{"id":8608,"date":"2019-01-25T09:46:06","date_gmt":"2019-01-25T14:46:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/?p=8608"},"modified":"2019-01-27T11:14:44","modified_gmt":"2019-01-27T16:14:44","slug":"thieves-of-experience-on-the-rise-of-surveillance-capitalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/?p=8608","title":{"rendered":"Thieves of experience: On the rise of surveillance capitalism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This review of Shoshana Zuboff’s <\/em>The Age of Surveillance Capitalism appeared originally<\/a> in the <\/em>Los Angeles Review of Books.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. The Resurrection<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We sometimes forget that, at the\nturn of the century, Silicon Valley was in a funk, economic and psychic. The\ngreat dot-com bubble of the 1990s had imploded, destroying vast amounts of investment\ncapital along with the savings of many Americans. Trophy startups like Pets.com,\nWebvan, and Excite@Home, avatars of the so-called New Economy, were punch lines.\nDisillusioned programmers and entrepreneurs were abandoning their Bay Area bedsits\nand decamping. Venture funding had dried up. As a business proposition, the\ninformation superhighway was looking like a cul-de-sac.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, less than 20 years on, everything\nhas changed. The top American internet companies are among the most profitable\nand highly capitalized businesses in history. Not only do they dominate the\ntechnology industry but they have much of the world economy in their grip. Their\nfounders and early backers sit atop Rockefeller-sized fortunes. Cities and\nstates court them with billions of dollars in tax breaks and other subsidies. Bright\nyoung graduates covet their jobs. Along with their financial clout, the\ninternet giants hold immense social and cultural sway, influencing how all of\nus think, act, and converse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Silicon Valley\u2019s Phoenix-like resurrection\nis a story of ingenuity and initiative. It is also a story of callousness, predation,\nand deceit. Harvard Business School professor emerita Shoshana Zuboff argues in\nher new book that the Valley\u2019s wealth and power are predicated on an insidious,\nessentially pathological form of private enterprise\u2014what she calls\n\u201csurveillance capitalism.\u201d Pioneered by Google, perfected by Facebook, and now\nspreading throughout the economy, surveillance capitalism uses human life as\nits raw material. Our everyday experiences, distilled into data, have become a\nprivately-owned business asset used to predict and mold our behavior, whether we\u2019re\nshopping or socializing, working or voting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zuboff\u2019s fierce indictment of the big internet firms goes beyond the usual condemnations of privacy violations and monopolistic practices. To her, such criticisms are sideshows, distractions that blind us to a graver danger: By reengineering the economy and society to their own benefit, Google and Facebook are perverting capitalism in a way that undermines personal freedom and corrodes democracy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Silicon Valley\u2019s Phoenix-like resurrection is a story <\/strong>
of ingenuity and initiative. It is also <\/strong>
a story of callousness, predation, and deceit.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Capitalism has always been a\nfraught system. Capable of both tempering and magnifying human flaws,\nparticularly the lust for power, it can expand human possibility or constrain\nit, liberate people or oppress them. (The same can be said of technology.) Under\nthe Fordist model of mass production and consumption that prevailed for much of\nthe twentieth century, industrial capitalism achieved a relatively benign balance\namong the contending interests of business owners, workers, and consumers. Enlightened\nexecutives understood that good pay and decent working conditions would ensure\na prosperous middle class eager to buy the goods and services their companies\nproduced. It was the product itself \u2014 made by workers, sold by companies,\nbought by consumers \u2014 that tied the interests of capitalism\u2019s participants together.\nEconomic and social equilibrium was negotiated through the product.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By removing the tangible product from the center of commerce, surveillance capitalism upsets the equilibrium. Whenever we use free apps and online services, it\u2019s often said, we become the products, our attention harvested and sold to advertisers. But, as Zuboff makes clear, this truism gets it wrong. Surveillance capitalism\u2019s real products, vaporous but immensely valuable, are predictions about our future behavior \u2014 what we\u2019ll look at, where we\u2019ll go, what we\u2019ll buy, what opinions we\u2019ll hold \u2014 that internet companies derive from our personal data and sell to businesses, political operatives, and other bidders. Unlike financial derivatives, which they in some ways resemble, these new data derivatives draw their value, parasite-like, from human experience.To the Googles and Facebooks of the world, we are neither the customer nor the product. We are the source of what Silicon Valley technologists call \u201cdata exhaust\u201d \u2014 the informational byproducts of online activity that become the inputs to prediction algorithms. In contrast to the businesses of the industrial era, whose interests were by necessity entangled with those of the public, internet companies operate in what Zuboff terms \u201cextreme structural independence from people.