On Prior Commitment in the Surveillance Capitalism Environment

If the book, “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism” by Shoshana Zuboff prompted one practical takeaway (because it is not a very practical book, rather more of a history), it was that prior commitment is one of the greatest tools in the war for your attention in the digital age.

If you simply adopt the tools and mediums of modern digital technologies without prior commitments to your own desired outcomes and the character with which you will pursue those outcomes, then you are going to be adopting the goals (and by extension the character to a degree) of the companies of those tools, which are driven by the attention economy. Their terms are conditions you have agreed to without knowing what you’ve agreed to.

As I said, the book, “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism” by Shoshana Zuboff, is a history and critique of the big tech companies setting the agenda and making their own rules for their benefit while the world and authorities play catch-up. But the catch-up is complicated by the fact that they are trying to tame the very technologies they are embedded in. Its very much a ‘who’s in control of who?’ situation. Each of us feels this in a smaller more personal manner – thinking we were in control but finding ourselves having to wrestle back control we didn’t realise we had ceded.

The book is a 500-page read (in small font). So it’s not short. Or simple. But comprehensive. It is very much a big story. Big picture: tech companies found they could use your behavioural data to make predictions and manipulations regarding your behaviour. They could do this because at the time they discovered they could, nobody stopped them doing it because it was cutting edge and policies take a long time to catch up with this sort of thing. What they then did was sell that data to others who were interested in making money off your behaviours (meaning to tailor your choices so that you buy their products – marketing). Later, this blows up bigger when the new media of the internet becomes dominated by the newer media of social media. Then it blows up more when trackable technologies get incorporated into what is a very fast-growing ecosystem of surveillance and selling of behavioural data – and now your fridge is watching everything you do and hearing everything you say!

What does any of this have to do with commitment? Well, in reading (or in my case listening) to the book, there was a point that got me thinking about how this started. To vastly oversimplify for a point, conveniences led many of us (and then eventually basically all of us) to use technologies that are embedded in this surveillance ecosystem. But it gets out of hand. Or at least it gets out of our hands and into their hands (but the story is, it was always in their hands). Such that they’re able to manipulate behaviours through a vast array of nudges or prompts placed in the ideal circumstances and timing, given all the data that they have on you (which is a disturbing amount).

So there are two wills at play here. People are catching on to this much more. Their will is to take your behavioural data and sell it and use it, and eventually down the line someone will sell you a product (or make you more likely to vote this or that way, or a whole range of other possible outcomes). Surveillance capitalism does unbelievably well in a consumerist culture.

Then there is your will. And this is the point. They are operating on the assumption or hope or idea that you will exchange some of the things that you take for granted for the conveniences they can supply (given that they expect you to, by default, prize convenience). So if you don’t worry about what you want necessarily, then they will make some of those choices for you and conveniently make it easy for you to achieve the things which they’ve subtly convinced you are in your best interest because you’ve delegated that to their decision-making. You’ve adopted their desires in adopting their technology.

All of this feeds into itself and comes at the cost of money, privacy, autonomy (in part – at the very least you are manipulated), and, as is increasingly becoming apparent, your sanity and happiness.

Again this leads us back to the idea of prior commitment. This system is not easily overcome, but perhaps the best way an individual can counter it is with prior commitment. For the Christian, the principles or framework you use which applies best to this environment are ones which counteract the principles of the surveillance capitalist and consumerist culture it’s embedded in.

Privacy is a matter of human dignity. But alongside privacy and human dignity are the ends that they use data for. If their ends are the manipulation of your desires to lead to a purchase (or perhaps a shift in mindset entirely – which can be much more nefarious), then a commitment to the Christian faith at a very deep level is needed. This is so that you have an informed or sanctified conscience and a quicker spiritual reflex when it comes to subtle things like consumerism, or basic secular notions of idolising output or efficiency or comfort or pleasure (the guises are many).

Shoshana Zuboff approaches this topic from a humanist perspective prizing an individual’s freedom and autonomy. Her chapters, “the right to the future tense”, or, “the will to will”, are key chapters in this regard. Her framework for deciding on prior commitment to combat manipulation in the surveillance and consumerist environment is one of basic human rights to choose what we will do for ourselves.

Human responsibility or the individual’s responsibility is something we can agree with and get on board with regarding Zuboff’s argument. But to what ends is completely open-ended in her book. Of course the biblical view would be that we are responsible for our actions and our actions are to be words, thoughts and deeds which glorify God and love others while avoid those which don’t serve this end.

To that end and given the topic of digital surveillance and its uses in the consumerist world, we are to have commitments to the ethical principles of generosity, focus and devotion on God, embodied relationships of love, and hope for the future beyond this world. And in all these matters we are also conscious that as Christians we want to set an example for those we lead in the faith, which includes those who are in our church who are struggling with these worldly matters. And those in our family who are or will be facing these matters.

And that’s not to mention the element of human responsibility which we uphold (along with Zuboff). We are held responsible by the Lord for what we do, say, and think, even if we are in an antagonistic environment for living according to the faith, and even when subtle nudges and prompts in many unseen ways shape our actions. Though we know there is a system, or many systems, in the world we inhabit which prompt us to live and think contrary to the Lord, and though we know that the people contributing to those systems will, too, be held responsible for what they do, we nevertheless “overcome evil with good” (Rom. 12:21), primarily at the individual level and in our immediate environment.

To achieve this, a simple and practical matter is to implement more ‘privacy-centric’ technology use or take steps to curtail consumerism – given both are key tactics or outcomes for the surveillance capitalist or big business. Though doing those things (in my opinion) is excellent and beneficial, the ‘why’ behind them is more beneficial, especially in the long term when future technologies emerge on with exponential power build on these existing systems.

The benefit of reading “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism” from a Christian perspective is that it asks us what that ‘why’ is, what our ethical and spiritual commitments are, and if our actions are in line with those, especially within the digital sphere and, broadly speaking, within the consumerist sphere. Because if our prior commitment to the Christian faith and the life that comes from that is weak or if we have in fact given in to the all-pervasive temptations of convenience which surround us and are always looking for a way to find leverage into our lives and therefore into our thinking and into our actions, then we will find ourselves inadvertently delegating our own responsibilities to the will of a surveillance capitalist who has an agenda contrary to the spiritual and ethical principles that you hold as a Christian.

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Zuboff, S. (2019). The age of surveillance capitalism: The fight for a human future at the new frontier of power. Profile books.