The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

by Shoshana Zuboff

1. Unprecedented: Most of us did not resist the early incursions of Google, Facebook, and other surveillance capitalist operations because it was impossible to recognize the ways in which they differed from anything that had gone before. The basic operational mechanisms and business practices were so new and strange, so utterly sui generis, that all we could see was a gaggle of “innovative” horseless carriages. Most significantly, anxiety and vigilance have been fixed on the known threats of surveillance and control associated with state power. Earlier incursions of behavior modification at scale were understood as an extension of the state, and we were not prepared for the onslaught from private firms. 2. Declaration as invasion: The lack of precedence left us disarmed and charmed. Meanwhile, Google learned the art of invasion by declaration, taking what it wanted and calling it theirs. The corporation asserted its rights to bypass our awareness, to take our experience and transform it into data, to claim ownership of and decisions over the uses of those data, to produce strategies and tactics that keep us ignorant of its practices, and to insist on the conditions of lawlessness required for these operations. These declarations institutionalized surveillance capitalism as a market form. 3. Historical context: Surveillance capitalism found shelter in the neoliberal zeitgeist that equated government regulation of business with tyranny. This “paranoid style” favored self-man...