A-Infos (en) Italy, FDCA, il Cantiere #23: The digital continent: obsessions and devices of surveillance - Marilina Veca (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

We receive a contribution on surveillance capitalism and digital social 
control from our collaborator Marilina Veca, journalist and writer. We 
propose it to our comrades and readers with the intent and hope of 
opening a debate on the new ways in which the ruling class "2.0" 
exercises its power.[and] ---- "Homo sapiens - provided he does not 
destroy himself with the sound of smart bombs and humanitarian wars or 
by continuing to pollute his habitat to continue producing more weapons 
and junk goods - will sooner or later find a way out of the dead end in 
into which the capitalist mode of production, not without his approval, 
put him?" (1).

The current situation seems to be the time of masterless slaves 
subjected to generalized surveillance in which everyone turns themselves 
in as voluntary data producers and where the hidden and occult masters 
are the Lords of Big Data . In short, technological implementation 
produces the involvement of citizens in their own surveillance. And the 
involvement of citizens in their own surveillance is expressed in all 
the activities that on the internet - in particular on the so-called 
social networks - stimulate and invite the production of data.

The more data in any form a person generates with their activities 
online and on the web , the greater their personal contribution will be 
to producing forms of surveillance on themselves and others.

Each new piece of data produced, each click , increases the intensity 
and extension of control. Today power is exercised in analysing, 
inducing and predicting the behavior of people who continuously and 
voluntarily provide the tools of their own control (everyone 
continuously "posts" on social media a series of data and information 
that determine their present and future behaviour, from (having animals 
at home, the sports practiced, the use of free time, the favorite books, 
the most listened to music, the furnishings of the house, the habits, 
the loves, and so on).

Activating the smartphone and connected apps and sensors, consulting 
messages, sending and receiving emails - including photos, work and play 
activities, various sharing, frequenting, etc. - the purchase of train 
and plane tickets, the study of weather forecasts, public transport 
timetables, WhatsApp groups , reference social networks, electronic 
games to pass the time, the most loved videos on You Tube , the use of 
the navigator, Google maps and locators, use of the credit card and 
prepaid cards, use of the badge, purchases on Amazon, requesting 
information from search engines, monitoring via devices and information 
on personal health and that of others, on vaccines, epidemics, 
pandemics, the closed-circuit cameras of subways, banks, companies, road 
gates, the sensors that everywhere track the digital devices we use and 
wear, etc.

We continuously generate data, continuously and voluntarily: we produce 
data that will serve for the permanent control and prediction of future 
behavior, data that will remain recorded in the servers of service 
providers for an indefinite time and will remain available for every 
possible use and for continuous and predictive surveillance of our 
behaviors. Once upon a time, to control a man it was enough to cage, 
limit and possibly repress his activity: now, on the contrary, everyone 
is stimulated to do, say, declare, expose themselves, provide 
information, continuously and on everything. It is from everyone's DOING 
that control is generated, a new control that is not comparable to any 
other form of surveillance previously practiced.

The Internet network, as Renato Curcio has repeatedly underlined, is not 
neutral at all, just as no other technological apparatus is neutral: we 
are increasingly incentivized to increase our "active subjection" 
through the use of all possible devices that have "hybridized" our 
lives. To give a banal example, the continuous expression of "I like"/"I 
don't like", the obsession with "likes " , the obsessive counting of the 
number of followers who follow and approve one of our posts, can appear 
like a game , as something unimportant, fun, a way to participate, to 
express solidarity or closeness or, on the contrary, disapproval: 
ultimately the best way to be " social ". Instead, expressing ourselves 
with " likes " constitutes an enormous production of data and productive 
predictions for digital platforms and makes each of us an in/voluntary 
promoter of surveillance. No longer supervise and punish but induce the 
production of data? Renato Curcio, in his studies on the cybernetic 
society, cited Dominique Cardon, the scholar who, "observing this device 
that assigns scores and rankings starting from measurements, a device 
that we now find everywhere in the digital continent", brought his 
attention precisely to the functions that these attributions perform not 
only for capturing customers but even more so in putting them to work 
for the reproduction of the devices themselves and for the production of 
their future. His answer is very interesting. He writes: "Measurements 
also serve to fabricate the future." By producing the behavior of the 
ranked, the algorithms that regulate the rankings "manufacture our 
reality, organize it and orient it".

In conclusion - conclusion just to say, because this topic has such 
enormous implications that it is impossible to write about it in a few 
lines - we are faced with new forms and articulations of power, a 
hierarchy of remote powers. I would like to conclude on a note of hope 
by quoting Curcio again: "However, this is also, or could be, a great 
opportunity to creatively redesign the economic, cultural, ethical and 
political horizon of a renewed coexistence worthy of being called 
"social", decolonized and post-capitalist; an opportunity to imagine 
concrete ways out of the digital atomization that humiliates us. 
Perhaps, after all, it is not Homo sapiens who has reached the end of 
his journey" (2).

(1) Renato Curcio, Artificial society , Sensibili alle Foglie, Rome, 2017.

(2) Ibid.

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