This article describes an emergent logic of accumulation in the networked sphere, ‘surveillance capitalism,’ and considers its implications for ‘information civilization.’ The institutionalizing practices and operational assumptions of Google Inc. are the primary lens for this analysis as they are rendered in two recent articles authored by Google Chief Economist Hal Varian. Varian asserts four uses that follow from computer-mediated transactions: ‘data extraction and analysis,’ ‘new contractual forms due to better monitoring,’ ‘personalization and customization,’ and ‘continuous experiments.’ An examination of the nature and consequences of these uses sheds light on the implicit logic of surveillance capitalism and the global architecture of computer mediation upon which it depends. This architecture produces a distributed and largely uncontested new expression of power that I christen: ‘Big Other.’ It is constituted by unexpected and often illegible mechanisms of extraction, commodification, and control that effectively exile persons from their own behavior while producing new markets of behavioral prediction and modification. Surveillance capitalism challenges democratic norms and departs in key ways from the centuries-long evolution of market capitalism.

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1057%2Fjit.2015.5.pdf

Big other: surveillance capitalism and the prospects of an information civilization

Every day, corporations are connecting the dots about our personal behaviorsilently scrutinizing clues left behind by our work habits and Internet use. The data compiled and portraits created are incredibly detailed, to the point of being invasive. But who connects the dots about what firms are doing with this information? The Black Box Society argues that we all need to be able to do soand to set limits on how big data affects our lives. Hidden algorithms can make (or ruin) reputations, decide the destiny of entrepreneurs, or even devastate an entire economy. Shrouded in secrecy and complexity, decisions at major Silicon Valley and Wall Street firms were long assumed to be neutral and technical. But leaks, whistleblowers, and legal disputes have shed new light on automated judgment. Self-serving and reckless behavior is surprisingly common, and easy to hide in code protected by legal and real secrecy. Even after billions of dollars of fines have been levied, underfunded regulators may have only scratched the surface of this troubling behavior. Frank Pasquale exposes how powerful interests abuse secrecy for profit and explains ways to rein them in. Demanding transparency is only the first step. An intelligible society would assure that key decisions of its most important firms are fair, nondiscriminatory, and open to criticism. Silicon Valley and Wall Street need to accept as much accountability as they impose on others.

The Black Box Society: The Secret Algorithms That Control Money and Information

Authorship of scientific papers is an important activity for the academic researcher, as papers provide a forum for communication of scientific results and can be used to provide references of scientific merit. Authors are responsible for the content of reports, and of course, the presentation of results should be as accurate and unbiased as possible. However, manuscripts can be written in a variety of ways using different words and expressions. In addition, each scientific author does not need to write every single word in the manuscript nor is he/she a novelist. The definition of scientific authorship is not clear-cut and is interpreted differently in various scientific communities. This issue is far from new, and during my years I have seen several commentaries on this subject. Kassirer and Angell, Editors of the New England Journal of Medicine, discussed the issue of authorship in an Editorial published in 1991. I consider this Editorial important as it emphasizes the importance of scientific input and the need to define the contribution of an author particularly in multicenter trials [1]. In order to define roles more clearly, Rennie et al. suggested using “contributors” as a more appropriate designation for some authors [2]. The scientific paper when published is open for discussion, and all authors should be able to provide input of scientific value. All submissions to the European Journal of Heart Failure must include a statement about the role of each author and a signed document defining each author's contribution. This requirement was implemented as a consequence of several reports of papers being published without the knowledge of some of the co-authors. An example is the Sudbo paper, published in the Lancet in 2005, in which several of the 13 co-authors claimed that they were not aware of the submission or the full result [3]. The European Journal of Heart Failure complies with the definitions of authorship as outlined by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors which is available online at: http://www.icmje.org. We have no further requirement more than an author should have made a scientific contribution. In our May issue, we published an Ethics statement from the HEART network [4]. In this statement, we repeat what we have stated on our website since June last year. The purpose of the statement is to ensure transparency

Who is an author

Self-directed learning on open online networks is now a possibility as communication and resources can be combined to create learning environments. But is it really? There are some challenges that might prevent learners from having a quality learning experience. This paper raises questions on levels of learner autonomy, presence, and critical literacies required in active connectivist learning.

