Surveillance capitalism Taking a stand against surveillance capitalism
Internet companies such as Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. own and control our data. This is why the scientist Shoshana Zuboff calls them surveillance capitalists. Surveillance can change power structures and lead to corporatocracies. What is Switzerland’s best course of action?
The technology we use – including smart TVs, smart watches and smart cars – works by gathering data on us. This is now commonplace in our lives in the digital age but raises the question of whom the data belongs to. If it belongs to us Swiss, we can specify what is done with our own public and private data without any problem, not least because we live in a direct democracy. But if the answer is (primarily) American Internet companies such as Google, Facebook, Amazon et al. owning this data and monitoring us, and passing it on to third parties, our democracy is being violated. The Internet activist Aral Balkan, an advocate for extending human rights to cyborgs, estimates that almost all of our data today is in the possession and under the control of these major corporations.
The economist Shoshana Zuboff of Harvard University describes the business models of these corporations as surveillance capitalism. She believes that their centralized business models, in which data represents oil for the capitalist machinery, have negative effects. What bothers her most is the clash of values such as freedom, democracy and privacy since the data gathered on us is misused and can corrupt our economical and political systems. The problem is that surveillance alters power structures and leads to a transformation of our democratic Switzerland into a corporatocratic system controlled by these Internet companies and their interests. The New York Times bestselling author John Perkins writes in his book that corporatocracies are primarily built on international banks, corporations and (inaugurated) governments.
How can we protect ourselves from such systems? Former President of the Swiss Confederation, Doris Leuthard, once said that we should introduce data secrecy to Switzerland in the same way as banking secrecy. I think that is a great idea! We could emulate the Japanese Wabi Sabi concept which is based more on transitions rather than rigid ideal states frozen in time. In light of the digital transformation of today’s system into a future system, we could establish alternative universal service obligations (as well as associated business models) for our state-affiliated corporations, which we can influence with initiatives thanks to our direct democracy. Think about it: instead of feeding the data models of the Internet giants, we could take (back) control over our data and protect our democratic values from corporatocracies. In any case, I think that we Swiss should defy digitization by accepting a state of persistent imperfection, i.e. with Wabi Sabi.
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