👁️ Surveillance Capitalism 👁️

Chapter four of Surveillance Capitalism is about the manila folder. But these easy tools for storing the information have a history that impacts the way we think about not just organizing information, but controlling it too. They're also implicated in some history of oppression. So let's see if we can understand what the chapter is saying about the manila folder. What did we not know before we read this? Well, I thought before that the manila folder was a key part of the modern information display system, something that we culturally interface with as a first step toward human-computer interaction. Before the computer, people had to interface with storage systems. And in a way, the manila folder was a forerunner to the computer. But one could also view the manila folder as a symbol of colonialism because of the way we got the abaca to make it. Abaca comes from a plant that only grows in the Philippines, and we had colonized that country. We controlled that trade. We profited while Filipino workers got next to nothing for the labor it took to grow abaca. It served as a method for exerting control over the market and other matters.This shows that something that is small as a piece of paper can have power behind it. It’s kind of wild to realize that the way we organize or share information isn’t always fair or neutral. It usually reflects who’s in charge and who gets to benefit from that information.

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