/pdf/the-challenges-to-connectivist-learning-on-open-online-14aq0sum3k.pdf

The Challenges to Connectivist Learning on Open Online Networks: Learning Experiences during a Massive Open Online Course

Enabled by the Internet-Web compound, co-creation of value by consumers has emerged as a major force in the marketplace. In sponsored co-creation, which takes place at the behest of producers, the activities of consumers drive or support the producers' business models. Autonomous co-creation is a wide range of consumer activities that amount to consumer-side production of value. Thus, individuals and communities have become a significant, and growing, productive force in e-commerce. To recognize co-creation, so broadly understood, as a fundamental area of e-commerce research, it is necessary to attain an integrated research perspective on this greatly varied, yet cohering, domain. The enabling information technology needs to be developed to suit the context. Toward these ends, the paper analyzes the intellectual space underlying co-creation research and proposes an inclusive taxonomy of Web-based co-creation, informed both by the extant multidisciplinary research and by results obtained in the natural laboratory of the Web. The essential directions of co-creation research are outlined, and some promising avenues of future work discussed. The taxonomic framework and the research perspective lay a foundation for the future development of co-creation theory and practice. The certainty of turbulent developments in e-commerce means that the taxonomic framework will require ongoing revision and expansion, as will any future framework.

/pdf/co-creation-toward-a-taxonomy-and-an-integrated-research-1h9luj2lfk.pdf

Co-Creation: Toward a Taxonomy and an Integrated Research Perspective

Amazon Best Books of the Month, January 2010: For the most part, Web 2.0--Internet technologies that encourage interactivity, customization, and participation--is hailed as an emerging Golden Age of information sharing and collaborative achievement, the strength of democratized wisdom. Jaron Lanier isn't buying it. In You Are Not a Gadget, the longtime tech guru/visionary/dreadlocked genius (and progenitor of virtual reality) argues the opposite: that unfettered--and anonymous--ability to comment results in cynical mob behavior, the shouting-down of reasoned argument, and the devaluation of individual accomplishment. Lanier traces the roots of today's Web 2.0 philosophies and architectures (e.g. he posits that Web anonymity is the result of '60s paranoia), persuasively documents their shortcomings, and provides alternate paths to "locked-in" paradigms. Though its strongly-stated opinions run against the bias of popular assumptions, You Are Not a Gadget is a manifesto, not a screed; Lanier seeks a useful, respectful dialogue about how we can shape technology to fit culture's needs, rather than the way technology currently shapes us. A QA a useful fantasy, a nothing. It is nonexistent until and unless a person experiences it in a useful way. What we have done in the last decade is give information more rights than are given to people. If you express yourself on the internet, what you say will be copied, mashed up, anonymized, analyzed, and turned into bricks in someone elses fortress to support an advertising scheme. However, the information, the abstraction, that represents you is protected within that fortress and is absolutely sacrosanct, the new holy of holies. You never see it and are not allowed to touch it. This is exactly the wrong set of values. The idea that information is alive in its own right is a metaphysical claim made by people who hope to become immortal by being uploaded into a computer someday. It is part of what should be understood as a new religion. That might sound like an extreme claim, but go visit any computer science lab and youll find books about "the Singularity," which is the supposed future event when the blessed uploading is to take place. A weird cult in the world of technology has done damage to culture at large. Question: In You Are Not a Gadget, you argue that idea that the collective is smarter than the individual is wrong. Why is this? Jaron Lanier: There are some cases where a group of people can do a better job of solving certain kinds of problems than individuals. One example is setting a price in a marketplace. Another example is an election process to choose a politician. All such examples involve what can be called optimization, where the concerns of many individuals are reconciled. There are other cases that involve creativity and imagination. A crowd process generally fails in these cases. The phrase "Design by Committee" is treated as derogatory for good reason. That is why a collective of programmers can copy UNIX but cannot invent the iPhone. In the book, I go into considerably more detail about the differences between the two types of problem solving. Creativity requires periodic, temporary "encapsulation" as opposed to the kind of constant global openness suggested by the slogan "information wants to be free." Biological cells have walls, academics employ temporary secrecy before they publish, and real authors with real voices might want to polish a text before releasing it. In all these cases, encapsulation is what allows for the possibility of testing and feedback that enables a quest for excellence. To be constantly diffused in a global mush is to embrace mundanity. (Photo Jonathan Sprague)

