The questions we pose are driven by specific incentives: complex queries empower problem-solvers, commerce-driven inquiries explore market potential, but to foster awareness, we ponder the absence of problems.
Surveillance capitalism, with its unsettling lexicon—harvesting, exhaust, extraction, akin to industrial strip mining—suggests that behaviors extracted are merely responses to the intrusive questions posed. Thus, the behaviors, and consequently the data, are manufactured at the moment of inquiry, not passively mined. This process is not a zero-sum game.
The core issue with surveillance capitalism lies in its data collection focus, which is narrowly aimed at consumer profiling and sales rather than gathering data that could contribute to more meaningful or transformative outcomes: global ecology or meaningful biopolitics.
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