Notes

[1] The phrase “data is the new oil” has been repeated ad nauseum by economists and tech-accelerationists for the past twenty years. British mathematician Clive Humbly coined the phrase in 2006. See: Arthur, C. (2013, August 23). Tech giants may be huge, but nothing matches big data. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/aug/23/tech-giants-data; LaRock, T. (2022, October 6). ‘Data is the new oil,’ but that also means it can be risky. Database Trends and Applications. https://www.dbta.com/Columns/Next-Gen-Data-Management/Data-is-the-New-Oil-But-That-Also-Means-it-Can-be-Risky-155275.aspx [return to page 1]

[2] Cutting ourselves off from social networking systems, attempting to be informed on geopolitics without networked news platforms, maintaining employment without LinkedIn, traversing the public square outside of a CCTV network, purchasing groceries without submitting yourself to facial recognition technologies, travelling through an airport without one’s biometrics being quantified under the excuse of national security, etc., is not a solution. An absolute escape from these surveillant systems means an absolute detachment from the illusion of democratic society. A social suicide. This choice, if recommended and if somehow successful, places responsibility for surveillance entirely on the powerless individual rather than holding tech oligarchs responsible for their instrumentation of biopolitical control.

[3] Further reading, see: Wallis, V. (2019). On “surveillance capitalism”. Jump Cut No. 59. https://ejumpcut.org/archive/jc59.2019/VicWallis-Zuboff/index.html

[4] Further reading, see: Couldry, N. & Mejias, U. A. (2019). The costs of connection: How data is colonizing human life and appropriating it for capitalism. Standford University Press; O’Neil, C. (2016). Weapons of math destruction: How big data increases inequality and threatens democracy. Broadway Books; Varoufakis, Y. (2023). Technofeudalism: What killed capitalism. Melville House Publishing.

[5] Unowned, from the perspective of European mercantilists, which invariably means uncapitalized and ready for exploitation.

[6] The Big Five tech companies in the West collectively known as GAMMA – the Chinese tech conglomerates BATX (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, and Xiaomi) are not present in this essay as whataboutism and the prolific Western practice of deflecting criticisms of Western surveillance onto Chinese companies further solidifies unfounded trust in the Western technocracy.

[7] Further reading, see: Pariser, E. (2011) The filter bubble: How the personalized web is changing what we read and how we think. Penguin Books.

[8] Solution, as explored by Foucault’s lectures on the axis of sovereign and subjects.

[9] Populism here refers to a symptom of post-democracy wherein the pillars of democracy (i.e., the parties, campaigns, elections, and representative government) continue to exist, but the system of rule has exited from the democratic process (Mbembe, 2019). Instead, the performance of democracy becomes the goal of the elected leader, and democratic function is increasingly influenced by the elites, the technocrats, and market forces. Further reading, see: Mouffe, C. (2018). For a left populism. Verso Books.

[10] Further reading, see: Lyon, D. (2018). The culture of surveillance: Watching as a way of life. Polity Press; Harcourt, B. (2015). Exposed: Desire and disobedience in the digital age. Harvard University Press.

[11] Tomas Schuman, pen name of Yuri Alexandrovich Bezmenov, was a Soviet journalist for the Novosti Press Agency, a front for espionage, propaganda, disinformation, and subversion. Schuman worked as a real-world Winston Smith during Soviet propaganda assignments in New Delhi where he worked to destabilize social and moral customs through “encouraging class and ideological struggle” (Schuman, 1985, p.9). [return to page 2]

[12] Further reading, see: Agamben, G. (2020). Where are we now? The epidemic as politics. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

[13] Digital policing systems have been intertwined with profit for technocrats since the early days of Facebook. The Department of Homeland Security would use Facebook as a source of personal data once Facebook became public (Lyon, 2017); Keyhole, the geospatial mapping company that would become the backbone for Google Earth (Zuboff, 2019) was an instrumental technology in the Iraq War (Engel, 2014); ICE uses facial aging technologies trained similarly to Snapchat filters to identify migrant children as they age (Guo, 2024), etc.

[14] Through subversion and propaganda, there is national pride in Western technological surveillance and supremacy. There is national fear in that same supremacy for foreign technology. By outsourcing surveillance fears onto foreign technologies (largely Chinese, a further example of xenophobia being necessary for perception management) the West has chosen to celebrate their own colonization so if it is done by a “trustworthy” local oligarchy. It is necessary, through our reliance on mass media technologies, that the techno-serf is “sufficiently docile so that their behaviour no longer threatens the system” (Kaczynski, 2018, p.94).

[15] Further reading, see: Agamben, G. (2005). State of Exception. University of Chicago Press; and Mbembe, A. (2019). Necropolitics. Duke University Press.

[16] Not to mention the slaying of doctors and food supplies. Further reading, see: CPJ. (2025, February 4). Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war. Committee to Protect Journalists. https://cpj.org/?p=321571

[17] Further reading, see: Tufekci, Z. (2017). Twitter and tear gas: The power and fragility of networked protest. Yale University Press.

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