Wednesday 28th of July from 6.00PM till 7.30PM in the Lower Meeting Room, Thistle Hall Wellington.
The challenges to humanity posed by the digital future, the first detailed examination of the unprecedented form of power called “surveillance capitalism,” and the quest by powerful corporations to predict and control us.
The heady optimism of the Internet’s early days is gone. Technologies that were meant to liberate us have deepened inequality and stoked divisions. Tech companies gather our information online and sell it to the highest bidder, whether government or retailer. Profits now depend not only on predicting our behaviour but modifying it too. How will this fusion of capitalism and the digital shape our values and define our future?
Shoshana Zuboff shows that we are at a crossroads. We still have the power to decide what kind of world we want to live in, and what we decide now will shape the rest of the century. Our choices: allow technology to enrich the few and impoverish the many, or harness it and distribute its benefits.
This session will be convened Neil Ballantyne
Required reading
Zuboff, S. (2019).The age of surveillance capitalism: The fight for a human future at the new frontier of power. Profile Books Ltd. Chapter One & Two.
Additional reading
Morozov, E. (2019, February). Capitalism’s new clothes. The Baffler.
Zuboff, S. et al. (2019). Surveillance capitalism: An interview with Shoshana Zuboff. Surveillance & Society 17(1/2): 257-266.