Surveillance Log 003 - Noteworthy links for 2025-10-19
Hello! Welcome to a new experiment on Surveilled, a weekly (or less) log of five (or less) links that I found interesting. The subject matter will mainly remain economic, financial and tech adjacent of course.
The longer, infrequent and irregular posts will continue of course, time permitting, but I felt the need to write something with less pressure and more freewheeling. Let me know what you think, just by replying to this email!
Without further ado, on to this week’s links. All previous issues are available here.
Everything Is Becoming a Bank — Ever increasing numbers of companies are making more money from the financial services they offer (like branded credit cards, buy now pay later schemes, etc.) than they do from the products they are known for, like airlines, department stores and even healthcare facilities. Beyond the first-order effects on customers’ finances, this rampant digital capitalism also has profound effects on society, persuasively documented by Marion Fourcade and Kieran Healey in their recent book The Ordinal Society, to name just one.
Trump’s State Department Wants to Use Tech Policy to Remake Europe In Its Image | TechPolicy.Press — Far-right zealots now working in the US State Department are focusing their efforts to spread democracy on so-called censorious governments in Western Europe, and they are entertaining far-reaching measures to reach their objectives. Interesting how this topic concentrates all the ideological strands of the Trump administration: perceived censorship of far-right ideas, economic nationalism, free rein to Silicon Valley, trade wars...
A cartoonist’s review of AI art - The Oatmeal — Matthew Inman and The Oatmeal are a throwback to a time on the internet when there was still optimism and boundless creativity. The Oatmeal still publishes regularly, and Inman recently posted his views on AI. I’m entirely sympathetic to his argument, but I’m not optimistic that evoking the benefits of process or the emotional appeal of true art will sway the masses...