University of Twente Philosophy Lectures 2023-2024
20 June 2024, 15:45-17:30, Cubicus C238
David Murakami Wood
Faculty member at the Centre for Law, Technology and Society, and a Professor of Critical Surveillance and Securities Studies in the Department of Criminology of the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ottawa
Title: Total surveillance as a civilizational stage: platform capitalism, surveillance and the dangers of TESCREAL
Abstract:
This presentation will examine the background, emergence and features of the increasingly common belief amongst the technology development community in the necessity of total surveillance for the future of civilization. This I argue is part of an increasingly coherent ideological constellation emerging around contemporary platform capitalism that has been called 'TESCREAL' – Transhumanism, Extropianism, Singularitarianism, Cosmism, Rationalism, Effective Altruism, and Longtermism (Gebru and Torres, 2024), based on the work of philosophers like Nick Bostrom, tech gurus like Ray Kurzweil and popular futurists like Eliezer Yudkowsky.
The presentation will trace some of the origins of this philosophical stance in capitalism, cybernetics and science fiction. It will argue that in the midst of a planetary polycrisis, the TESCREAL philosophy is a deliberate distraction from the steps needed to take account of the threat to our planet's life-support systems, the collapse of the nation-state settlement that has underpinned capitalism, and the further dissolution of the bonds of solidarity, neighbourhood and community that have survived or been forged in reaction to colonialism and capitalist exploitation. Furthermore, this ideological constellation serves to act as both apologia for the already enormous infiltration of surveillance into everyday lives, and a justification for the intensification of this process towards a society of total surveillance, ‘for our own good.’
Short bio: Dr. Murakami Wood is an interdisciplinary specialist in surveillance, security and technology from a global urban perspective, working mainly in Canada, Japan, the UK and Brazil. He is a leading organizer in the field of surveillance studies as co-founder and now co-editor-in-chief of the international, open access, peer-reviewed journal, Surveillance & Society, co-founder and a current director of the Surveillance Studies Network, co-editor of Surveillance Studies: A Reader (Oxford University Press, 2018), Big Data Surveillance and Security Intelligence (UBC Press, 2021), and the forthcoming International Handbook of Surveillance Studies (Edward Elgar).
Educated at Oxford and Newcastle, UK, Dr. Murakami Wood joined the University of Ottawa in 2022 from Queen’s University at Kingston where he was Director of the Surveillance Studies Centre, and Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology, and a former Canada Research Chair (Tier II) in Surveillance Studies.
