Table Of ContentMonitored
Monitored
Business and Surveillance
in a Time of Big Data
Peter Bloom
First published 2019 by Pluto Press
345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA
www.plutobooks.com
Copyright © Peter Bloom 2019
The right of Peter Bloom to be identified as the author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7453 3863 7 Hardback
ISBN 978 0 7453 3862 0 Paperback
ISBN 978 1 7868 0392 4 PDF eBook
ISBN 978 1 7868 0394 8 Kindle eBook
ISBN 978 1 7868 0393 1 EPUB eBook
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made
from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping
and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the
environmental standards of the country of origin.
Typeset by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England
Simultaneously printed in the United Kingdom and United States of
America
Contents
Acknowledgements vi
Preface: Completely Monitored vii
1. Monitored Subjects, Unaccountable Capitalism 1
2. The Growing Threat of Digital Control 27
3. Surveilling Ourselves 51
4. Smart Realities 86
5. Digital Salvation 112
6. Planning Your Life at the End of History 138
7. Totalitarianism 4.0 162
8. The Revolution Will Not Be Monitored 186
Notes 203
Index 245
Acknowledgements
This is dedicated to everyone in the DPO – thank you for
letting me be your temporary Big Brother and for the opportu-
nity to change the world together.
Preface
Completely Monitored
In 2017 Netflix released the hi-tech thriller The Circle with a
star-studded cast including Tom Hanks, Emma Watson, and
John Boyega. Beneath its standard plot lies a chilling vision of
a coming dystopian tomorrow. It presents nothing less than the
rise of a new virulent form of tyranny where big data and social
media can track anyone, anywhere, at any time. This frightening
scenario may sound far-fetched but it in fact mirrors real-life
developments. As reported in the Guardian, former Facebook
president Sean Parker warned that its platform ‘literally changes
your relationship with society, with each other … God only
knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains’. And while The
Circle had a predictable Hollywood happy ending, our own
future is far less assured.
Rapidly emerging is the growing threat of ‘totalitarianism
4.0’, one that is rising alongside the present hi-tech revolutions
of ‘Industry 4.0’ fuelled by advances in big data, artificial intel-
ligence, and digital communications. Rather than the ominous
visage of Big Brother in 1984, this new attempt at total control
will come in the form of wearable technology, depersonalised
algorithms, and digitalised audit trails. Everyone will be fully
analysed and accounted for. Their every action monitored, their
every preference known, their entire life calculated and made
predictable. Yet this also raises a key question – who is behind
this updated totalitarianism? Perhaps it is more accurate to ask
who or what is benefitting from this totally monitored society?
And just as importantly who and what is not being monitored
and why?
viii MONITORED
The key to answering these questions is to critically explore
and reconsider our common understandings of the term
accounting itself. Accounting is conventionally associated with
financial accounting, a fact that is not surprising given that
finance has largely driven the twenty-first-century economy.
However, it also refers to the collection and analysis of infor-
mation about people – specifically the use of techniques to
account for our beliefs and actions. Thus just as financial tools
can be used to quantify and interpret the profits of a business,
so to can social accounting techniques be employed to map the
behaviour of people through the accumulation of their personal
and shared data.
It is absolutely crucial, therefore, to better understand how
the proliferation of these new accounting techniques – partic-
ularly linked to big data, social media, and artificial intelligence
– are transforming the ways people are socially controlled and
how, in turn, the present status quo is being reinforced. On
the one hand, new technology has made it easier to track all
aspects of our existence – from work to home and everything
in-between. On the other hand, political and economic elites
appear to conduct their business in secret, with little public
oversight or knowledge. Further, the actual movement of
capital and the spread of its power seems to happen in relative
darkness, hidden by esoteric financial modelling and compli-
cated accounting strategies whose primary purpose is evasion
rather than detection. Significantly, in the present period
financial and social accounting have increasingly merged – as
the ability to collect and analyse people’s data is aimed at and
judged according to the same fiscal values of maximising their
economic value. The overriding purpose of this book is thus
to demonstrate how these accounting techniques are making
the majority of people in the world more accounted for and
ultimately accountable, while rendering elites and the capitalist
system they profit from dramatically less so.
PREFACE ix
Being Complete Monitored
One of the most interesting and worrying features of the
modern world is the ease in which personal information is
obtained and exchanged. Everything from your favourite type
of music to your present need for a new hammer to even your
New Year’s resolutions are digitally monitored and increasingly
exploited by corporations and governments. Our thoughts and
our actions are becoming progressively archived, as data from
our past are being used to openly and not so openly shape our
present and future choices. More precisely, the question is: to
what extent has being made more accounted for also made us
and society generally more politically and ethically accountable?
One thing is abundantly clear: it is certainly simpler to follow
and judge the lives of others. It is now possible to monitor
almost everything we do, from what time we wake up in the
morning, to how many steps we take throughout the day, to the
types of movies we binge watch at night, to the number of times
we check our emails at work, to the amount of time we spend
working from home.
And this information is not merely personal – it is increas-
ingly shared for the entire world to see and analyse for their
own voyeuristic and profitable purposes. Who hasn’t looked
up an old friend or partner on Facebook? Who hasn’t Google
searched themselves or those they know to discover in seconds
a previously unknown accomplishment or possibly even hidden
salacious secrets? And information that is private is seemingly
easily uncovered by those with the technological know-how and
criminal desire to do so.
At the turn of the new millennium it would appear that
everyone and everywhere is, for better or for worse, more visible.
This form of total personal and collective exposure has given
birth to a new type of citizen. While conventional ideals of free
speech, civic engagement, and social responsibility certainly
have not disappeared (at least in principle), they are being
