In my May 2023 Book Club, I said 'The Age of Surveillance Capitalism' by Shoshana Zuboff is the best book I've read this year. A rip-the-mask-off-the-tech-giants journalistic tour de force that squeezed my mind and my heart. I honestly think about the book several times a week -- even months later.
One of the more profound insights it left me with is this idea of who owns "the right to the future tense." Right now? We do! We get to decide what we do next, right? But... for how long? Algorithms nudge our behavior into binary actions that chip away agency. A map tells us which way to drive ... then slips a donut ad in at the red light. A prompt from the pharmacy tells us the next tube of cream has been delivered to our mailbox ... before we've even checked to see if the rash is still there. Does this nudging add up to convenience alone? When will it -- or when did it -- tip further into behavior ... cajoling. Behavior ... determining?
Who owns the future tense? Today I'm sharing a short excerpt from Chapter 11 of 'The Age of Surveillance Capitalism' introducing this idea. These are 8 of the first 12 paragraphs of that chapter that run across four of the 525 pages of the book. I hope this might nudge you into buying the book. (You can do so right here!) But, of course, that is still (for now) your decision...
Neil
Chapter Eleven
The Right To The Future Tense
An Excerpt from ‘The Age of Surveillance Capitalism’
I wake early. The day begins before I open my eyes. My mind is in motion. Words and sentences have streamed through my dreams, solving problems on yesterday's pages. The first work of the day is to retrieve those words that lay open a puzzle. Only then am I ready to awaken my senses. I try to discern each birdcall in the symphony outside our windows: the phoebe, redwing, blue jay, mockingbird, woodpecker, finch, starling, and chickadee. Soaring above all their songs are the cries of geese over the lake. I splash warm water on my face, drink cool water to coax my body into alertness, and commune with our dog in the still-silent house. I make coffee and bring it into my study, where I settle into my desk chair, call up my screen, and begin. I think. I write these words, and I imagine you reading them. I do this every day of every week—as I have for several years—and it is likely that I will continue to do so for one or two years to come. I watch the seasons from the windows above my desk: first green, then red and gold, then white, and then back to green again. When friends come to visit, they peek into my study. There are books and papers stacked on every surface and most of the floor. I know they feel overwhelmed at this sight, and sometimes I sense that they silently pity me for my obligation to this work and how it circumscribes my days. I do not think that they realize how free I am. In fact, I have never felt more free. How is this possible? I made a promise to complete this work. This promise is my flag planted in the future tense. It represents my commitment to construct a future that cannot come into being should I abandon my promise. This future will not exist without my capacity first to imagine its facts and then to will them into being. I am an inchworm moving with determination and purpose across the distance between now and later. Each tiny increment of territory that I traverse is annexed to the known world, as my effort transforms uncertainty into fact. Should I renege on my promise, the world would not collapse. My publisher would survive the abrogation of our contract. You would find many other books to read. I would move on to other projects. My promise, though, is an anchor that girds me against the vagaries of my moods and temptations. It is the product of my will to will and a compass that steers my course toward a desired future that is not yet real. Events may originate in energy sources outside my will and abruptly alter my course in ways that I can neither predict nor control. Indeed, they have already done so. Despite this certain knowledge of uncertainty, I have no doubt that I am free. I can promise to create a future, and I can keep my promise. If the book that I have imagined is to exist in the future, it must be because I will to will it so. I live in an expansive landscape that already includes a future that only I can imagine and intend. In my world, this book I write already exists. In fulfilling my promise, I make it manifest. This act of will is my claim to the future tense. To make a promise is to predict the future; to fulfill a promise through the exercise of will turns that prediction into fact. Our hearts pump our blood, our kidneys filter that blood, and our wills create the future in the patient discovery of each new sentence or step. This is how we claim our right to speak in the first person as the author of our futures. The philosopher Hannah Arendt devoted an entire volume to an examination of will as the "organ for the future" in the same way that memory is our mental organ for the past. The power of will lies in its unique ability to deal with things, "visibles and invisibles, that have never existed at all. Just as the past always presents itself to the mind in the guise of certainty, the future's main characteristic is its basic uncertainty, no matter how high a degree of probability prediction may attain." When we refer to the past, we see only objects, but the view to the future brings "projects," things that are yet to be. With freedom of will we undertake action that is entirely contingent on our determination to see our project through. These are acts that we could have "left undone" but for our commitment. "A will that is not free," Arendt concludes, "is a contradiction in terms." Will is the organ with which we summon our futures into existence. Arendt's metaphor of will as the "mental organ of our future" suggests that it is something built into us: organic, intrinsic, inalienable. Moral philosophers have called this "free will" because it is the human counterpoint to the fear of uncertainty that suffocates original action. Arendt describes promises as "islands of predictability" and "guideposts of reliability" in an "ocean of uncertainty." They are, she argues, the only alternative to a different kind of "mastery" that relies on "domination of one's self and rule over others." . . . Why should an experience as elemental as this claim on the future tense be cast as a human right? The short answer is that it is only necessary now because it is imperiled. Searle argues that such elemental "features of human life" rights are crystallized as formal human rights only at that moment in history when they come under systematic threat. So, for example, the ability to speak is elemental. The concept of "freedom of speech" as a formal right emerged only when society evolved to a degree of political complexity that the freedom to speak came under threat. The philosopher observes that speech is not more elemental to human life than breathing or being able to move one's body. No one has declared a "right to breathe" or a "right to bodily movement" because these elemental rights have not come under attack and therefore do not require formal protection. What counts as a basic right, Searle argues, is both "historically contingent" and "pragmatic." I suggest that we now face the moment in history when the elemental right to the future tense is endangered by a panvasive digital architecture of behavior modification owned and operated by surveillance capital, necessitated by its economic imperatives, and driven by its laws of motion, all for the sake of its guaranteed outcomes.
