The current governing infrastructure is a cohort of privatized companies fused with public sects of government, which participate in the covert accumulation and assessment of data as a proxy for manipulative economic leverage. Capital and surveillance encompass and formidably illustrate the progressive expansion of America's consumer-based cultural constituents. These components are contingent to human social propensities involving hierarchical communal integration which is determined through monetary influences. This is coupled with the willful suspension of an awareness that extends beyond the confines of narcissism contributing to the sustenance of a lax yet illusory psychological framework which eliminates possible motives that may lead to its realization. This system is exploited with the employment of life-altering technological innovations, which have chartered new routes for big business and big brother to formulate a schema that swindles the masses into a kind of catatonic consent. An unadulterated exemplification of this paradigm resides in Facebook.
Facebook is a hyperreality that offers its 1.19 billion (next web) users synthetic connection. Social media sites like Twitter and Instagram have monopolized human interaction to such a significant degree that refusing to participate in the virtual reality is nearly perceived as antisocial behavior (or social suicide). This pervasive ideology is intrinsic to the website's economic power and social influence, which is acutely reflected in the submission to their terms and conditions by users whose data is then effectively synthesized and disseminated to corporate partners, advertisement agencies, and various government departments with the specific purpose of amassing capital and intellectual leverage. This type of coercion is demonstrative of an indisputable power whose origins lie in the cultivated tactic of anonymous influence. Thus, Facebook acts as a formidable "social architect" (Gilliom and Monahan), shaping the interaction between the public, private, and corporate sphere (oftentimes unbeknownst to the public).
The recent article in Time, entitled "US Tech Titans Reveal New Data About NSA Snooping", portrays the conjunction between private corporations like Facebook and national security. The link between government and the corporate sector is solidified through their joint use of surveillance; Facebook plays a vital role (along with other tech companies) in "secret U.S. surveillance program[s]" such as PRISM, an intelligence operation that "examines user content including e-mails, videos and online chats" (Business & Money, Time). Interestingly enough, the governments attempt to gain and archive data about the masses falls under the illusory notion that it will protect us, while private companies are completely transparent in their economic incentives. The common denominator between both entities is the propagation of fear (the fear of terrorism, isolation, exclusion etc.) in order to "alleviate" it, which transpires through a masquerade of self-appointed leadership roles to a seemingly unsuspecting public. However this can only be accomplished with unmitigated access to personal information. Francis Bacon's resonating phrase "knowledge is power" has echoed throughout our timeline with a sort of associative vagueness but it is clearly evident that in a society predicated on surveillance, information rather than knowledge is power.
Sources Cited:
1) next web - Facebook passes 1.19 billion monthly active users
2) Supervision, Gilliom and Monahan.
3) Time, Business & Money - US Tech Titans Reveal New Data About NSA Snooping
*The title is a play on a line taken from Shakespeare's Hamlet.
I wholeheartedly agree with the last part of your blog post about information being power and not so much the knowledge anymore. It is definitely the information age and seems the more they can collect, the better off they are in getting to their mission of knowing everything about us. I have nothing to hide so it is not an issue for me. Its when something happens that negatively impacts me that I did not do but are being blamed for is when I will have the problem. ~Shari Gray~
ReplyDeleteThomas Smith
ReplyDeleteI feel like you really hit the nail on the head by equating information with power, considering how much information is uploaded onto the Internet. Regardless of whether the information is intended to be public (such as on Facebook) or private (such as in an email), corporations and government agencies like the NSA are able to monitor the details of peoples' lives to a troubling extent. Despite this, people continue to broadcast their lives through social media, supposedly because of sheer ignorance or the benefits of connecting with other people outweigh the toll of surveillance. And the worst is probably still yet to come. The prevalence of social media continues to grow at an alarming rate, and the technology used to monitor the data sent through the Internet is always advancing.
I like how you equate the refusal to participate in social media with social suicide, for to an extent I believe this to be true. I deactivated my Facebook account a while ago and there are many instances when I feel completely out of the loop as to the goings on in the world (and by world I mean my few hundred friends and family members whom I could call if I really wanted to get in touch with). That being said, I want to relate this to the part of your conclusion where you bring up fear. Your point goes hand in hand with Gilliom and Monohan’s fifth big idea; fear and desire in the surveillance society. As the authors point out, the two are closely connected, as the desire to be an active participant of social media has to do with the fear of being alone, isolated, or in your words, committing social suicide. This makes me wonder how big of an influence Facebook and other social media sites would have on society if the majority of us did not have this fear of isolation or the desire to be seen 24/7.