You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto

An Amazon Best Book of the Month, May 2013: Jaron Lanier's last book, You Are Not a Gadget, was an influential criticism of Web 20's crowd-sourced backbone In Who Owns the Future?, Lanier is interested in how network technologies affect our culture, economy, and collective soul Lanier is talking about pretty heady stuff--the monopolistic power of big tech companies (dubbed "Siren Servers"), the flattening of the middle class, the obscuring of humanity--but he has a gift for explaining sophisticated concepts with clarity In fact, what separates Lanier from a lot of techno-futurists is his emphasis on the maintaining humanism and accessibility in technology In the most ambitious part of the book, Lanier expresses what he believes to be the ideal version of the networked future--one that is built on two-way connections instead of one-way relationships, allowing content, media, and other innovations to be more easily attributed (including a system of micro-payments that lead back to its creator) Is the two-way networked vision of the internet proposed in Who Owns the Future quixotic? Even Lanier seems unsure, but his goal here is to establish a foundation for which we should strive At one point, Lanier jokingly asks sci-fi author William Gibson to write something that doesn't depict technology as so menacing Gibson replies, "Jaron, I tried But it's coming out dark" Lanier is able to conjure a future that's much brighter, and hopefully in his imagination, we are moving closer to that --Kevin Nguyen Q&A with Jaron Lanier Q Years ago, in the early days of networking, you and your friends asserted that information should be free What made you change your tune? A In the big picture, a great new technology that makes the world more efficient should result in waves of new opportunity Thats what happened with, say, electricity, telephones, cars, plumbing, fertilizers, vaccinations, and many other examples Why on earth have the early years of the network revolution been associated with recessions, austerity, jobless recoveries, and loss of social mobility? Something has clearly gone wrong The old ideas about information being free in the information age ended up screwing over everybody except the owners of the very biggest computers The biggest computers turned into spying and behavior modification operations, which concentrated wealth and power Sharing information freely, without traditional rewards like royalties or paychecks, was supposed to create opportunities for brave, creative individuals Instead, I have watched each successive generation of young journalists, artists, musicians, photographers, and writers face harsher and harsher odds The perverse effect of opening up information has been that the status of a young persons parents matters more and more, since its so hard to make ones way Q Throughout history, technological revolutions have caused unemployment but also brought about new types of jobs to replace the old ones Whats different today? A Cars can now drive themselves, and cloud services can translate passages between languages well enough to be of practical use But the role of people in these technologies turned out to be a surprise Back in the 1950s, the fantasy in the computer science world was that smart scientists would achieve machine intelligence and profound levels of automation, but that never worked Instead, vast amounts of big data gathered from real people is rehashed to create automation There are many, many real people behind the curtain This should be great news for the future of employment! Multitudes of people are needed in order for robots to speak, drive cars, or perform operations The only problem is that as the information age is dawning, the ideology of bright young people and newfangled plutocrats alike holds that information should be free Q Who does own the future? Whats up for grabs that will affect our future livelihoods? A The answer is indeed up for grabs If we keep on doing things as we are, the answer is clear: The future will be narrowly owned by the people who run the biggest, best connected computers, which will usually be found in giant, remote cloud computing farms The answer I am promoting instead is that the future should be owned broadly by everyone who contributes data to the cloud, as robots and other machines animated by cloud software start to drive our vehicles, care for us when were sick, mine our natural resources, create the physical objects we use, and so on, as the 21st century progresses Right now, most people are only gaining informal benefits from advances in technology, like free internet services, while those who own the biggest computers are concentrating formal benefits to an unsustainable degree Q What is a Siren Server and how does it function? A I needed a broad name for the gargantuan cloud computer services that are concentrating wealth and influence in our era They go by so many names! There are national intelligence agencies, the famous Silicon Valley companies with nursery school names, the stealthy high finance schemes, and others All these schemes are quite similar The biggest computers can predictably calculate wealth and clout on a broad, statistical level For instance, an insurance company might