\u201d When databases displace goods as the engine of the economy, our own interests, as consumers but also as citizens, cease to be part of the negotiation. We are no longer one of the forces guiding the market\u2019s invisible hand. We are the objects of surveillance and control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. The Map<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It all began innocently. In the\n1990s, before they founded Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin were\ncomputer-science students who shared a fascination with the arcane field of\nnetwork theory and its application to the internet. They saw that by scanning\nweb pages and tracing the links between them, they would be able to create a\nmap of the net with both theoretical and practical value. The map would allow them\nto measure the importance of every page, based on the number of other pages\nthat linked to it, and that data would, in turn, provide the foundation for a powerful\nsearch engine. Because the map could also be used to record the routes and choices\nof people as they traveled through the network, it would provide a finely\ndetailed account of human behavior. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Google\u2019s early days, Page and\nBrin were wary of exploiting the data they collected for monetary gain, fearing\nit would corrupt their project. They limited themselves to using the\ninformation to improve search results, for the benefit of users. That changed\nafter the dot-com bust. Google\u2019s once-patient investors grew restive, demanding\nthat the founders figure out a way to make money, preferably lots of it. Under\npressure, Page and Brin authorized the launch of an auction system for selling\nadvertisements tied to search queries. The system was designed so that the\ncompany would get paid by an advertiser only when a user clicked on an ad. This\nfeature gave Google a huge financial incentive to make accurate predictions\nabout how users would respond to ads and other online content. Even tiny increases\nin click rates would bring big gains in income. And so the company began\ndeploying its stores of behavioral data not for the benefit of users but to aid\nadvertisers \u2014 and to juice its own profits. Surveillance capitalism had arrived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Google\u2019s business now hinged on\nwhat Zuboff calls \u201cthe extraction imperative.\u201d To improve its predictions, it had\nto mine as much information as possible from web users. It aggressively expanded\nits online services to widen the scope of its surveillance. Through Gmail, it\nsecured access to the contents of people\u2019s emails and address books. Through\nGoogle Maps, it gained a bead on people\u2019s whereabouts and movements. Through\nGoogle Calendar, it learned what people were doing at different moments during\nthe day and whom they were doing it with. Through Google News, it got a readout\nof people\u2019s interests and political leanings. Through Google Shopping, it opened\na window onto people\u2019s wish lists, brand preferences, and other material\ndesires. The company gave all these services away for free to ensure they\u2019d be used\nby as many people as possible. It knew the money lay in the data. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once it embraced surveillance as the\ncore of its business, Google changed. Its innocence curdled, and its idealism\nbecame a means of obfuscation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even as its army of PR agents and lobbyists continued to promote a cuddly Nerds-in-Toyland image for the firm, the organization grew insular and secretive. Seeking to keep the true nature of its work from the public, it adopted what its CEO at the time, Eric Schmidt, called a \u201chiding strategy\u201d \u2014 a kind of corporate omerta backed up by stringent nondisclosure agreements. Page and Brin further shielded themselves from outside oversight by establishing a stock structure that guaranteed their power could never be challenged, neither by investors nor by directors. As one Google executive quoted by Zuboff put it, \u201cLarry [Page] opposed any path that would reveal our technological secrets or stir the privacy pot and endanger our ability to gather data.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As networked computers came to mediate more and more of people\u2019s everyday lives, the map of the online world created by Page and Brin became far more lucrative than they could have anticipated. Zuboff reminds us that, throughout history, the charting of a new territory has always granted the mapmaker an imperial power. Quoting the historian John B. Harley, she writes that maps \u201care essential for the effective \u2018pacification, civilization, and exploitation\u2019 of territories imagined or claimed but not yet seized in practice. Places and people must be known in order to be controlled.\u201d An early map of the United States bore the motto \u201cOrder upon the Land.\u201d Should Google ever need a new slogan to replace its original, now-discarded \u201cDon\u2019t be evil,\u201d it would be hard-pressed to find a better one than that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. The Heist<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zuboff opens her book with a look\nback at a prescient project from the year 2000 on the future of home automation\nby a group of Georgia Tech computer scientists. Anticipating the arrival of\n\u201csmart homes,\u201d the scholars described how a mesh of environmental and wearable sensors,\nlinked wirelessly to computers, would allow all sorts of domestic routines,\nfrom the dimming of bedroom lights to the dispensing of medications to the\nentertaining of children, to be programmed to suit a house\u2019s occupants. