Shoshana Zuboff

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. Shoshana Zuboff's interdisciplinary breadth and depth enable her to come to grips with the social, political, business, and technological meaning of the changes taking place in our time. We are at a critical juncture in the confrontation between the vast power of giant high-tech companies and government, the hidden economic logic of surveillance capitalism, and the propaganda of machine supremacy that threaten to shape and control human life. Will the brazen new methods of social engineering and behavior modification threaten individual autonomy and democratic rights and introduce extreme new forms of social inequality? Or will the promise of the digital age be one of individual empowerment and democratization? The Age of Surveillance Capitalism is neither a hand-wringing narrative of danger and decline nor a digital fairy tale. Rather, it offers a deeply reasoned and evocative examination of the contests over the next chapter of capitalism that will decide the meaning of information civilization in the twenty-first century. The stark issue at hand is whether we will be the masters of information and machines or its slaves.

The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

i used to think that we can use cognitive science and behavioral research to prompt/guide people into doing positive things like habit-building, donating to charities, or making more environmentally conscious choices. but ofc companies will take this research and turn it into manipulative strategies for their own profit driven goals

Ivy Chen

To state all this in plain language, Google's invention revealed new capabilities to infer and deduce the thoughts, feelings, intentions, and interests of individuals and groups with an automated architecture that operates as a one-way mirror irrespective of a person's awareness, knowledge, and consent, thus enabling privileged secret access to behavioral data.

As we shall see, surveillance capitalism's unusual products manage to be derived from our behavior while remaining indifferent to our behavior. Its products are about predicting us, without actually caring what we do or what is done to us.

lol reading this as i'm trying to get a job in tech

Although some of these data are applied to product or service improvement, the rest are declared as a proprietary behavioral surplus, fed into advanced manufacturing processes known as “machine intelligence,” and fabricated into prediction products that anticipate what you will do now, soon, and later. Finally, these prediction products are traded in a new kind of marketplace for behavioral predictions that I call behavioral futures markets. Surveillance capitalists have grown immensely wealthy from these trading operations, for many companies are eager to lay bets on our future behavior.

Eneko Uruñuela

Hayek explained the necessity of absolute individual and collective submission to the exacting disciplines of the market as an unknowable "extended order" that supersedes the legitimate political authority vested in the state: "Modern economics explains how such an extended order... constitutes an information-gathering process... that no central planning agency, let alone any individual, could know as a whole, possess, or control...."2 Hayek and his ideological brethren insisted on a capitalism stripped down to its raw core, unimpeded by any other force and impervious to any external authority. Inequality of wealth and rights was accepted and system and as even celebrated as a necessary feature of a successful market a force for progress.23 Hayek's ideology provided the intellectual superstructure and legitimation for a new theory of the firm that became another crucial antecedent to the surveillance capitalist corporation: its structure, moral content, and relationship to society.”

The absolute authority of market forces would be enshrined as the ultimate source of imperative control, displacing democratic contest and deliberation with an ideology of atomized individuals sentenced to perpetual competition for scarce resources. The disciplines of competitive markets promised to quiet unruly individuals and even transform them back into subjects too preoccupied with survival to complain.

He described the double movement: "a network of measures and policies ... integrated into powerful institutions designed to check the action of the market relative to labor, land, and money."

A sobering 2016 report from the International Monetary Fund warned of instability, concluding that the global trends toward signeoliberalism "have not delivered as expected." Instead, inequality had nificantly diminished "the level and the durability of growth" while increasing volatility and creating permanent vulnerability to economic crisis."

A précis of Piketty's extensive research may be stated simply: capitalism should raw. Capitalism, like sausage, is meant to be cooked not be eaten by a democratic society and its institutions because raw capitalism is antisocial.

italism's unusual products manage to be derived from our behavior capwhile remaining indifferent to our behavior. Its products are about predicting us, without actually caring what we do or what is done to us.

Without a device like Apple's iPod or its digital songs, there were no margins, no surplus, nothing left over to sell and turn into revenue.

"Simply displaying the ability to make money will not be enough to remain a major player in the years ahead. What will be required will be an ability to show sustained and exponential profits."

"You need to do more than just invent things,"

THE TOP 10 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER Shortlisted for the FT Business Book of the Year Award 2019 'Easily the most important book to be published this century. I find it hard to take any young activist seriously who hasn't at least familarised themselves with Zuboff's central ideas.' - Zadie Smith, The Guardian 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 us. The heady optimism of the Internet's early days is gone. Technologies that were meant to liberate us have deepened inequality and stoked divisions. Tech companies gather our information online and sell it to the highest bidder, whether government or retailer. Profits now depend not only on predicting our behaviour but modifying it too. How will this fusion of capitalism and the digital shape our values and define our future? Shoshana Zuboff shows that we are at a crossroads. We still have the power to decide what kind of world we want to live in, and what we decide now will shape the rest of the century. Our choices: allow technology to enrich the few and impoverish the many, or harness it and distribute its benefits. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism is a deeply-reasoned examination of the threat of unprecedented power free from democratic oversight. As it explores this new capitalism's impact on society, politics, business, and technology, it exposes the struggles that will decide both the next chapter of capitalism and the meaning of information civilization. Most critically, it shows how we can protect ourselves and our communities and ensure we are the masters of the digital rather than its slaves.

