in modern society. Our personal information is totally transparent to the people who are hidden at the back of the screens and monitoring us, However, we know nothing about them and we do not even know what they are doing with our data. In some situations, people don’t really know what are they giving consent to (Permission agreement is way too long). We also found that under the influence of information capitalism, there seems to be no trust on people, for example, we have to provide so many documents and goes through credit check processes to rent an apartment. Finally, we discussed that the data extraction processes happen almost every moment in our daily life and it’s inevitable. People can’t do anything to change this situation but at least each individual should be aware that “deception-induced ignorance is no social contract, and freedom from uncertainty is no freedom."

Week 13 - Big Brother - Ars-onist

Is giving up privacy an “incontournable” to have access to resources in modern society? As stated by Varian, the general public tend to converge to give up the fight against the invasion of privacy to get specific returns like mortgage, medical, legal or digital assistant advices. (p. 380) By doing such, we must question the long term impacts of our decisions. As seen in oppressive regimes today, the results can be devastating. Perhaps, we should start at the level of education about our human rights namely, the one to privacy. The author underlines important impacts of Web Giants to whom we give more personal data in our lives to illustrate potential consequences. Is giving up our privacy a necessity in our life, or is it just a social tendency to standardize a past luxury? The society we’re building around surveillance capitalism is strikingly similar to a digital Panopticon; most astonishing however, is the fact that we’re joining it willingly.

Surveillance Capitalism Zuboff S.H.A.M.E

The interesting thing about Zuboff’s analysis is the focus on capitalism being the driving force of the issues she details, rather than the more common nebulous descriptions that assign agency to search engines or technologies. She also highlights how surveillance capitalism is not a fault of the system but rather has become necessary for its growth. We need to recognize this shift and adapt to it, both by becoming aware of how our data is used, and by questioning the systems that enable it. Its ubiquity does not make it by default harmless, acceptable or impossible to change.

It’s worth asking, just as we ask “do we need to be surveilled like this?”, the follow-up question, “do we need capitalism, if these are the conditions it creates?”

S.H.A.M.E.

We discussed the implications of privacy when people our being watched. The text introduces the notions of public surveillance. Societies sometimes benefits from mass surveillance, but people loose their right to privacy. How does mass surveillance affects people's behaviour? Do people have a right to privacy?

We discussed about cyborgs and how the next evolutionary step for humans is to improve our senses. For example, if you attached a vibration motor that vibrates when you face north, it may increase your spacial awareness. Can improving our other senses impact our evolution?  How can technology merge with our biological selves to improve our lives.

Week 12 : Confused Coffee Beans - Foucault and Haraway

In “Panopticism”, Michel Foucault refers to Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon, an idea of power with visibility using architecture. This process would maximise the power over the population to increase productivity, economy and education. Foucault describes what he calls discipline and relates two images of this theory: the discipline blockade, an enclosed space, and discipline mechanism, a machine to operate power for efficiently. As he mentions, this technique is already being used with the capitalist regime, where everything is control with the power of money. Indeed, Foucault argues that a more developed society could lead for better control and observation over the population, which is true. Just take the example of the television around 1975, only sophisticated community could afford them and due to their popularity, the government or else, could easily distributed any kind of message or information and the society was not even aware that they could be fooled through media.

In the “Cyborg Manifesto”, Donna Haraway discusses the concept of gender brought by cyborgization. Throughout its evolution, the human race has blurred the distinction between the human, the animal and the machine. She demonstrates that nowadays machines have made unclear the border between artificial and natural elements and that it has cause confusion with the concept of physicality. She explains that societal dualisms are becoming a big problem with machine, and for sure it is, since their are not as comprehensive as humans are. There are many distinctions that the machine can learn, but its processing of the information is based on a specific pattern and barely from its own judgement. Therefore, as Haraway argues, this will cause many social controversies, especially in a Western patriarchal raised community with groups such as the feminism. In bref, what Haraway wants is a world without gender, where cyborgs would all be equally judge and where they could create their own identity.

