ABSTRACT
Everyday life in the twenty-first century is unavoidably surveillant, especially in the increasingly data-dependent global north but with parallel effects in the south. Surveillance has become a dominant aspect of interactions with governments, corporations, and indeed any and all organizations. It is part of everyday experience, interaction, involvement, and initiative, not least through internet and social media use. Surveillance is rapidly becoming part of a whole way of life, seen in mundane imaginaries and practices such as complacent data donation or social ranking. But these are not innocent cultural developments; they echo and embody an emerging stage of political-economic development, “surveillance capitalism.” Led by giant internet corporations such as Google, this phenomenon promotes data capture and analysis as the new fuel for prosperity and progress. If this conjunction is correctly stated, it raises profound questions of social relationships, for ethics, the politics of data and everyday life.
