A Digital Declaration by Shoshana Zuboff

Another important article by Shoshana Zuboff (via Jeff Zucker on the Solid forum here).

Here’s the topic for today’s article about her book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff.

Some quotes:

We need new synthetic declarations to define and support other variants of information capitalism that participate in the social order, value people, and reflect democratic principles

In the shadow and gloom of today’s institutional facts, it has become fashionable to mourn the passing of the democratic era. I say that democracy is the best our species has created so far, and woe to us if we abandon it now. The real road to serfdom is to be persuaded that the declarations of democracy we have inherited are no longer relevant to a digital future. These have been inscribed in our souls, and if we leave them behind— we abandon the best part of ourselves. If you doubt me, try living without them, as I have done. That is the real wasteland, and we should fear it

Do not let your courage falter. We are only at the beginning, and it’s true that be-ginnings are scary. But as Hannah Arendt put it, every beginning, seen from the perspective of the framework that it interrupts, is a miracle. The capacity for performing such miracles is entirely human, she argues, because it is the source of all freedom. “What usually remains intact in the epochs of petrification and foreordained doom is the faculty of freedom itself, the sheer capacity to begin, which animates and inspires all human activities and is the hidden source …of all great and beautiful things.”

May we, together, carry forward Frank Schirrmacher’s legacy by sharing in the author-ship of many great and beautiful new facts that reclaim the digital future as humanity’s home.

Let this be our declaration.

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Mozilla podcast with Shoshana Zuboff

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