The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power by Shoshana Zuboff is one of the most important books of the twenty-first century. Harvard Business School professor Zuboff coins the term ‘surveillance capitalism’ to describe a new economic logic in which human experience is claimed as raw material for behavioral prediction products sold to advertisers and other clients. She traces the origins of this logic in Google’s discovery that its users’ behavioral data was more valuable than its search product, and shows how it has since spread throughout the digital economy. Zuboff argues that surveillance capitalism represents an unprecedented assault on human autonomy, agency, and democratic governance.