About

Today, in the 2020s, about twenty years have passed since the Internet became generally available in Japan. With the advancement of network and AI technologies, the emergence of smartphones, and the spread of social media, all aspects of society have become increasingly informatized, and our lives have become more convenient. At the same time, cyber-attacks, the collecting of personal information by corporations and governments, and spreading fake news through social media have become problems that threaten our lives.

How can we learn how our data and privacy are handled, which many people feel uncomfortable about despite enjoying the convenience of the Internet?

Regarding the Title: SAKOKU [Walled Garden]

"SAKOKU (isolation)", the title YCAM gave to a series of exhibitions, refers to the limitation of visibility. Laws dealing with personal data differ from country to country, as does the situation regarding privacy. By choosing a search engine or social media, one subconsciously chooses the information they receive, in other words, the scope of visibility. "Walled Garden" expresses the state in which we feel comfortable inside walls, our visible range, and the state of being unable to see the inside from the outside.

What perspectives can the field of expression and creativity offer to this isolated (sakoku) situation? The SAKOKU [Walled Garden] project is a project that thinks about the future of information and the Internet through a collaborative approach with artists to stimulate the imagination for the future.

On Surveillance Capitalism

The SAKOKU [Walled Garden] Project and Surveillance Capitalism

A few years ago, two original workshops were developed and conducted at YCAM. One of the topics was "Surveillance Capitalism". It refers to a new economic system that enables companies to generate enormous profits by using behavioral data on the Internet to predict the behavior of each and one of us and display advertisements at more effective moments.

The term was proposed by social psychologist and philosopher Shoshana Zuboff in her book, where she warns that this system limits our behavior and the scope of our imagination.

Reference - Shoshana Zuboff "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power"/Profile Books

How Surveillance Capitalism works

In the early 2000s began targeted advertising, a business practice of tracking users' online behavior and displaying associated ads. Targeted advertising allows analysis of how ads displayed can lead to purchasing behavior. It allowed technology companies to earn more revenue from advertisers in exchange for user behavior data instead of being paid by its users. To improve the accuracy of behavioral data, technology companies began to deploy services such as email, maps, video, smartphone operating systems, and consumer electronics.

Today, through networks and AI-embedded services, we receive advertisements created by technology companies' systems and make various decisions based on such information. Can we call these decisions "decisions based on free will"?

Where Surveillance Capitalism is going

The problem with surveillance capitalism is that it monitors, predicts, and even directs consumers' behaviors toward an outcome companies desire.

Companies predict every user action to further control behaviors, and know perfectly well when and to whom to show which ads. This is one ideal situation for technology companies contributing to surveillance capitalism. If this situation continues to develop, companies might be able to predict and guide future behavior even more accurately in all aspects of our lives. The system will become ubiquitous, making its presence increasingly difficult to recognize.

The concentration of information in certain companies has already brought problems, confusion, and division among people.

A case where data collected by Facebook has been used to guide votes to certain electoral candidates through Cambridge Analytica. Facebook is a free social networking service that requires revenue to maintain its platform. However, when data is used by third parties to influence critical choices, can it still be called a free useful service?

Pokémon GO, a free smartphone game app, has become a popular form of entertainment that uses AR technology to connect virtual and physical space. It is also a service that, in the context of surveillance capitalism, has proven that companies can direct people to where they wish, not only online but also to physical locations. Game players, who thought they were chasing Pokémon, were stopping by the stores of the sponsoring companies, where they would purchase products to reap the game's rewards.

What can we do?

There is no easy solution to surveillance capitalism. So far, we have encouraged the evolution of various technologies without questioning their harmful effects because of our desire for convenience. We have strengthened the economic foundation of surveillance capitalism. Not only systems of detection and analysis but even the data generated from our actions are now treated as corporate secrets. How personal information is handled on the Internet is increasingly becoming a black box.

At the same time, the protection of personal information is being legally strengthened in certain areas, with the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) coming into force in the EU in 2018 and the CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act) in the US in 2020. In addition, some companies and nonprofit organizations are offering alternative options, such as new search engines, SMS services, and browsers that do not obtain personal information and do not rely on targeted advertising. Still, some countries are strengthening the government's authority to monitor communications, such as the enactment of the "Investigatory Powers Act 2016" in the United Kingdom.

It will become even more important to better understand our own situation, whether we have made a conscious choice or not, including decisions we have not explicitly chosen to do so.

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