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New digital and algorithmic technologies have allowed companies to extract and monetize data about people, a process often termed “surveillance capitalism.” But such surveillance is not new and has been accomplished through a variety of means in the past. The critique of surveillance turns less on technology and more on how it shifts power into the hands of those with the “tools of surveillance.” One place we see this power shift operating is on workers. Since the mid-19th century, big business has found various means to surveil their workforces. These have ranged from accounting and audit systems to “Taylorist” piece-rate schemes, to company towns, psychological testing, and even the structuring of workflows in factories through assembly lines. More recent uses of digital devices track not just factory workers but service sector employees as well. As in the past, much depends on the ability of workers to push back and exert agency. But the intensification of job-related surveillance also may provoke the familiar Polanyi “double movement” against the intrusive and intensive marketization of all life and may be motivating right-wing political movements as a result.
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