use massive amounts of data to only insure people who are unlikely to get sick The problem is that the risk and loss that can be avoided by having the biggest computer still exist Everyone else must pay for the risk and loss that the Siren Server can avoid The interesting thing about the original Homeric Sirens was that they didnt actually attack sailors The fatal peril was that sailors volunteered to grant the sirens control of the interaction Thats what were all doing with the biggest computing schemes Q As a solution to the economic problems caused by digital networks, you assert that each one of us should be paid for what we do and share online How would that work? A Weve all contributed to the fortunes of big Silicon Valley schemes, big finance schemes, and all manner of other schemes which are driven by computation over a network But our contributions were deliberately forgotten This is partly due to the ideology of copying without a trace that my friends and I mistakenly thought would lead to a fairer world, back in the day The error we made was simple: Not all computers are created equal What is clear is that networks could remember where the value actually came from, which is from a very broad range of people I sketch a way that universal micropayments might solve the problem, though I am not attempting to present a utopian solution Instead I hope to deprogram people from the open ideal to think about networks more broadly I am certain that once the conversation escapes the bounds of what has become an orthodoxy, better ideas will come about Q Who Owns the Future seems like two books in one Does it seem that way to you? A If all I wanted was sympathy and popularity, I am sure that a critique by itselfwithout a proposal for a solutionwould have been more effective Its true that the fixes put forward in Who Owns the Future are ambitious, but they are presented within an explicitly modest wrapping I am hoping to make the world safer for diverse ideas about the future Our times are terribly conformist For instance, one is either red or blue, or is accepted by the open culture crowd or not I seek to bust open such orthodoxies by showing that other ideas are possible So I present an intentionally rough sketch of an alternate future that doesnt match up with any of the present orthodoxies A reality-based, compassionate world is one in which criticism is okay I dish it out, but I also lay my tender neck out before you Q Youre a musician in addition to being a computer scientist What insight has that given you? A In the 1990s I was signed to a big label, but as a minor artist I had to compete in an esoteric niche market, as an experimental classical/jazz high prestige sort of artist That world was highly competitive and professional, and inspired an intense level of effort from me I assumed that losing the moneyed side of the recording business would not make all that much of a difference, but I was wrong I no longer bother to release music The reason is that it now feels like a vanity market Self-promotion has become the primary activity of many of my musician friends Yuk When the music is heard, its often in the context of automatically generated streams from some cloud service, so the listener doesnt even know its you Successful music tends to be quite conformist to some pre-existing category, because that way it fits better into the automatic streaming schemes I miss competing in the intense NYC music scene Who keeps you honest when the world is drowning in insincere flattery? So here I am writing books Hello book critics!

Who Owns the Future

You Are Not a Gadget

Named one of the best books of 2017 by The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, & VoxThe father of virtual reality explains its dazzling possibilities by reflecting on his own lifelong relationship with technologyBridging the gap between tech mania and the experience of being inside the human body, Dawn of the New Everything is a look at what it means to be human at a moment of unprecedented technological possibility. Through a fascinating look back over his life in technology, Jaron Lanier, an interdisciplinary scientist and father of the term virtual reality, exposes VRs ability to illuminate and amplify our understanding of our species, and gives readers a new perspective on how the brain and body connect to the world. An inventive blend of autobiography, science writing, philosophy and advice, this book tells the wild story of his personal and professional life as a scientist, from his childhood in the UFO territory of New Mexico, to the loss of his mother, the founding of the first start-up, and finally becoming a world-renowned technological guru. Understanding virtual reality as being both a scientific and cultural adventure, Lanier demonstrates it to be a humanistic setting for technology. While his previous books offered a more critical view of social media and other manifestations of technology, in this book he argues that virtual reality can actually make our lives richer and fuller.

Jaron Lanier

Papers

You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto

Who Owns the Future

You Are Not a Gadget

Dawn of the New Everything: Encounters with Reality and Virtual Reality

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