ReplyDeleteJonathan Berry-Smith
The relationship that you mention between private corporations and national security is something that I highly agree with. Private corporations are using data that is being collected through surveillance such as Facebook for their own benefit. An example would be a corporation who is doing hiring selection. The hiring selection committee would go through the applicants history and Facebook is one of the main surveillance tools they can use to look through a person's history. I have heard it many times before where a person is not hired by a company due to images and comments that have been posted up on their Facebook. One thing that alarms me is the number of people who use social media. Users of social media is growing at a very fast pace and although most of us know that social media is a tool of surveillance, people still continue to sign up for different social media accounts online. Revealing personal information such as phone numbers, emails, and images of your family is increasing and it is all due to the "social architecture" of social media.
ReplyDelete- Jordan Ho
- Cheryl Iwamoto
ReplyDeleteYou are definitely right about the pressure to join social media sites, especially Facebook. The site in itself is definitely a sphere of self-policing, giving its users the power to create a profile that suits their own ideal image of themselves. However, something that I felt could have been mentioned might be the increasing awareness of just how "private" Facebook is. As Jordan mentioned in his response, many companies will view applicants' Facebook pages to gain a better picture of who they might be hiring. This practice is becoming more and more prevalent, and as it does, it encourages even more self-policing on the site, to the point where the image portrayed on one's profile does not even fit the ideal of the user, but instead the ideal of potential employers.
Your last sentence regarding information over knowledge resonates a lot with me. In today's society, information allows the people with the informational advantage to manipulate those with less information. It's a bit unsettling to know the government secretly goes through every little interaction potentially on facebook and that nothing really is "private" when using facebook. It definitely appears that the government's "protection" using this data is mostly an illusion rather than truth. Also, your point about people refusing to join these social media sites leading to social suicide raises a valid concern in society. With people younger and younger growing up with cellphones and facebook (I hear kids in middle school have an iphone these days using facebook), this can negatively impact people who aren't able to access that technology and instill a sense of loneliness, isolation, and exclusion for a large part of society from a young age.
ReplyDelete-Dylan Tong
I thought this post was very interesting and accurate. Facebook and other social media outlets have become so ingrained in our daily lives that we don't even realize we are constantly on them refreshing our feeds. I really like the point at the end where you say information is power instead of knowledge. Our society has become a competition of who knows what and who can get the information the fastest. I think you did a great job of distinguishing the private and public sector and explaining how they are intertwined. It is scary to acknowledge the truths behind our society and the manipulative and coercive nature of social media.
ReplyDeleteBrooke Arthur
Erica Au
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading this post very much, because I definitely agree that there is a social pressure to be a part of Facebook. Many people do not realize that things that are "private" are not actually private because they are on the internet. It seems that Facebook has become a place where people show off the things that they have, or the things that they do. Requiring such a level of approval from "friends" seems unhealthy, but people still post photos and wait around for likes, shares, and comments. Although a way to avoid the invasiveness of this popular social media site is to simply not use it, many times people endure the lack of privacy to maintain contact with friends from grade school. Facebook is great in that it allows you to connect with everyone around the world, but at what cost? Sure, one can choose to restrict information on Facebook, but social pressures cause some people to eventually cave and join in on what everyone else is doing.
I really liked how you referred to Facebook as a "social architect". I find that nowadays a lot of people will reveal a lot more of themselves on Facebook in comparison to other social networks such as LinkedIn. The amount of reach that Facebook has upon today's younger generations is often underestimated and the amount of data that people will place upon their profiles is often exploited by marketing campaigns. For example my roommate was recruiting for his consulting club and he could sort through the types of people to target a Facebook ad at by where they what major they are, what year a student was, and he was even able to target ads based upon where people lived around Berkeley. The amount of data that Facebook is able to gather from where photos and statuses were posted also all feed into a gigantic tracking systems for all consumers using Facebook. I was a bit shocked that all of these features to special target ad campaigns at my fellow students was available only for $10. This small demonstration of Facebook's advertising reach really opened my eyes to the amount of information we are making freely available on such a public social network.
ReplyDeleteMichael Wu
I agree with you that government and private companies using fear as an excuse to gain private information from Facebook. Just as Gilliom described in Overseers of the Poor, that most people in welfare think it is reasonable for governments to have every single information of themselves, even they don't like it, feel humiliated and degraded. We feel it is inevitable for the government to have our private information because we fear that something terrible will happen if the government cannot have all the information. Nobody feels comfortable about it but we get numb just like people on the welfare.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I want to say is Facebook can also be used as a weapon. Most people agree with that Facebook contributed a great part in Arab Spring. People used Facebook effectively to assemble, demonstrate, fight for democracy and fight against their government. Without social network, it will be impossible to have such a powerful mass activity.
Yes, Facebook can be used by the governments to control and monitor their people but more, yes, we can use Facebook to fight against the governments.
Sansui Iwamoto