Data, data, Data. Data is everything.

It shapes a lot of our modern world. And understanding just how it is transforming our lives and is used in our lives and influences us is very crucial. There are a couple of books that are worth reading. Sashana Zuboff Surveillance Capitalism is one of them. And we have like a whole workshop that’s just on the topic of that book. And we’ll give you a whole new understanding on how data has become a fundamental part of the way that society functions and a vital part of the way that capitalism functions. I want to explore these concepts with you and help you reflect on how they apply to our own work in organizing.

And that’s going to help us be more strategic as a group. It’s also going to ensure that we use data ethically and effectively. First of all, data is not just a byproduct of our interactions. It’s not just something that naturally happens. It is a force of production. It is how value is generated. The data is how the companies make a product.

Because when your behavior online is collected and analyzed, they can predict what you’re going to do in the future. That isn’t knowing that you are about to do something, whether that’s make a purchase or watch a video or spend time with something or interact with something that is a commodity because it makes you more likely to do one thing or another thing that makes you more likely to buy a product. These are prediction products called Behavioral Surplus and that influences how we live and how we work and how we interact with the world around us. If you read Surveillance Capitalism you’ll hear about the concept of vectorialism. This book just explores the role of data and explains how personal data is used for profit. We can also look at the book the Cost of Connection and this book takes a little further and talks about how data is colonizing human life. And it appropriates us much in the same way that land and resources were used during the colonial era.

And this is part of extracting value from information rather than from material goods. And that has a lot of implications for all of us because it’s all about how data is being used as a commodity and turning into these prediction based products that are very profitable. What this means is the entities that have the information have a lot of influence. And this mode of production is marked by the ability to predict and even change human behavior for profit. And this cycle of exploitation benefits a select few who while impacting and controlling everyone else. And I want you to think about this when you think of social media. Social media is a Very useful tool for finding collaborators and supporters and partners.

It’s the tool that a lot of people use to grow their organizations that effectively is using the forces of production by transforming that user behavior into data that is marketable. But this process is part of what is called surveillance capitalism, and it is collecting and commodifying this information for profit. It’s important to remember that data is not neutral. It is part of a system that not only, you know, exploits behavioral surplus, but also creates behavioral surplus that can be sold. So when we’re using LinkedIn or Instagram or email, we’ve got to think about how our actions have a place in these systems. And just like if you’re printing out a bunch of flyers, someone’s going to ask you, hey, what about the environment you need to think about? Hey, if you are using social media and connecting with people, are you just merely extracting value or are you building some sort of relationship?

And I want you to think about the power of teaching, because teaching is like the thing here. It’s the division of learning. When we use our tools with the intention of empowering people or giving them more understanding or more agency, then we’re able to help them a lot. And that helps us avoid not just being a predictive product, but having something that has some sort of ethical engagement. So to manage our outreach, we use something called a CRM. And you may hear that word used a lot now. You know what it means.

It stands for Customer Relationship management. And this helps us to organize our contact information, how they communicate with us and stay connected with them. We know when they are opening. Like if we send you an email, we know whether you open it or you don’t open it. If you reply, we know how you’re replying. And basically the idea with this is, you know, instead of this being like your relationship being based on what each individual remembers about you, you’re able to have a relationship with the organization. So if I get sick and someone else is, you know, in the role of membership secretary, they can come in and they can like resume a conversation and they can know that, hey, you joined a year ago, you opened a few emails at first for that first few weeks, and then you stopped and an event happened and you’re starting to re engage now.

Like, the organization knows you to that level immediately. And that’s great because we now know your needs and motivations and we can engage with you and help you in different ways. That’s why we have this survey as like the first thing that you did, because we know what you’re interested in and why. And so we encourage everybody to get familiar with it. Login, you should have an entry on our website, so make sure that you’ve got access, you know, your profile, you’ve got your own data and all this other stuff, you have control over it. Understanding how that’s used can help us be more mindful. Whether that’s using social media for outreach or we’re managing relationships on our own side, we can approach data and information with a critical eye.

And using this tool in a positive way. Yeah, that’s action you can take today. You can use fluentcrm right now and verify your status and involvement in campaigns. You can also, yeah, just respect the division of learning. And this is what we talked about earlier. You really want. When we’re reaching out to people, our goal is to teach them the spreading of information is really what we’re doing more than anything else.

If we can do that, we’re doing our job pretty well. I mean, at the end, the central task that’s at the end of the road for all of our outreach is you watching a video like this where I’m showing you how to read a book. So, you know, great, this is positive action that you can take today.