It is about the darkening of the digital dream and its rapid mutation into a voracious and utterly novel commercial project that I call surveillance capitalism. These prediction products are traded in a new kind of marketplace for behavioral predictions that I call behavioral futures markets. Users provided the raw material in the form of behavioral data, and those data were harvested to improve speed, accuracy, and relevance and to help build ancillary products such as translation. I call this the behavioral value reinvestment cycle, in which all behavioral data are reinvested in the improvement of the product or service.
Surveillance capitalism’s command of the division of learning in society begins with what I call the problem of the two texts. The first text, full of promise, actually functions as the supply operation for the second text: the shadow text. Everything that we contribute to the first text, no matter how trivial or fleeting, becomes a target for surplus extraction.
Behavioral surplus must be vast and varied, but the surest way to predict behavior is to intervene at its source and shape it. The processes invented to achieve this goal are what I call economies of action. The scientists and engineers whom I interviewed identified three key approaches to economies of action, each one aimed at achieving behavior modification. The first two I call “tuning” and “herding.” The third is already familiar as what behavioral psychologists refer to as “conditioning.” This new level of competitive intensity characterized by scope and action ratchets up the invasive character of supply operations and initiates a new era of surveillance commerce that I call the reality business.
There are many buzzwords that gloss over these operations and their economic origins: “ambient computing,” “ubiquitous computing,” and the “internet of things” are but a few examples. For now I will refer to this whole complex more generally as the “apparatus.” Although the labels differ, they share a consistent vision: the everywhere, always-on instrumentation, datafication, connection, communication, and computation of all things, animate and inanimate, and all processes—natural, human, physiological, chemical, machine, administrative, vehicular, financial.This chapter and the next draw our attention to the gap between experience and data, as well as to the specific operations that target this gap on a mission to transform the one into the other. I call these operations rendition. We have seen that the dispossession of human experience is the original sin of surveillance capitalism, but this dispossession is not mere abstraction. Rendition describes the concrete operational practices through which dispossession is accomplished, as human experience is claimed as raw material for datafication and all that follows, from manufacturing to sales.
In this way, surveillance capitalism births a new species of power that I call instrumentarianism. Part III examines the rise of instrumentarian power; its expression in a ubiquitous sensate, networked, computational infrastructure that I call Big Other; and the novel and deeply antidemocratic vision of society and social relations that these produce. Thanks to Big Other’s capabilities, instrumentarian power reduces human experience to measurable observable behavior while remaining steadfastly indifferent to the meaning of that experience. I call this new way of knowing radical indifference. It is a form of observation without witness that yields the obverse of an intimate violent political religion and bears an utterly different signature of havoc: the remote and abstracted contempt of impenetrably complex systems and the interests that author them, carrying individuals on a fast-moving current to the fulfillment of others’ ends.
The withdrawal of agreement [from surveillance capitalism] takes two broad forms, a distinction that will be useful as we move into Part III. The first is what I call the counter-declaration. These are defensive measures such as encryption and other privacy tools, or arguments for “data ownership.” Such measures may be effective in discrete situations, but they leave the opposing facts intact, acknowledging their persistence and thus paradoxically contributing to their legitimacy. For example, if I “opt out” of tracking, I opt out for me, but my action does not challenge or alter the offending practice. The second form of disagreement is what I call the synthetic declaration. If the declaration is “check,” the counter-declaration is “checkmate,” and the synthetic declaration changes the game. It asserts an alternative framework that transforms the opposing facts.
I just wanted to put this into the world. It was some cover artwork by the amazing Alice Duke, commissioned for a novel I wrote called I Have Seen You in Forever. In the end it didn't work out with the publisher (in an amiable and mutual way, and we may publish a different book together if I ever get them the manuscript), and I'm not sure if the novel ever will go out into the world. It might just hang out in its own world. But I love this strange picture and the secret story it's about that almost nobody knows.
So this is what I've been writing recently. The Shrike is an oracle-based RPG system for solo, co-operative, or GM-guided play. It's about fantastic voyages. You can access a pre-alpha version here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1b_MXcdENtS4bjBC03ES5QlPOvrJeg7EqQzirbLQwito/edit?usp=sharing
The Shrike is also potentially part of something a bit new, in the sense that the voyages are mostly procedurally generated. I am slightly hitting a wall (or really more like diminishing returns) in my pseudo-coding abilities, so I'll be developing it as more-or-less a standard RPG for now. But if you happen to be a games developer who might be interested in collaborating on a bigger, more innovative version of it, get in touch.