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Essential to the effort would be the processing of intimate data on people\u2019s habits, predilections, and health. Taking it for granted that such information should remain private, the researchers envisaged a leak-proof \u201cclosed loop\u201d system that would keep the data within the home, under the purview and control of the homeowner. The project, Zuboff explains, reveals the assumptions about \u201cdatafication\u201d that prevailed at the time: \u201c(1) that it must be the individual alone who decides what experience is rendered as data, (2) that the purpose of the data is to enrich the individual\u2019s life, and (3) that the individual is the sole arbiter of how the data are put to use.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s most remarkable about the birth of surveillance capitalism is the speed and audacity with which Google overturned social conventions and norms about data and privacy. Without permission, without compensation, and with little in the way of resistance, the company seized and declared ownership over everyone\u2019s information. It turned the details of the lives of millions and then billions of people into its own property. The companies that followed Google presumed that they too had an unfettered right to collect, parse, and sell personal data in pretty much any way they pleased. In the smart homes being built today, it\u2019s understood that any and all data will be beamed up to corporate clouds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Without permission, without compensation, <\/strong>
and with little in the way of resistance, Google seized and <\/strong>
declared ownership over everyone\u2019s information.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Google conducted its great data\nheist under the cover of novelty. The web was an exciting frontier \u2014 something\nnew in the world \u2014 and few people understood or cared about what they were\nrevealing as they searched and surfed. In those innocent days, data was there\nfor the taking, and Google took it. The public\u2019s naivete and apathy were only\npart of the story, however. Google also benefited from decisions made by\nlawmakers, regulators, and judges \u2014 decisions that granted internet companies\nfree use of a vast taxpayer-funded communication infrastructure, relieved them of\nlegal and ethical responsibility for the information and messages they\ndistributed, and gave them carte blanche to collect and exploit user data. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Consider the terms-of-service\nagreements that govern the division of rights and the delegation of ownership online.\nNon-negotiable, subject to emendation and extension at the company\u2019s whim, and\nrequiring only a casual click to bind the user, TOS agreements are parodies of\ncontracts, yet they have been granted legal legitimacy by the courts. Law\nprofessors, writes Zuboff, \u201ccall these \u2018contracts of adhesion\u2019 because they\nimpose take-it-or-leave-it conditions on users that stick to them whether they\nlike it or not.\u201d Fundamentally undemocratic, the ubiquitous agreements helped\nGoogle and other firms commandeer personal data as if by fiat. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bullying style of TOS\nagreements also characterizes the practice, common to Google and other\ntechnology companies, of threatening users with a loss of \u201cfunctionality\u201d\nshould they try to opt out of data sharing protocols or otherwise attempt to escape\nsurveillance. Anyone who tries to remove a pre-installed Google app from an\nAndroid phone, for instance, will likely be confronted by a vague but menacing\nwarning: \u201cIf you disable this app, other apps may no longer function as\nintended.\u201d This is a coy, high-tech form of blackmail: \u201cGive us your data, or\nthe phone dies.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In pulling off its data grab,\nGoogle also benefited from the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. As much\nas the dot-com crash, the horrors of 9\/11 set the stage for the rise of\nsurveillance capitalism. Zuboff notes that, in 2000, members of the Federal\nTrade Commission, frustrated by internet companies\u2019 lack of progress in\nadopting privacy protections, began formulating legislation to secure people\u2019s\ncontrol over their online information and severely restrict the companies\u2019\nability to collect and store it. It seemed obvious to the regulators that\nownership of personal data should by default lie in the hands of private\ncitizens, not corporations. The 9\/11 attacks changed the calculus. The\ncentralized collection and analysis of online data, on a vast scale, came to be\nseen as essential to national security. \u201cThe privacy provisions debated just\nmonths earlier vanished from the conversation more or less overnight,\u201d Zuboff\nwrites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Google and other Silicon Valley\ncompanies benefited directly from the government\u2019s new stress on digital\nsurveillance. They earned millions through contracts to share their data\ncollection and analysis techniques with the National Security Agency and the\nCentral Intelligence Agency. But they also benefited indirectly. Online\nsurveillance came to be viewed as normal and even necessary by politicians, government\nbureaucrats, and the general public. One of the unintended consequences of this\nuniquely distressing moment in American history, Zuboff observes, was that \u201cthe\nfledgling practices of surveillance capitalism were allowed to root and grow\nwith little regulatory or legislative challenge.\u201d Other possible ways of\norganizing online markets, such as through paid subscriptions for apps and\nservices, never even got a chance to be tested.