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Shoshana Zuboff

Shoshana Zuboff Biography

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“The extension and depth of exposure include every data point but necessarily omit the latency within each person, precisely because it cannot be observed and measured. This is the latency of a possible self that awaits ignition from that one spark caused by the caring attention of another embodied human being. It is in that clash of oxygen and ember that the latent is perceived, comprehended, and yanked forward into existence. This is real life: fleshy, soft, uncertain, and replete with silence, risk, and, when fortune smiles, genuine intimacy.”

LoveLifeSoulIntimacy
Book:The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power
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“Effectiveness without autonomy is not effective, dependency-induced compliance is no social contract, a hive with no exit can never be a home, experience without sanctuary is but a shadow, a life that requires hiding is no life, touch without feel reveals no truth, and freedom from uncertainty is no freedom.”

FreedomDemocracyCapitalismLaborPrivacy
Book:The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power
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“This is the existential contradiction of the second modernity that defines our conditions of existence: we want to exercise control over our own lives, but everywhere that control is thwarted. Individualization has sent each one of us on the prowl for the resources we need to ensure effective life, but at each turn we are forced to do battle with an economics and politics from whose vantage point we are but ciphers. We live in the knowledge that our lives have unique value, but we are treated as invisible. As the rewards of late-stage financial capitalism slip beyond our grasp, we are left to contemplate the future in a bewilderment that erupts into violence with increasing frequency. Our expectations of psychological self-determination are the grounds upon which our dreams unfold, so the losses we experience in the slow burn of rising inequality, exclusion, pervasive competition, and degrading stratification are not only economic. They slice us to the quick in dismay and bitterness because we know ourselves to be worthy of individual dignity and the right to a life on our own terms.”

LifeExpectationsCapitalismInequalityControlSelf DeterminationModernityIndividualization
Book:The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power
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“I've lived in a preindustrial (rural Argentina) as well as an industrial world. You experience a different sense of time in a community that works the land. Human relationships aren't professionalized or contractualized; family and friends take primacy. Life has much more continuity than discontinuity. There's a great deal of poetry in everyday life.”

WorldHumansWellsDifferentTimeCommunityDealsLandEverydayEveryday LifeFamily And FriendsContinuityHuman RelationsHuman RelationshipsArgentinaLife TimePrimacyDiscontinuity
Author:Shoshana Zuboff
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“Computer mediation seems to bathe action in a more conditional light: perhaps it happened; perhaps it didn't. Without the layeredrichness of direct sensory engagement, the symbolic medium seems thin, flat, and fragile.”

RealityLightSeemsActionHappenedComputerDirectMediumsFlatsFragileEngagementRealismSymbolicSensoryMediationConditional
Book:In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power
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“Labor came to humanity with the fall from grace and was at best a penitential sacrifice enabling purity through humiliation. Laborwas toil, distress, trouble, fatigue--an exertion both painful and compulsory. Labor was our animal condition, struggling to survive in dirt and darkness.”

HumanityFallAnimalDarknessStruggleGraceTroubleSacrificeConditionsLaborPainfulPurityDirtDistressToilHumiliationFatigueEnablingExertionCompulsoryStruggling To SurviveFalls From Grace
Author:Shoshana Zuboff
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“The history of work has been, in part, the history of the worker's body. Production depended on what the body could accomplish with strength and skill. Techniques that improve output have been driven by a general desire to decrease the pain of labor as well as by employers' intentions to escape dependency upon that knowledge which only the sentient laboring body could provide.”

WellsHas BeensBodyPainDesireWorkSkillsLaborIntentionWorkersProductionsAccomplishDrivenTechniqueEmployersDecreaseDependencyOutputAutomation
Book:In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power
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“If the technology cannot shoulder the entire burden of strategic change, it nevertheless can set into motion a series of dynamicsthat present an important challenge to imperative control and the industrial division of labor. The more blurred the distinction between what workers know and what managers know, the more fragile and pointless any traditional relationships of domination and subordination between them will become.”

IfsKnowsImportantChallengesTechnologyLaborSeriesWorkersBurdenShouldersTraditionalManagersDistinctionDivisionFragileNeverthelessDominationImperativesStrategicPointlessSubordinationDivision Of Labor
Author:Shoshana Zuboff
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“My teenage children watched Senator Clinton on the Today Show, mouths agape. They attended our local caucus with me and saw hundreds of our friends and neighbors gathered in the elementary school gym on that Sunday afternoon, despite an ugly Maine snowstorm. They listened to the thoughtful searching debates and saw us cast our votes. How could anyone suggest we didn't know exactly what we were doing? 'What's the point of electing someone who doesn't believe in the American people?' they asked. 'If she wants to ignore us now when she's only a candidate, what will she do as the President?'”

PeopleIfsKnowsWantBelieveChildrenShowsTodaySchoolPresidentSawsMouthsVoteClintonCastsUglyNeighborDebateLocalsDespiteCandidatesThoughtfulSundayGymAfternoonSenatorsTeenageElementary SchoolMaineCaucusAgapeSunday AfternoonsSnowstorms
Author:Shoshana Zuboff
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“It looks like the age of the mass is behind us and the age of the individual is upon us. The chasm that now exists between new people and old organizations is destroying economic value and inhibiting the emergence of a new chapter of capitalism aligned with the needs of this new society. The new purpose of commerce is to provide the tools, platforms, and relationships, digital or human, that enable individuals to live the lives they choose.”

PeopleNeedsHumansLooksAgePurposeValuesIndividualBehindsEconomicMassCapitalismToolsOrganizationDigitalDestroyingPlatformsChaptersCommerceEmergenceChasmsEconomic Value
Author:Shoshana Zuboff
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“In diminishing the role of the worker's body in the labor process, industrial technology has also tended to diminish the importance of the worker. In creating jobs that require less human effort, industrial technology has also been used to create jobs that require less human talent. In creating jobs that demand less of the body, industrial production has also tended to create jobs that give less to the body, in terms of opportunities to accrue knowledge on the production process.”

GivingHumansBodyJobsUsedOpportunityProcessTermEffortRolesTechnologyTalentDemandCreatingLaborImportanceWorkersProductionsDiminishCreating Jobs
Author:Shoshana Zuboff
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