34 lines
1.5 KiB
Markdown
34 lines
1.5 KiB
Markdown
---
|
|
tags: [ecopolsoc, internet, surveillance-capitalism]
|
|
created: Monday, January 20, 2025
|
|
---
|
|
|
|
# c9d7492f_requerimiento
|
|
|
|
Zuboff likens the expropriation of private information by surveillance
|
|
capitalists to the behaviour of the Conquistadores when they first arrived in
|
|
South America.
|
|
|
|
In order to legitimise their actions they were obliged to inform the native
|
|
inhabitants of their intentions and tell them that they were now subordinate to
|
|
the Spanish crown.
|
|
|
|
This provided supposed justification for the violence and brutality that would
|
|
follow if the natives did not comply. Sometimes the declaration would just be
|
|
muttered moments before attack.
|
|
|
|
"Conquest by declaration" is also the technique of Google, she claims. The
|
|
equivalent of the _requerimiento_ being the opaque and incomprehensible terms of
|
|
of service, _designed_ not to be read.
|
|
|
|
_These twenty-first-century invaders do not ask permission; the forge ahead,
|
|
papering the scorched earth with faux-legitimation practices. Instead of
|
|
cynically conveyed monarchical edicts, they offer cynically conveyed
|
|
terms-of-service agreements whose stipulations are just as obscured and
|
|
incomprehensible. They build their fortifications, fiercely defending their
|
|
claimed territories, while gathering strength for the next incursion.
|
|
Eventually, they build their towns in intricate ecosystems of commerce, politics
|
|
and culture that declare the legitimacy and inevitability of all that they have
|
|
accomplished._
|
|
|
|
_The Age of Surveillance Capitalism_ (2019): 179
|