Re: <nettime> Shoshana Zuboff > The Secrets of Surveillance

[Brian Holmes <bhcontinentaldrift@gmail.com>]

On 03/13/2016 12:39 AM, Patrice Riemens wrote:

> "here's to that future" indeed, Brian, but I wonder how deeper we must
> sink before things get better.

To answer your questions, Patrice, for sure, both North America and the 
EU are sunk in governmental gridlock, and that is the essence of the 
crisis: an inability to collectively respond. In the US, the classic 
sequence of a long downswing is unfolding: inventions pile up while the 
economy stagnates, so the inventions are not brought to market. They 
pile up: electric cars, vastly more efficient batteries, driverless 
cars, digital manufacturing, smart grids, solar power, Internet of 
things, to list just a few. Some of this research is crucially sponsored 
by the federal governments (batteries and digital manufacturing are the 
US ones I happen to know about). So all the entrepreneurs know full well 
that if the governmental blockage could be overcome, then investors 
would provide capital for all these new inventions, and they would go 
into production. This leads to a very palpable mood that you feel in the 
US: the entrepreneurs are chafing at the bit. They want to get on with 
changing the world. But there is no coherent institutional framework in 
which to do so, so everyone is afraid and no one makes risky investments.

Can government do it? Can entrepreneurs do it without government?

It would be crucial to have a better understanding of what is going on 
in China, but in North America and Europe the answer to both questions 
at present is no. There is still no grand strategy to deal with the 
triple crisis of unemployment/precarity, breakdown of the global 
monetary and military order, and climate chaos. And disorganized private 
capital cannot by definition come up with any such grand strategy. The 
situation is much worse in the EU than in North America, and it's 
probably worse in China as well, given that they are facing mortal 
ecological threats as well as a huge transition away from the previous 
paradigm of export-led growth. Nonetheless, in all three major blocs 
there are forces that are ready to go ahead with new projects, and I 
think the most widespread consensus in all three blocs points (like it 
or not, I don't) to a kind of eco-securitarian use of Big Data to manage 
complex populations at the limits of territorial sustainability.

From her text, I am not sure Shoshana Zuboff "gets it" about the depth 
of the crisis. For sure, Google thinks it can develop and sell the 
organizational technologies to overcome the crisis and make superprofits 
in the 21st century. No doubt (although she doesn't say this) Google 
thinks it can partner with the Federal government and redouble its own 
softcore consumer surveillance with the real hardcore military 
surveillance of the NSA and friends (this is suggested by Eric Schmidt's 
recent "defection" to the Pentagon). "Consume & secure" is the 
neoliberal paradigm of optimization and control that I outlined ten 
years ago in my text "Future Map." However, just wishing for the 
realization of this goal does not necessarily make it happen! 
Neoliberalism is notably lacking in any positive concept of the State, 
and sorry guys, there is no resolution of the triple crisis without the 
national state, and even more importantly, without serious collaboration 
between continental scale state-formations. Only some kind of coherent 
transnational government can restore enough predictability, security and 
general interoperability to allow capitalism (that damn plague of 
humanity) to go on forward in a smooth and normalized way. So the "dirty 
little secret of surveillance" (apparently also a secret to Mme Zuboff) 
is that such collaboration is presently absent, the state is missing in 
action. Without it, imho, the famous "surveillance capitalism" is pretty 
much dead in the water.

How much worse it's gonna get? Well, y'all in Europe are apparently not 
going to solve the problem. There is no clear bottom to the European 
plunge. Over here, if the USians elect Hillary, I believe we will have 
some new ugly wars (that's her thing) and maybe some kind of negative, 
business-as-usual form of resolution to the crisis via a new assertion 
of full-spectrum American arrogance. If Bernie is elected (funny how we 
now have to call them by their first names) then we either get more 
gridlock, or oh, miracle of miracles, maybe the huge number of people in 
this country who want a different development path would actually be 
called upon to create one (obviously I am voting Bernie, April 15, in 
Chicago). If "the Donald" is elected, frankly, I can't imagine it, but 
then we would trade places with the EU to become the most abject 
continental-scale power.... Were that to happen, well, maybe I would 
finally take some interest in Alexander Bard's ideas after all!

best, Brian

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