Have you, Spirit, carried out my instructions for you to point the storm? And as you said, I have spread them over the island in armies. I came to the King’s son by myself. These lines come from separate areas of the text in Act 1, but they correlate directly with each other. The lines come from Prospero and from this, an argument can be made that the storm was whipped up by Prospero and he wants to regain his power by using control and manipulation to the others on the island. The readings from Zuboff and Desmet, and the video from Kuhn also relate to control and manipulation. Prospero’s actions can be seen as a metaphor for how businesses use technology and data to manage and sway customers. Businesses utilize data and algorithms to forecast and shape consumer behavior, much as Prospero does to influence others. Using data and technology, corporations in contemporary society have the ability to manipulate and control people. This is comparable to Zuboff’s claim that businesses affect people’s behavior and develop new systems of exploitation and control by using the data they collect. According to Zuboff, businesses are exploiting this data to build new types of exploitation and control, just like Prospero does in the play to influence and control the other characters on the island. Zuboff’s concept of “surveillance capitalism,” which she characterizes as a new economic system that depends on the collecting and analysis of personal data to develop targeted advertising and influence behavior, is also fundamentally based on the concepts of control and manipulation. The first act of The Tempest and The Psychology of Totalitarianism also both deal with the concept of power and control. Similar to how totalitarian governments utilize propaganda and manipulation to keep control over their citizens, Prospero in the play is able to use his magic to manipulate and control the other characters. “The entirety of human subjectivity becomes an insignificant by-product of mechanistic processes,” (20). From this perspective you can see that humanity does not matter, everything can be boiled down to simple particles that interact in accordance with the law of mechanics. Lastly, the first act of The Tempest shares ideas of change and transition with the Kuhn “paradigm shift” video. The Kuhn video demonstrates how scientific paradigms can change and evolve over time, leading to new ways of understanding the world, just as the play reflects a transition from the old order to the new. This idea can also be extended to how businesses and governments are reshaping social control structures and power dynamics through the use of new technologies and data collection. For instance, the emergence of new technologies like the internet and social media has created significant difficulties for governments in policing the spread of knowledge and ideas. In reaction, many governments have changed how they exercise their control, using methods such as censorship, propaganda, and monitoring.
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