Big other: Surveillance Capitalism and the Prospects of an Information Civilization

TLDR

Varian identifies four uses of computer‑mediated transactions—data extraction and analysis, new contractual forms, personalization, and continuous experiments—and notes that surveillance capitalism challenges democratic norms and departs from traditional market capitalism. The article examines surveillance capitalism as an emergent logic of accumulation in the networked sphere, using Google’s practices as a lens, to illuminate its implications for an information civilization and the global architecture of computer mediation. The authors find that this architecture creates a distributed, largely uncontested power—Big Other—constituted by hidden mechanisms of extraction, commodification, and control that exile individuals from their own behavior while generating new markets for behavioral prediction and modification.

Abstract

This article describes an emergent logic of accumulation in the networked sphere, ‘surveillance capitalism,’ and considers its implications for ‘information civilization.’ The institutionalizing practices and operational assumptions of Google Inc. are the primary lens for this analysis as they are rendered in two recent articles authored by Google Chief Economist Hal Varian. Varian asserts four uses that follow from computer-mediated transactions: data extraction and analysis,’ ‘new contractual forms due to better monitoring,’ ‘personalization and customization, ’ and continuous experiments. ’ An examination of the nature and consequences of these uses sheds light on the implicit logic of surveillance capitalism and the global architecture of computer mediation upon which it depends. This architecture produces a distributed and largely uncontested new expression of power that I christen: Big Other. ’ It is constituted by unexpected and often illegible mechanisms of extraction, commodification, and control that effectively exile persons from their own behavior while producing new markets of behavioral prediction and modification. Surveillance capitalism challenges democratic norms and departs in key ways from the centuries-long evolution of market capitalism.