Prior to Dr. Plaut’s presentation, my anxieties about technology were vague and eerily similar to the ideas of someone wearing a tin foil hat. After leaving the presentation, those fears were made specific and all the more troubling.
For me, one of the strengths of Dr. Plaut’s research was his ability to place the leading scholarship on Surveillance Capitalism in a relatable context. With reference to academics such as Shoshanna Zuboff and Paul Virilio, Dr. Plaut was able to convey how the increasing presence of technology is able to create extensive data profiles of our everyday lives.Drawing on examples like countdown cards and facial recognition technology, Dr. Plaut identified how technology is constantly compiling data that places restrictions on our sense of agency as individuals. For example, our data profiles are becoming central to whether or not we will be eligible for basic services such as health insurance or financial support. Evidently, while Surveillance Capitalism may occur outside of public awareness, its impacts are still tangible and pervasive.
Moving forward, I think it would be interesting to take this research out of the abstract and explore whether or not the public sees Surveillance Capitalism as a genuine issue. As I mentioned before, I was aware that businesses were mining my information for potentially insidious purposes, however I didn’t really care. This sense of complacency is fascinating to me. Are we opposed to corporations having access to an extensive datafile on us? Or are we conditioned to accept datafiles as a reality of contemporary society?
