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The Law of Informational Capitalism
- Source :
- Yale Law Journal. March, 2020, Vol. 129 Issue 5, p1460, 56 p.
- Publication Year :
- 2020
-
Abstract
- The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power BY SHOSHANA ZUBOFF PUBLICAFFAIRS , 2019 Between Truth and Power: The Legal Constructions of Informational Capitalism BY JULIE E. COHEN OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2019 Over the past several decades, our capacity to technologically process and exchange data and information has expanded dramatically. An early sense of optimism about these developments has given way to widespread pessimism, in the wake of a wave of revelations about the extent of digital tracking and manipulation. Shoshana ZubofFs book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, has been hailed by many as the decisive account of the looming threat of private power in the digital age. While the book offers important insights, ZubofFs account is too narrow: it fixates on technological threats to our autonomy and obscures the relationship between technology and the problems of monopoly, inequality, and discriminatory hierarchy that threaten our democracy. ZubofFs book also fails to appreciate the critical role that law plays in the construction and persistence of private power. Julie Cohen's book, Between Truth and Power: The Legal Constructions of Informational Capitalism, gives us a much better framework to comprehend intensifying forms of private power today and the role that law has played in supporting them. Drawing on Cohen's insights, I construct an account of the 'law of informational capitalism,' with particular attention to the law that undergirds platform power. Once we come to see informational capitalism as contingent upon specific legal choices, we can begin to consider how democratically to reshape it. Though Cohen does not emphasize it, some of the most important legal developments--specifically, developments in the law of takings, commercial speech, and trade--are those that encase private power from democratic revision. Today's informational capitalism brings a threat not merely to our individual subjectivities but to equality and our ability to self-govern. Questions of data and democracy, not just data and dignity, must be at the core of our concern.<br />INTRODUCTION Over the past several decades, a series of extraordinary technological developments has drastically expanded human capacities to store, exchange, and process data and information. Early attempts to understand this [...]
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 00440094
- Volume :
- 129
- Issue :
- 5
- Database :
- Gale General OneFile
- Journal :
- Yale Law Journal
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- edsgcl.625864208