Tao Oat

Pierre

0xADADA

Years from now people will consider this book to be THE Das Capital of our period, naming, defining, and describing the present and future threat to human autonomy, privacy, free will, democracy, and the right to our future tense. 

Just as the industrial revolution set us on the path to the collapse of the world of nature, this book describes a future struggle against the demise of Human Nature.

soooo dense, but eye-opening. this would have a much bigger impact if it were more accessible! but evidence upon evidence to never trust ad-based tech companies 

Mark Stenberg 

Jimmy Cerone

Stunning read. I feel like I didn't understand anything about Google or Facebook before reading this book. Fascinating connections between tech, human nature, and freedom.

Ivaylo Durmonski

What is surveillance capitalism? How our data is being used? How can we protect ourselves from the big corporations that are controlling the world? What needs to happen so we can create better digital homes for ourselves?

These are just some of the questions the book tries to answers. Tired of how big tech companies usurp our privacy and later camouflage everything, Shoshana Zuboff wants to bring to light the evil practices of data collection by tech giants we think are noble and innovative.

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism is a disturbing book that sends an important message – we should care about our data and don’t allow others to capitalize on what is rightfully ours. And more, we should divorce the view that freely sharing our data in exchange for using the services online is a fair trade.

Guided by the question, “Can the digital future be our home?” Zuboff created the history book of surveillance capitalism. Yes, this read can be considered as an encyclopedia that covers every little detail related to online surveillance and digital human rights. She carefully collected facts about the digital companies that mine personal information and masterfully presented this in a head-spinning tome that can be considered too big for most of us to read.

But don’t let the size of the book scare you. The text, while full of technical terms, remains interesting and attention-grabbing till the very end. Even if you don’t regularly use social media sites – the main private data collectors – this is still an important read that I believe everyone should go through.

Key takeaway?

The World Wide Web is an ungoverned place that allows money-driven companies to collect data about your, our, behavior. Once private data is collected, it is later packaged in forms of addictive activities that aim to predict and modify your behavior. Furthermore, to increase transactions. Sadly, what companies know about you, is not for you. The whole system is focused on automating you.

Link to full review:
https://durmonski.com/book-summaries/...

Extremely good. Far more deliberate and clear than a most articles on big tech.

Bryan Alexander

We read this for our online book club in the spring and summer of 2019.

Here are our discussions by chapter: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, and 18.

My concluding thoughts?

Generally Zuboff succeeds in sketching out a dystopian business model, one predicated on turning the details of our lives into corporate profit.  This is most famously or notoriously demonstrated by Facebook and Google.  The structures and strategies Surveillance Capitalism lays out are very useful tools, like the kidnap/corner/compete playbook.

Zuboff gives us new ways to think about the digital world in 2019, drawing out an archaeology of its development and pushing back on current understanding.  In one neat move, for example, she takes issue with the famous “you are not the consumer; you are the product” axiom.  Instead, Zuboff would rather we think thusly: “we are the sources of raw-material supply.” (69-70)

The book is mostly analytical, a wide-ranging and deeply probing exploration of the business model.  Developing a solution to surveillance capitalism is a secondary consideration, and not a very inspiring one.  Zuboff has some hopes for creative and popular resistance, and ultimately sees governmental regulation as the best option.  I'm not sure that this is convincing.

To begin with, as Zuboff acknowledges, governments often engage in surveillance that is arguably more terrifying than Facebooks, as they are backed up with laws and armed might.  Many governments also practice the nudging Surveillance Capitalism decries.  Yes, states can and often do two opposing things at the same time, but the tension should be addressed.  Otherwise the argument runs the risk of asking us to appeal to bullies for protection.

Moreover, the politics involved can become challenging, especially in the United States.  This month several Democratic presidential candidates are going after some of Silicon Valley; regulating tech firms could become an epically partisan issue, especially for a Republican party keen to protect and extend big business.  On the other hand, some Republicans, including Trump, are incensed at what they see as FAANG's anti-conservative bias.   The Trump administration is also weighing regulatory options against the digital giants.  A leading conservative blogger called for antitrust action. Is a bipartisan consensus possible?