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What we lose under this regime is something more fundamental than privacy. It\u2019s the right to make our own decisions about privacy \u2014 to draw our own lines between those aspects of our lives we are comfortable sharing and those we are not. \u201cPrivacy involves the choice of the individual to disclose or to reveal what he believes, what he thinks, what he possesses,\u201d explained Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas in a 1967 opinion. \u201cThose who wrote the Bill of Rights believed that every individual needs both to communicate with others and to keep his affairs to himself. That dual aspect of privacy means that the individual should have the freedom to select for himself the time and circumstances when he will share his secrets with others and decide the extent of that sharing.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Google and other internet firms\nusurp this essential freedom. \u201cThe typical complaint is that privacy is eroded,\nbut that is misleading,\u201d Zuboff writes. \u201cIn the larger societal pattern,\nprivacy is not eroded but redistributed . . . . Instead of people having the\nrights to decide how and what they will disclose, these rights are concentrated\nwithin the domain of surveillance capitalism.\u201d The transfer of decision rights\nis also a transfer of autonomy and agency, from the citizen to the corporation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. The Script<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fearing Google\u2019s expansion and coveting\nits profits, other internet, media, and communications companies rushed into the\nprediction market, and competition for personal data intensified. It was no\nlonger enough to monitor people online; making better predictions required that\nsurveillance be extended into homes, stores, schools, workplaces, and the\npublic squares of cities and towns. Much of the recent innovation in the tech\nindustry has entailed the creation of products and services designed to vacuum\nup data from every corner of our lives. There are the chatbots like Alexa and Cortana,\nthe digital assistants like Amazon Echo and Google Home, the wearable computers\nlike Fitbit and Apple Watch. There are the navigation, banking, and health apps\ninstalled on smartphones and the new wave of automotive media and telematics systems\nlike CarPlay, Android Auto, and Progressive\u2019s Snapshot. And there are the myriad\nsensors and transceivers of smart homes, smart cities, and the so-called\ninternet of things. Big Brother would be impressed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But spying on the populace is not the end game. The real\nprize lies in figuring out ways to use the data to shape how people think and\nact. \u201cThe best way to predict the future is to invent it,\u201d the computer\nscientist Alan Kay once observed. And the best way to predict behavior is to\nscript it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Google realized early on that the internet allowed market research to be conducted on a massive scale and at virtually no cost. Every click could become part of an experiment. The company used its research findings to fine-tune its sites and services. It meticulously designed every element of the online experience, from the color of links to the placement of ads, to provoke the desired responses from users. But it was Facebook, with its incredibly detailed data on people\u2019s social lives, that grasped digital media\u2019s full potential for behavior modification. By using what it called its \u201csocial graph\u201d to map the intentions, desires, and interactions of literally billions of individuals, it saw that it could turn its network into a worldwide Skinner box, employing psychological triggers and rewards to program not only what people see but how they react. The company rolled out its now ubiquitous \u201cLike\u201d button, for example, after early experiments showed it to be a perfect operant-conditioning device, reliably pushing users to spend more time on the site, and share more information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was Facebook, with its incredibly detailed data<\/strong>
on people\u2019s social lives, that grasped digital media\u2019s <\/strong>
full potential for behavior modification.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zuboff describes a revealing and in\nretrospect ominous Facebook study that was conducted during the 2010 U.S. congressional\nelection and published in 2012 in Nature<\/em>\nunder the title \u201cA 61-Million-Person Experiment in Social Influence and\nPolitical Mobilization.\u201d The researchers, a group of data scientists from\nFacebook and the University of California at San Diego, manipulated\nvoting-related messages displayed in Facebook users\u2019 news feeds on election day\n(without the users\u2019 knowledge). One set of users received a message encouraging\nthem to vote, a link to information on poll locations, and an \u201cI Voted\u201d button.\nA second set saw the same information along with photos of friends who had\nclicked the button. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The researchers found that seeing the\npictures of friends increased the likelihood that people would seek information\non polling places and end up clicking the \u201cI Voted\u201d button themselves. \u201cThe\nresults show,\u201d they reported, \u201cthat [Facebook] messages directly influenced\npolitical self-expression, information seeking and real-world voting behaviour\nof millions of people.\u201d Through a subsequent examination of actual voter records,\nthe researchers estimated that, as a result of the study and its \u201csocial\ncontagion\u201d effect, at least 340,000 additional votes were cast in the election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nudging people to vote may seem praiseworthy,\neven if done surreptitiously. What the study revealed, though, is how even very\nsimple social-media messages, if carefully designed, can mold people\u2019s opinions\nand decisions, including those of a political nature. As the researchers put\nit, \u201conline political mobilization works.