Web 1.0 vs 2.0
While web 1.0 was much more static and information was "published" to be shared with the public, Web 2.0 marked a new era of websites where users could create + engage with information and share it on the internet with no technical knowledge. People went from creating websites to creating blogs, to posting on social media platforms. In the Web 2.0 era, data became a valuable commodity, and corporations are doing their best to get their hands on it. User interaction (clicks, views, attention) and advertising have become the currency of the internet.
Data and Surveillance
Neutral Surveillance
In one school of thought, surveillance is a necessary collection of information for the purposes of organization and administration. When you have a large enough collection of people, information and organization is required for society to function, especially in modern information societies. Consider how the government census is used to figure out how to structure government programs, distribute aid, and just generally to create budgets. In this framing, surveillance is simply the means of gathering information.
Negative Surveillance
Negative surveillance, on the other hand, embodies the typical negative connotations people have towards surveillance, the one that imagines "big brother" looking over people's shoulders. According to Christian Fuchs, "Negative approaches see surveillance as a form of systematic information gathering that is connected to domination, coercion, the threat of using violence, or the actual use of violence in order to attain certain goals and accumulate power, in many cases against the will of those who are under surveillance."
Big Data
Web 2.0 has supercharged society's ability to collect data, as well as to use that data to influence people. From advertising to social media to trends to movements, the internet manages to encapsulate so much of the human experience, while also embodying its own unique, universal, virtual experience. In a capitalistic society, the surveillance potential of the internet is irresistible and full of profit potential.
That is because web 2.0 has produced an age of mass self-surveillance, where people have gotten into the habit of freely producing content and data about themselves and sharing it online, where it can reach a global audience. For corporations, it becomes but a matter of collecting all this data, and then analyzing it to influence future business decisions and increase their desirability to customers. In this manner, even neutral surveillance methods can be utilized to influence consumers, regardless of how actively they use the internet.
Perhaps it is not until the era of Web 3.0 and decentralization takes hold, will we be able to move past the surveillance capabilities of the internet, to disconnect the concept of negative surveillance from an information society.
Exercise
Engage in some self-surveillance of your own! Type a "post" you'd like to share, and voila! You've just shared some information over the internet (that I promise won't be stored because I haven't figured out how to do that yet ;D )
