Shoshana Zuboffs’ eloquent call for friction in her book Surveillance Capitalism comes without a roadmap. But then the people who swarmed the Berlin wall didn't have one either.
In her 2013 "Be the Friction- Our Response to the New Lords of the Ring" article (https://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/the-surveillance-paradigm-be-the-friction-our-response-to-the-new-lords-of-the-ring-12241996.html), she ends with this more fervent call to action:
'The Key to the Master Lock I say, do not despair. The indifference of the Lords of Silicon Valley is not a harbinger of the end times, but rather a wake up call to remind us that we must undertake the work of every age. Do not forget that we summoned the Internet into our lives with our questions and our needs. But there is more to be done –– a new world to be forged. It too can be summoned with our effort. All that is digital can have a profound role to play in humanizing life on earth. Our job is not to labor for our over-seers, but to invent new ways for them to work on our behalf so that we all might flourish. Here is the key to the master lock: friction. It may be an irritant to the companies driving the next escalation of metadata, but it is also the future of democratic aspirations and commercial renewal. This friction is a new era of democratic expression in legislation, oversight, and regulation that enshrines our freedoms in terms relevant to our new age: transparency, voice, informed choice, respect for the individual. Friction must be as vigilant and steadfast as the power of the old dream. It is our insistence on a new commercial model that refuses to externalize our well being, our freedom, our privacy, and our rights to live our lives and manage our data as we choose. It is a demand for companies to take responsibility and accept accountability to end users as the ultimate source of value and wealth. Finally, friction is you and me. It is our willingness to exercise judgement, to say what is right and was is wrong even when we are at odds with power and opinion. That 8% of Americans who trust social media is very good news. It means there are 92% for whom, despite years of exposure to the information panopticon, routine violations of personal sovereignty outside the workplace have not been normalized. It means that the new Lords can not hold sway if we all stand up and say “no.”'
More fervent, but still general.
Something I've been saying for decades... " if we all stand up and say 'no.' " Who says we have to say "yes" to something that's imposed on us, without permission or offer? War works like that too. What if all the soldiers simply said 'no thanks' ...