the age of surveillance capitalism pages

Here is the crucible of an unprecedented form of power marked by extreme concentrations of knowledge and free from democratic oversight. Vast wealth and power are accumulated in ominous new 'behavioral futures markets,' where predictions about our behavior are bought and sold, and the production of goods and services is subordinated to a new 'means of behavioral modification.' The threat has shifted from a totalitarian Big Brother state to a ubiquitous digital architecture: a 'Big Other' operating in the interests of surveillance capital. Zuboff vividly brings to life the consequences as surveillance capitalism advances from Silicon Valley into every economic sector. The stakes could not be higher: a global architecture of behavior modification threatens human nature in the twenty-first century just as industrial capitalism disfigured the natural world in the twentieth.

In this masterwork of original thinking and research, Shoshana Zuboff provides startling insights into the phenomenon that she has named surveillance capitalism. The threat has shifted from a totalitarian 'big brother' state to a universal global architecture of automatic sensors and smart capabilities: A 'big other' that imposes a fundamentally new form of power and unprecedented concentrations of knowledge in private companies-free from democratic oversight and control'-īook Synopsis The challenges to humanity posed by the digital future, the first detailed examination of the unprecedented form of power called 'surveillance capitalism,' and the quest by powerful corporations to predict and control our behavior. The consequences of surveillance capitalism for us as individuals and as a society vividly come to life in The Age of Surveillance Capitalism's pathbreaking analysis of power. It is not simply about tracking us and selling ads, it is the business model for an ominous new marketplace that aims at nothing less than predicting and modifying our everyday behavior-where we go, what we do, what we say, how we feel, who we're with. Zuboff tackles the social, political, business, personal, and technological meaning of 'surveillance capitalism' as an unprecedented new market form. Now, three decades later she asks why the once-celebrated miracle of digital is turning into a nightmare. Her seminal book In the Age of the Smart Machine foresaw the consequences of a then-unfolding era of computer technology.

About the Book 'Shoshana Zuboff, named 'the true prophet of the information age' by the Financial Times, has always been ahead of her time.

The age of surveillance capitalism pages