Dana Ryashy, Sol Paul, Xavier Champoux, Rose-Marie Dion

Week 12 - Panopticon, Cyborg - TETRA

Question: Is there a society in machines?

During our discussion, a few keywords came up: Society, power and discipline. The concept of Panopticism is intriguing because it reminds us of self-regulation and feedback that we have been exploring in previous texts. According to Michael Foucault, a Panopticon machine consists of two elements: it can be seen without seeing and this machine sees everything without being seen. In other words, it is an omnipresent supervisor that is “the object of information but not of communication”(Foucault, 200). It regulates the system and makes sure that there are no interruptions in the system. This discussion led to how our society functions nowadays: there’s the government that regulates politics and society while there are the citizens that are being constantly supervised by the higher-ups. Whenever the citizens commit bad acts, they will be punished, thus sent to prison. Therefore, the system does the same thing: the supervisor reacts whenever there’s entropy and regulates the situation in the system.

Concerning cyborgs in this text, I think our society will be very much more integrated with machines, and the possibility for a more genderless reality could become more realized. The cyborg theory is described as a hybrid of machine and organism. A creature of social reality and a creature of fiction. The science, technology, and socialist-feminism in the late twentieth century is discussed by means of cyborg technology being integrated into society and bridging the gaps crafted by higher patriarchal dominance. However, I feel that these two ideas work well together and not at all. The text explains that there is a divide between fiction and lived experience, between science fiction, and social reality. So where do cyborgs factor in? Are they merely a product of patriarchal capitalism, purely created for a military means? Or does cyborg technology play a more social role, creating a more genderless and levelled society? I believe that we have been more frightened of how powerful cyborgs may become, and have not explored possibilities for what a cyborg is, and how could that make an influential impact on us.

2SDAYS - Discipline/Cyborgs

In our discussion we noticed that both texts describe the "mechanism of exclusion" as a way to define what is normal and abnormal. This mechanism is embedded in the fabric of society and the minds of people. The panopticon of the past has now transformed into the technology of today that we each carry in our pockets (smart phones). It is almost an Orwellian construct of society. Like the disciplines, these tools have shelved individuals into a disciplined construct and become a form of self regulating the population. People today are much less spontaneous and carefree than the past. If we were not disciplined, would life be chaotic? The technology we have created has impacted our identities in that we categorize ourselves within the normal and abnormal framework. Haraway claims that our saving grace is the multiplicity of identities and points of view, which we agreed on and feel that this queerness and variety is much more futuristic than the norm.

V.A.P.C - Week 13 - Body/Corporeality/Control

The readings of Donna Haraway and Michel Foucault explain that any individual can gain power through the use of machines. Concepts such as the Panopticon allow anyone to put a number of people under constant surveillance in the effort of correcting others. This idea also works the other way around in that the observer is also seen by various third-parties, so as to evoke fairness. Another important concept within the readings is that of the cyborg; the hybrid of man and machine. By allowing mechanisms to enhance the bodily aspects of organisms, it might be possible to overcome restrictions and prejudices related to race and gender, as well as allow people to go beyond life and death by being ever-present within machines. In addition, these enhancements can also lead to a world where communication has reached its peak and everyone can understand each other, effectively removing language barriers. With humans gaining powers of surveillance, language and the ability control gender and race, would all forms of conflict cease, or would they increase? There might be some who would struggle to find uniqueness in a world where anyone can be anything they desire. Furthermore, the constant surveillance on one’s self and others could lead to issues of privacy and the need to act compliant for fear of retaliation by others. There is also the matter of immortality if consciousness where to be transferred into a machine: would living forever make people constantly challenge their purpose and happiness in life as the world around them makes drastic changes over many years? Despite these doubts, it is undeniable that machines can improve the lives of others and will continue to do so for many, many years.

Week 12 - Panopticon, Cyborg - Ars-onist

How does the manipulation and domination of information define the means of power and control?

