# Negative Liberty

By [socio](https://paragraph.com/@socio) · 2022-03-13

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![created: 2022; materials: original photography, digital media, adobe photoshop and lightroom, lightricks photoleap and imageleap, google snapseed, apple photos](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/5cc624da81d047c1406d165e7031bcc2ee5242be93733362fe38ba02139b9d5d.png)

created: 2022; materials: original photography, digital media, adobe photoshop and lightroom, lightricks photoleap and imageleap, google snapseed, apple photos

**_Negative Liberty_ considers the twentieth century development of techniques of mass prediction and modification, aka behavior engineering. Constituent images mark a series of canonical shifts over the course of this history. These include, among others, the development of mass surveillant architectures, the first recognition of the power of variable ratio reward schedules to sustain human behavior, the birth of social network analysis, the application of rational-bureaucratic management techniques to track and typologize human populations, the proliferation of mechanisms by which to target and monitor communication efficacy, the advent of computer-based mass simulation techniques, their first application to democratic elections, and the synthesis of all of the foregoing into continuous, multi-channel, and individualized surveillance + messaging processes.**

**Pictured at center is former US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. While remembered for his role in the Vietnam War, McNamara believed fervently in the potential of computer-based simulations to control and predict human mass behavior. Charged with the annual allocation of approximately 10% of US gross domestic product from 1961-1968, McNamara reoriented technical and social scientific research agendas nationwide, setting in motion multidisciplinary efforts that would birth not only the internet, but a range of invention and insight fundamental to the behavior engineering systems that constitute contemporary surveillance capitalism.**

**The collage title is drawn from “Two Concepts of Liberty,” by 20th C political philosopher Isaiah Berlin, which served as the foundational philosophical justification for the actions of Western bloc from its publication in 1958 until the end of the Cold War. _Negative liberty_ refers to freedom from interference by other people.**

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*Originally published on [socio](https://paragraph.com/@socio/negative-liberty)*