Humans are so much more than the data we gen­er­ate. Claim free­dom from being reduced to mere prod­ucts of data-col­lect­ing corporations.

The rich trail of data behind every dig­i­tal inter­ac­tion and page impres­sion is exploit­ed at every con­ceiv­able cor­po­rate turn. In The Age of Sur­veil­lance Cap­i­tal­ism, author and Har­vard Busi­ness School pro­fes­sor Shoshana Zuboff explains what’s at stake for the future of human auton­o­my.¹² Com­pa­nies effec­tive­ly mis­di­rect people’s use of their prod­ucts and ser­vices to look as though they increase options and free­doms. Yet, the real­i­ty is that our inter­ac­tions serve to sup­ply those same com­pa­nies with the raw mate­ri­als for them to exploit in order to sell prod­ucts and ser­vices back to us in a vicious cycle.

So where are the pro­tec­tions against this preda­to­ry prac­tice? It’s not that peo­ple weren’t warned. Instead, the prob­lem is noth­ing was done with that infor­ma­tion about how atten­tion was being manipulated.

Zuboff ref­er­ences a Unit­ed States Sen­ate com­mit­tee hear­ing in 1977 on the effects of behav­ioral mod­i­fi­ca­tion (a term that describes the abil­i­ty for one’s inter­nal deci­sion-mak­ing to be con­trolled via select­ed behav­ioral pat­terns), stud­ied under con­ceal­ment, by the CIA in the 1950s and ‘60s. One of the big take­aways from this hear­ing was the fact that behav­ioral mod­i­fi­ca­tion posed a seri­ous threat to democ­ra­cy and human auton­o­my. How­ev­er, despite this knowl­edge no pol­i­cy was made to pre­vent behav­ioral mod­i­fi­ca­tion against unsus­pect­ing cit­i­zens. And so, when we arrive at the onslaught of behav­ioral mod­i­fi­ca­tion that now occurs online, most of us are caught unaware. This sets the stage for, not only elec­tion inter­fer­ence, but a whole host of small­er, tar­get­ed efforts to influ­ence our indi­vid­ual choices.

Tech­nol­o­gy con­tin­ues to pro­vide avenues for manip­u­la­tion. As long as enti­ties like GAFA (Google, Apple, Face­book, Ama­zon), main­tain their iron grip on con­sumer infor­ma­tion, this data will be used to fur­ther shape our rou­tines and influ­ence our deci­sions. It’s imper­a­tive we find ways to pre­serve unmedi­at­ed spaces in which we can inter­act with­out hid­den influ­ence. Zuboff explains how “every ser­vice that has ‘per­son­al­ized’ in front of it is noth­ing but sup­ply chain inter­faces for the flow of raw mate­r­i­al to be trans­lat­ed into data, to be fash­ioned into pre­dic­tion prod­ucts, to be sold in behav­ioral futures mar­kets so that we end up fund­ing our own dom­i­na­tion. If we’re gonna fix this, no mat­ter how much we feel like we need this stuff, we’ve got to get to a place where we are will­ing to say no.”¹³ Resis­tance and rejec­tion are our best course of action in order to reshape the mar­ket­place into one that is more sup­port­ive of human auton­o­my and demo­c­ra­t­ic values.

We must remain vig­i­lant in defend­ing our right to exist with­out the con­trol of self-inter­est­ed cor­po­ra­tions claim­ing to be mak­ing the world a bet­ter place. We must con­tin­u­al­ly claim author­i­ty of our own atten­tion. The integri­ty of all our expe­ri­ences depends on this vital condition.