the age of surveillance capitalism review

This entry was posted in and tagged reviews by Bill Wake. 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. Surveillance capitalism took from us without permission, pushing pushing to normalize what would be unacceptable. The key question for us: “Who knows? Who decides? Who decides who decides?” The power: “ instrumentarianism, defined as the instrumentation and instrumentalization of behavior for the purpose of modification, predication, monetarization, and control.“ Surveillance capitalism is not totalitarian.

Just as totalitarianism struggled to be understood (and was originally analyzed in terms of imperialism), surveillance capitalism is a new thing. She documents her ideas thoroughly (150 pages of footnotes:) “If we are to rediscover our sense of astonishment, then let it be here: if industrial civilization flourished at the expense of nature, and now threatens to cost us the Earth, an information civilization shaped by surveillance capitalism will thrive at the expense of human nature and threatens to cost us our humanity.“

Zuboff makes the analogy that just like the imperative of industrial capitalism leads to global warming, that this information imperative will lead to dehumanization. (Thus maps, Pokemon Go, email, …) Once you can make predictions, you have an incentive to move to control, whether direct or by nudging you (without your consent). This put them on a path of needing to consume any information about us that they can get. (And Facebook later repeated this discovery.) Zuboff’s premise is that “Google discovered that we are less valuable than others’ bets on our future behavior.” The closer they can get to accurate predictions, the more money they make. It outlines the dark side of modern social media. This book is the most significant book I’ve read in a while.

The age of surveillance capitalism review