Surveillance Capitalism

The Digital Persuasion Engine: Dark Patterns, Surveillance, and Behavioral Control 1 The Digital Persuasion Engine - Part 1: Dark Patterns: A User's Guide to Manipulation 2 The Digital Persuasion Engine - Part 2: The Surveillance Nudge 3 The Digital Persuasion Engine - Part 3: Trapped in the Feed 4 The Digital Persuasion Engine - Part 4: The Slot Machine in Your Pocket ← Series Home The Unavoidable Architecture of Digital Life The digital environment is fundamentally non-neutral; every design choice, from default settings to button placement, inevitably influences human behavior. This unavoidable structuring is known as choice architecture. When this power is harnessed for commercial ends through the constant collection and monetization of personal data, it becomes the surveillance nudge. Companies leverage this ubiquitous architecture to steer individual choices toward directions that maximize their own revenue and growth objectives. ...

Defense and Future 1 Defense and Future – Part 1: Building Cognitive Immunity 2 Defense and Future – Part 2: The Ethics of the Nudge 3 Defense and Future – Part 3: The Coming Age of Synthetic Persuasion ← Series Home Immortality, bliss, divinity New human goals Harari Existential risk Technology rendering humans irrelevant AI advancement The Paradoxical Pursuit of Immortality and Certainty At the beginning of the third millennium, humanity has prioritized conquering famine, plague, and war, and is now setting its sights on audacious new goals: achieving immortality, bliss, and divinity,. This pursuit is fundamentally enabled by breakthroughs in biotechnology and information technology. However, this unprecedented access to scientific power comes with a severe existential risk: the technology capable of upgrading Homo sapiens into Homo deus may also be powerful enough to render the unenhanced human irrelevant,. This dilemma is driven by a deep ideological conflict stemming from the rise of algorithms and the challenge they pose to the liberal humanist ideals of free will and individual sovereignty. ...

The War of Words: The Invisible Logic of Political Language and Automated Influence 1 The War of Words - Part 1: The Invisible Logic of Political Language 2 The War of Words - Part 2: The Tyranny of the Narrating Self 3 The War of Words - Part 3: The STEPPS of Automated Influence ← Series Home The Scarcest Resource: Commodifying Attention and Volition Attention is the most fiercely contested resource in the modern age, continually harvested at industrial scale and converted into profit. This ongoing appropriation transforms every waking moment into a zone of potential commercial exploitation, ensuring that few times or spaces remain uncultivated by those seeking to resell human awareness. To successfully colonize this most personal of resources, influence professionals have developed precise, scalable methods for spreading ideas and modifying behavior, shifting their focus from broad persuasion to targeted, automated coercion that operates just beyond the threshold of conscious thought. ...