TY - JOUR
T1 - Digital slavery, time for abolition?
AU - Chisnall, Mick
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2020/9/2
Y1 - 2020/9/2
N2 - Slavery is a powerful and emotive term describing an abhorrent infringement of fundamental human rights and should not be applied casually. I relate the practice of slavery to two different concepts of "alienation from self": first, as being "owned" as property by a third party; and, second, as being "owned" in a more informal, contemporary sense, through the removal of an individual's ability to govern her own life. This dual meaning of alienation from self leads me to consider self-ownership in a legal sense as well as, less formally, as having the agency to determine one's own life. From both perspectives I claim that the increasing trafficking of personal data to supply algorithm-based analytics and AI is enabling a new form of digital enslavement that has the potential to curtail liberty and cause harm. I suggest that the conceptualization of problematic digital practices as a new form of slavery is a much needed addition to the mainstream critique of the collection, aggregation and trafficking of personal data, which has focused mostly on individual privacy. This focus, in turn, has obscured and diminished the seriousness of concerns about collective and individual autonomy.
AB - Slavery is a powerful and emotive term describing an abhorrent infringement of fundamental human rights and should not be applied casually. I relate the practice of slavery to two different concepts of "alienation from self": first, as being "owned" as property by a third party; and, second, as being "owned" in a more informal, contemporary sense, through the removal of an individual's ability to govern her own life. This dual meaning of alienation from self leads me to consider self-ownership in a legal sense as well as, less formally, as having the agency to determine one's own life. From both perspectives I claim that the increasing trafficking of personal data to supply algorithm-based analytics and AI is enabling a new form of digital enslavement that has the potential to curtail liberty and cause harm. I suggest that the conceptualization of problematic digital practices as a new form of slavery is a much needed addition to the mainstream critique of the collection, aggregation and trafficking of personal data, which has focused mostly on individual privacy. This focus, in turn, has obscured and diminished the seriousness of concerns about collective and individual autonomy.
KW - Digital slavery
KW - personal data privacy
KW - alienation from self
KW - predictive analytics
KW - data brokers
KW - digital marketing
KW - government digital services
U2 - 10.1080/01442872.2020.1724926
DO - 10.1080/01442872.2020.1724926
M3 - Article
SN - 0144-2872
VL - 41
SP - 488
EP - 506
JO - Policy Studies
JF - Policy Studies
IS - 5
ER -