Harvard Kennedy School's Carr Center Holds Inaugural Event for ‘Surveillance Capitalism’ Initiative

The Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School held the inaugural event on Friday for its new initiative, “Surveillance Capitalism or Democracy?” — a subsidiary of its Technology and Human Rights program.

The event, entitled “A Dialogue with the World: Surveillance Capitalism or Democracy? The Fight for the Soul of Our Information Civilization,” featured 2021 Nobel Peace Prize recipient Maria Ressa, Harvard Business School professor Shoshana Zuboff, European Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager, and UK House of Lords Baroness Beeban Kidron.

The initiative follows Zuboff’s coining of the term “surveillance capitalism” — or the system that “owns and operates our global information and communication spaces” — in her writings since 2014, including her 2019 book “The Age of Surveillance Capitlism.”

Her work — and Carr Center Faculty Director Mathias Risse’s 2023 publication on the same topic — are the basis for this initiative, according to the Carr Center’s announcement of the program.

Vestager spoke to the importance of Zuboff’s novel in providing language to talk more widely about issues surrounding information privacy online.

“Shoshana has provided us with a lens, a vocabulary, an understanding of what is ongoing,” Vestager said.

During the event, Vestager opened with a hopeful message on the possibility of enacting social change to create a surveillance-free future, repeating “it’s not too late.”

“We still have a fair chance of preventing that a huge majority of us will just be meat for the machine,” she said.

Ressa clarified that although it might not be too late, “it’s almost too late.” She warned Harvard graduates of the risk of a similarly dire future during her keynote address at the University’s 2024 Commencement ceremonies.

Zuboff echoed the imminence and severity of privacy breaches in the face of technology addiction.

“You are no longer on the social map unless you are rendered as and mediated by information,” Zuboff said. “So the question is who knows that knowledge? Who decides who knows that knowledge? Who decides who decides?”

The panelists also discussed the role of rules and regulations in controlling the digital world.

“I hope that what is going to emerge from today’s conversation is a faith in a rules-based order,” Kidron said. “Unless and until those rules are routinely and ruthlessly applied to the digital world, then we will not solve the problem, because ultimately, this is about power.”

Zuboff, however, added the way forward was not with status quo regulations.

“We have passed the window when regulatory legislation can be effective,” Zuboff said. “The reason is that all regulation is always a conversation.”

“You’re not saying it can’t exist. You’re saying, be a little more this way. Be a little more that way,” she said. “But when you’re face to face with something that is categorically immoral, that is categorically catastrophic for your society, for your political system, for individuals and for collectivities of people, societies, you don’t muck around with compromise.”

In a discussion about alternative conceptions of the increasing threats to privacy, Ressa and Zuboff discussed techno-feudalism as an alternative to surveillance capitalism.

“Feudalism, I don't like either.” Zuboff said. “Feudalism suggests a lot of people are illiterate who can’t own anything and have no sense of themselves as individuals.”

“We are not that. We are educated, we know what’s going on,” she added. “We understand ourselves as deserving of self-governance.”

—Staff writer Samuel A. Church can be reached at samuel.church@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @samuelachurch.

—Staff writer Anna Feng can be reached at anna.feng@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @_annafeng.