Elsewhere: Sad Press Games
In every place thou makeste solas,Gret joye, sporte, and welfare;
'Solus,' egregious dog? O viper vile!Clearly part of Pistol's retort involves him stuffing this word back in Nym's face, feeding it to him till he digests it and perhaps even poops or pees it out. Cf. "gives me the lie in the throat / as deep as the lungs" in Hamlet and Touchstone going no further than the Lie Circumstantial in As You Like It. The conventional comparison of language to something edible was pretty well-established around this time, enough so that an audience could probably follow Shakespeare putting some kind of extra spin on it. Cf. e.g. Donne's 'Satire II':
The 'solus' in thy most mervailous face;
The 'solus' in thy teeth, and in thy throat,
And in thy hateful lungs, yea, in thy maw, perdy,
And, which is worse, within thy nasty mouth!
But hee is worst, who (beggarly) doth chawIs Pistol perhaps even tracing the alimentary canal as a hidden "viper vile" within Nym? Is there some sense of Pistol as a haruspex, poking about in Nym's entrails for omens? Is that what Nym picks up on in his demonology-themed comeback? Well, perhaps. But the key thing to recognise is the peristaltic quality of Pistol's speech: the word moves steadily downward, and the "nasty mouth" is far likelier the "mouth" in Nym's butt than the one in his face.
Others wits fruits, and in his ravenous maw
Rankly digested, doth those things out-spue . . .
The meate was mine, th'excrement is his owne.
Dame, sho said, bi Goddes grace,And there are plenty of later examples too. And where has the 'solus/solace' ended up? Usually a word is thrown back in your face, or at most in your throat. But here:
Mi husband dose me solace.
Þharfore no better nede I can
Bot I most luf sum oÞer man.
I do retort 'solus' in thy bowels;Now, we could suppose that Pistol introduces something new with this play on his name (the cocked pistol / hard cock bit), rather than continuing a thought that began in the lines before. Take is obviously a hugely polysemous word, so there are plenty of options to play with. (And since Pistol is apparently engaging on wordplay on his own name, it might be worth mentioning that "nim" could mean "to take, to nick"). Just possibly, Pistol has abandoned his previous thread, and is simply saying: "I can take you [in a fight]," or "I can take [aim]," or "I can take [i.e. strike, hit]," and the innuendo of "cock is up" may not even be that important.
For I can take, and Pistol's cock is up,
And flashing fire will follow.
Marbas, alias Barbas is a great president, and appeareth in the form of a mightie Lyon: but at the commandement of a coniuror commeth up in the likenes of a man, and answereth fully as touching anie thing which is hidden or secret: he bringeth diseases and cureth them; he promoteth wisdom, and the knowledge of mechanicall arts, or handicrafts; he changeth men into other shapes, and under his presidency or governement are thirtie six legions or divels conteined.
Barbatos, a great countie or earle, and also a duke, he appeareth in Signo sagittarii sylvestris, with foure kings, which bring companies and great troopes. He understandeth the singing of birds, the barking of dogs, the lowings of bullocks, and the voice of all living creatures. He detecteth treasures hidden by magicians and inchanters, and is of the order of vertues, which in part beare rule: he knoweth all things past, and to come, and reconcileth freends.
Stolas is a great prince, appearing in the forme of a nightraven, before the exorcist, he taketh the image and shape of a man, and teacheth astronomie, absolutelie understanding the vertues of herbes and pretious stones; there are under him twentie six legions.
Saleos is a great earle, he appeareth as a gallant soldier, riding on a crocodile, and weareth a dukes crowne, peaceable, &c.
What! are men mad? Hath nature given them eyes"Twinn'd" might not mean what you think it is (more on that in a moment). There is also a textual crux to note: "th'unnumbered beach" or "the number'd" beach? (See Note 1).
To see this vaulted arch, and the rich crop
Of sea and land, which can distinguish 'twixt
The fiery orbs above, and the twinn'd stones
Upon the numbered beach, and can we not
Partition make with spectacles so precious
'Twixt foul, and fair?
