"capitalism should not be eaten raw. Capitalism like a sausage, is meant to be cooked by a democratic society and its institutions because raw capitalism is antisocial."
What a sorry era we live in.

"Search needed people to learn from, & people needed Search to learn from. This symbiosis enabled Google's algorithms to learn & produce ever-more relevant & comprehensive search results"

But this has "an absence of a sustainable market transaction.. & was not yet capitalism"...

This turned, prompted by the http://dot.com  crash, into a 'behavioural surplus' being recognised that could be monetised. Surveillance Capitalism was born. Google turned from "the youthful Dr Jekyll into a ruthless, muscular Mr Hyde determined to hunt his prey anywhere"

"Google policies had to enforce secrecy in order to protect operations that were designed to be undetectable because they took things from users without asking and employed those unilaterally claimed resources to work in the service of others' purposes"

"The 9/11 attacks transformed the government's interest in Google, as practices that just hours earlier were careening toward legislative action were quickly recast as mission-critical necessities."

"Google is a shape-shifter, but each shape harbors the same aim: to hunt and capture new raw material. Baby, won't you ride my car? Talk to my phone? Wear my shirt? Use my map? In all these cases the varied torrent of creative shapes is the sideshow to the main event"

Google's 4-step cycle to dispossess:
1. Incursion: moving into undefended space (laptop, phone, Web page) to take behavioural surplus data.
2. Habituation: "People habituated to the incursion with some combination of agreement, helplessness and resignation."
1/2

3. Adaptation: superficial but effective changes "to satisfy the immediate demands of government authorities, court rulings and public opinion"
4. Redirection: changing contested supply operations "just enough so that they appear to be compliant with.. demands"

There are two texts in surveillance capitalism - the public text we create and engage with, and the shadow text - the 'data exhaust' from the first exploited for profit by the surveillance capitalists - "they help create the world they claim to merely 'show' us".

"In Britain, university administrators are already talking about a" missing generation" of data scientists" as Google and other tech cos hoover them up. "there is no one left to teach the next generation of students".
Where does this leave transport modelling?!! @tgent_fens

Thinking connected vehicles and telematics make for improved mobility with innovations such as black box insurance? Maybe. But have a read of this book which shines a light on the dystopian world of monitoring and control of our behaviour in the rapacious interests of profit.

"Despite its pervasiveness both in Silicon Valley & in the wider culture of data scientists and technology developers, inevitabilism is rarely discussed or critically evaluated".
Transport colleagues - does this sound familiar? Automation & IoT are inevitable and good we're told.

"The 'Internet of things' is all push, not pull. Most consumers do not feel a need for these devices. You can say 'exponential' and 'inevitable' as much as you want. The bottom line is that the Valley has decided that this has to be the next big thing so that firms here can grow"

"The image of technology as an autonomous force with unavoidable actions and consequences has been employed across the centuries to erase the fingerprints of power and absolve it of responsibility".
#SmartMobility #intelligentmobility

The grand seduction by the siren sound of technology.... A killer paragraph below from Zuboff.
Let's stop talking smart and get back to sustainable as the imperative for strong transport planning.

Driverless cars, I'm looking at you!

"We accept the idea that technology must not be impeded if society is to prosper, and in this way we surrender to technological determinism. Rational consideration of social values is considered 'retrograde'".

#AutonomousVehicles