Put another way, can Congress escape Silicon Valley's lobbying might, or will it be sufficiently captured to not enact anything meaningful?  Further, if Evgeny Morozov is right, as Barbara Fister suggests, and surveillance capitalism is really about capitalism itself, what kind of political organization is available now to respond? Perhaps thee bipartisan possibility I noted above will fall apart as a socialism-interested left wing feuds with Republicans and centrist Democrats alike.   Or, if surveillance capitalism is about extraction, as Zuboff insists, is a better model anti-colonialism, as Vanessa Vaile suggests?  That could lead to an international politics, whereby some other nations oppose Silicon Valley for fomenting an updated, digital colonialism.

Or should we think about this instead as a health care issue, since so many of the privacy  violations Zuboff abhors occur in the body of mind?  If so,  the odds aren't good, as Noel De Martin observes.  Indeed, surveillance capitalism may have succeeded in implanting itself too deeply in our psyches to be uprooted, as Mark Spradley ponders.

Furthermore, the book notes several times that the surveillance capitalism model doesn't stem entirely from the technology sector.  Indeed, the financial sector played a key role in shaping and driving it (cf Mark Corbett Wilson's fine comment).  That sector is enormously powerful, both economically and politically.  How can a society and culture oppose its strategy?  Arguably America failed to do so after the 2008 financial disaster (recall Occupy).  Again, political challenges and complexity are rampant on this score.

Shifting from politics to economics, Zuboff would like us to support alternative funding models.  What are they?  Barbara Fister identifies DuckDuckGo and paid(walled) journalism. Noel De Martin points to Netflix as one where we pay for content - although it's really a hybrid model, as Netflix mines our viewing habits to surface recommendations.

Can other businesses compete by openly resisting surveillance capitalism?  Carl Rosenfeld thinks this might be happening with VPN providers.  Apple has lately made a play for being taken seriously as a pro-privacy actor. Alan Baily notes that Apple makes hardware and might be too far behind Google etc. to catch up.  Perhaps their alleged shift to being a media company will lead them to follow Netflix's hybrid path.  The computer gaming industry - immense and weirdly absent from Zuboff's book - largely sells artifacts and services without managing to stalk our inner data-thoughts (except through canny design); Steam is not great at recommendations.

On a different register, I think Age of Surveillance Capitalism fails to understand why so many consumers volunteer to enter the universe of decreased, monetized privacy.  The book compares this business model to military conquest, but doesn't account well for our conscious embrace of it.  As Ken Soto points out, low- or no-cost services of high quality are quite appealing to consumers.  Think of how Gmail outcompeted email clients, or how Facebook crafted a better social experience than Facebook.  Google Earth, Google Books: these are effective tools without serious competition.  As Nicholas Carr argues (and it's not often I agree with him),
While Zuboff’s assessment of the costs that people incur under surveillance capitalism is exhaustive, she largely ignores the benefits people receive in return — convenience, customization, savings, entertainment, social connection, and so on. The benefits can’t be dismissed as illusory, and the public can no longer claim ignorance about what’s sacrificed in exchange for them.
I admit to being torn on this in my personal experience.  Despite my dread of their datamining, Amazon's recommendation system is better than the suggestions I'll get from 99% of bookstores.   I use many Google tools (Drive, Gmail, Maps, etc) because the price is good and the quality high.  Facebook still gives me a bigger social network than any other platform, no matter how badly Zuckerberg behaves.  Voice activated tools are handy for me when I'm cooking or driving.  Convenience and quality are powerful forces and help enable the age of surveillance capitalism; the titular book needs to account for them, even though that would weaken its rhetorical stance.

Beyond myself, I think the personal experience of many other people helps explain why Facebook, Google et al can get away with this.  You see, Zuboff posits an opposition between a good life with privacy and the bad life after social media, yet that duality doesn't withstand scrutiny.  Before Web 2.0 many people already lived with many privacy violations.  The world of work can compromise privacy in a variety of ways, from surveilled email to intense bodily scrutiny; actually, as Katie Fitzpatrick points out, Zuboff seems more concerned with leisure than work.  The war on (some) drugs has habituated many Americans to yielded up our bodily fluids to bureaucratic processing.  The many people who serve in or work closely with the military have a very different privacy experience than the ideal one Zuboff holds out.  In fact, the war on terror has systematically degraded American civil liberties.  Even without war, many who would access some public services are long used to opening up their lives to the gaze of civil servants.  Next to any of these, letting Google trawl one's email to shape some small ads is far less threatening.  If I can slightly misread Blayne Haggart, the book overstates its claims to novelty.

Where does this leave us?

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism is a powerful book that should be read.  It does feel incomplete, however, like a business book that falls short of politics, or one crafted with a Manichean zeal that misses the nuances of history and daily life.  I recommend it for its utility and the conversations it should start.

Looking ahead, I think Zuboff outlines an unfolding politics.  We should pursue that thinking.

(And many thanks, once more, to the readers in our online book club.)

Rupert Dannreuther

Very long, could be condensed and less wordy but an interesting look at Zuboff's theory around surveillance capitalism which uses our behaviours as products.

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power

Reviews

Highlights