The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

by Shoshana Zuboff

When Mattel hired a new CEO in January 2017, it’s no surprise that the company looked to Google, selecting its president for the Americas with responsibility for Google’s commercial and advertising sales operations.36 Most analysts agreed that the appointment heralded Mattel’s commitment to its innovations in internet-enabled toys and virtual reality, but the appointment underscores the shift in focus from making great products for you to collecting great data about you. The doll that was once a beloved mirror of a child’s unfettered imagination, along with all the other toys in the toy box—and the box, and the room that hosts the box, and the house that hosts the room—are all earmarked for rendition, calculation, connection, and profit. No longer mere things, they are reinvented as vehicles for a horde of commercial opportunities fabricated from our dialogue chunks and assorted gold dust.