How does an enclosed system self-govern effectively? In “Panopticism”, Michel Foucault underlines the asymmetry of knowledge through a non-violent mean, towards a functioning corporeal where each individual’s capacity is maximized. Omnipresence and “unverifiable” supervision replace authority and authenticity in the ontology of ruling. On another hand, the Cyborg theory established by Donna Haraway offer a futuristic, idealistic approach to power through knowledge and affinity instead of mere “identity politics”. By acknowledging the problems of categories and naturalism in political discourses (such as alienation and exclusion), a Cyborg has the power to self-construct and reconstruct, to build its own characteristics and to embrace similarities between human, animals and machines. Should such a society exist, it is still debatable whether it would put an end to the conflicts we face nowadays.

Haraway & Foucault analyse systematic power and control while pointing to a future of an increasingly deep cybernetic society. Both agree that the one with more information gets the most control, and that social order and inequalities aren’t necessarily built, but come from complex and intertwined dominant social systems that are historically in place. This has pushed a separation between the man and the body, the man and the machine, and the man and state. With the rapid advancement and globalization of 21st century technology, there is a push to more intersectionality of different realities between animal, man, and machine. With the analysis of the cyborg, this can push us to a pluriversal future that is more fluid and critical of the systems of [information] domination.

THE FANTASTIC FOUR VS WEIZENBAUM & BROOKS - Issue 10

Joseph Weizenbaum creator of ELIZA grapples in his article over the public interpretation of his work. The fascination and the implication that his program could replace psychologist made questions arise on the topic of technologies place in society, the roles they play in us, the increasing comparing of man and machine, and the limitations he believes should exist in the role technology plays in human lives. Weizenbaum points out an interesting observation which he saw first hand with ELIZA, that we as individuals form strong ties to machines, as they are extensions of ourselves we seem to have no issue with "investing his [our] most private feelings in a computer". The implications this has with our own autonomy and the losing of that in an increasing technological world is a deep question. Weizenbaum clearly seems to believe that there should be limits to what computers ought to do, some things which remain solely in the realm of the human. It's clear why the idea of ELIZA of DOCTOR could replace psychologist would upset him so, to reduce that engaged human interaction to the likeness of a processor would be very troubling to him indeed.

In Rodney Brooks' essay "The Seven Deadly Sins of Predicting the Future of AI" we have a very amusing an interesting reading. Brook's discusses the misconceptions, false predictions, and fallacies that plague the field of technology and robotics. First he lays out four general topic areas of prediction: Artificial General Intelligence, The singularity (praise unto our robot overlords), Misaligned values, & Killer robots. Then he breaks down the seven mistakes: Over and Under Estimating, Imagining Magic, Performance VS Competence, Suitcase Words, Exponentials (sorry singularity 😢), Hollywood Scenarios, and finally Speed of Deployment. The breath and width take to exploring and explaining each of these is both entertaining and interesting to read, and certainly touches on a lot of conceptions we've held at one point or another in our lives (but certainly not since starting CART 210).

Week 10 : Confused Coffee Beans - Weizenbaum and Brooks

In his “Introduction”, Joseph Weizenbaum uses his ELIZA device to argue that there are important differences between men and machines as thinkers. He thinks that science is illusory, which after reading his own reflection of this idea, we can approve on many ways. With the internet and the continuous uncertainty of this platform, his saying about the fact that “has virtually delegitimatized all other ways of understanding”, is totally true. Weizenbaum also strongly talks about the controversy around his ELIZA machine that he thinks are wrongly interpreted. He talks about how many psychiatrists seriously believed the DOCTOR (extension of ELIZA) and how people became emotionally involved with the it, which is indeed not very surprising because the curiosity of humans always surpasses its judgement. In fact, the ELIZA program was the spread of a belief that it demonstrated a general solution to the problem of computer understanding of natural language.

In “The seven deadly sins of predicting the future of AI, Robots, and other stuff”, Rodney Brooks defines what he thinks are mistaken predictions about robotics and Artificial Intelligence. The six misunderstood elements that he points out are: over and under estimating, imagining magic, performance versus competence, suitcase words, exponentials, Hollywood scenario and the speed of deployment

Dana Ryashy, Sol Paul, Xavier Champoux, Rose-Marie Dion