Let’s Talk About Surveillance Capitalism
I find great joy in creating heart-based workshops and retreats, offering opportunities for deep human connection and strategies for tech life balance. But as many of you know, Screen Time Lifeline is more than just a wellness endeavor. It is also my aim to identify and confront the ways the tech industry reinforces oppressive dynamics and colonizes our relationships, our world views, our independent thinking, our free will and our minds: all for profit.
Recently I started a deep dive into the topic of surveillance capitalism, a term coined by the brilliant Shoshana Zuboff, defined as “A new economic order that claims human experience as free raw material for hidden commercial practices or extraction, prediction and sales.” Zuboff’s brilliant book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight For a Human Future At The New Frontier of Power has been compared to Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and Karl Marx’s Das Kapital. Alex Ross from The New Yorker called it “a step-by-step account of the building of the digital iron cage.” I am only on page 17 and have worn out a highlighter on this thing!
This is a book that needs discussion and engagement. If you are in Seattle and interested in an informal book group to delve into Zuboff’s book, shoot me an email and let’s talk! I’m picturing a very slow read with meetings outdoors in the summer and in my therapy office when it gets cold. Nothing formal or fee based. Just showing up and sharing thoughts, impressions and learning.
On the same topic, and poet Anne Boyer’s essay The Earthly Shadow of the Cloud took my breath away, brought tears to my eyes, and made me feel seen. She perfectly captures my experience as a Gen-Xer observing the onset and progression of the digital age, describing the sense of expansion and connection that the early internet promised, and distress about where we are heading:
“Like every innocent who ever didn’t remember non-property could become property, I thought, of course, that there would be an organized resistance to that internet, the craven one, that no one would choose to love their own surveillance or live as a personal brand … I am not so delusional as to think I could lead an organized resistance to this process of enclosure. Nor do I think I can, alone, defend those poet things: the moon and love. But I also can’t forget that there are people who want to own, as data, the bacteria in our intestines and the salt in our tears." Read the whole thing here.
See you again soon!
Much Love,
Christina
P.S. If you’ve read this far, thank you! I invite you to join my mailing list for occasional musings and updates on retreats and events. I won't spam you, or share your data. Let's start supporting small businesses on platforms they own!