\u201d Although few heeded it at the time,\nthe study provided an early warning of how foreign agents and domestic\npolitical operatives would come to use Facebook and other social networks in\nclandestine efforts to shape people\u2019s views and votes. Combining rich\ninformation on individuals\u2019 behavioral triggers with the ability to deliver precisely\ntailored and timed messages turns out to be a recipe for behavior modification\non an unprecedented scale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To Zuboff, the experiment and its aftermath carry an even broader lesson, and a grim warning. All of Facebook\u2019s information wrangling and algorithmic fine-tuning, she writes, \u201cis aimed at solving one problem: how and when to intervene in the state of play that is your daily life in order to modify your behavior and thus sharply increase the predictability of your actions now, soon, and later.\u201d This goal, she suggests, is not limited to Facebook. It is coming to guide much of the economy, as financial and social power shifts to the surveillance capitalists. \u201cThe goal of everything we do is to change people\u2019s actual behavior at scale,\u201d a top Silicon Valley data scientist told her in an interview. \u201cWe can test how actionable our cues are for them and how profitable certain behaviors are for us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Behavior modification is the thread that ties today\u2019s\nsearch engines, social networks, and smartphone trackers to tomorrow\u2019s\nfacial-recognition systems, emotion-detection sensors, and artificial-intelligence\nbots. What the industries of the future will seek to manufacture is the self.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. The Bargain<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nAge of Surveillance Capitalism<\/em> is a long, sprawling book, but there\u2019s a\npiece missing. While Zuboff\u2019s assessment of the costs that people incur under\nsurveillance capitalism is exhaustive, she largely ignores the benefits people\nreceive in return \u2014 convenience, customization, savings, entertainment, social connection,\nand so on. The benefits can\u2019t be dismissed as illusory, and the public can no\nlonger claim ignorance about what\u2019s sacrificed in exchange for them. Over the\nlast two years, the press has uncovered one scandal after another involving\nmalfeasance by big internet firms, Facebook in particular. We know who we\u2019re dealing\nwith.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is not to suggest that our\nlives are best evaluated with spreadsheets. Nor is it to downplay the abuses\ninherent to a system that places control over knowledge and discourse in the\nhands of a few companies that have both incentive and means to manipulate what\nwe see and do. It is to point out that a full examination of surveillance\ncapitalism requires as rigorous and honest an accounting of its boons as of its\nbanes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the choices we make as consumers\nand private citizens, we have always traded some of our autonomy to gain other\nrewards. Many people, it seems clear, experience surveillance capitalism less as\na prison, where their agency is restricted in a noxious way, than as an\nall-inclusive resort, where their agency is restricted in a pleasing way. Zuboff\nmakes a convincing case that this is a short-sighted and dangerous view \u2014 that\nthe bargain we\u2019ve struck with the internet giants is a Faustian one \u2014 but her\ncase would have been stronger still had she more fully addressed the benefits\nside of the ledger. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book has other, more cosmetic\nflaws. Zuboff is prone to wordiness and hackneyed phrasing, and she at times\ndelivers her criticism in overwrought prose that blunts its effect. A less\ntendentious, more dispassionate tone would make her argument harder for Silicon\nValley insiders and sympathizers to dismiss. The book\nis also overstuffed. Zuboff feels compelled to make the same point in a dozen different\nways when a half dozen would have been more than sufficient. Here, too,\nstronger editorial discipline would have sharpened the message.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whatever its imperfections, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism<\/em> is an original and often brilliant work, and it arrives at a crucial moment, when the public and its elected representatives are at last grappling with the extraordinary power of digital media and the companies that control it. Like another recent masterwork of economic analysis, Thomas Piketty\u2019s 2013 Capital in the Twenty-First Century<\/em>, the book challenges assumptions, raises uncomfortable questions about the present and future, and stakes out ground for a necessary and overdue debate. Shoshana Zuboff has aimed an unsparing light onto the shadowy new landscape of our lives. The picture is not pretty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This review of Shoshana Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism appeared originally in the Los Angeles Review of Books. 1. The Resurrection We sometimes forget that, at the turn of the century, Silicon Valley was in a funk, economic and psychic. The great dot-com bubble of the 1990s had imploded, destroying vast amounts of investment […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8608"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8608\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8618,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8608\/revisions\/8618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}