The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

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

By: Shoshana Zuboff

Narrated by: Nicol Zanzarella

Length: 24 hrs and 16 mins

Publisher's summary

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.

In this masterwork of original thinking and research, Shoshana Zuboff provides startling insights into the phenomenon that she has named surveillance capitalism. The stakes could not be higher: a global architecture of behavior modification threatens human nature in the 21st century just as industrial capitalism disfigured the natural world in the 20th. Zuboff vividly brings to life the consequences as surveillance capitalism advances from Silicon Valley into every economic sector. Vast wealth and power are accumulated in ominous new "behavioral futures markets", where predictions about our behavior are bought and sold, and the production of goods and services is subordinated to a new "means of behavioral modification". The threat has shifted from a totalitarian Big Brother state to a ubiquitous digital architecture: a "Big Other" operating in the interests of surveillance capital. Here is the crucible of an unprecedented form of power marked by extreme concentrations of knowledge and free from democratic oversight. Zuboff's comprehensive and moving analysis lays bare the threats to 21st-century society: a controlled "hive" of total connection that seduces with promises of total certainty for maximum profit—at the expense of democracy, freedom, and our human future. With little resistance from law or society, surveillance capitalism is on the verge of dominating the social order and shaping the digital future—if we let it.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2019 Shoshana Zuboff (P)2019 Hachette Audio

Critic reviews

An International Bestseller

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year

A Financial Times Best Book of the Year

A Sunday Times (UK) Best Business Book of the Year

Selected by Barack Obama, Zadie Smith (in the Wall Street Journal), Jia Tolentino (in the New Yorker), Elif Shafak (in the Guardian), and Ana Botin (in Bloomberg) as one of the best books of 2019

Finalist for the Financial Times/McKinsey Best Book of the Year Award

"If a book's importance is gauged by how effectively it describes the world we're in, and how much potential it has to change said world, then in my view it's easily the most important book to be published this century... Zuboff is concerned with the largest act of capitalist colonisation ever attempted, but the colonisation is of our minds, our behaviour, our free will, our very selves. Yet it's not an anti-tech book. It's anti unregulated capitalism, red in tooth and claw. It's really this generation's Das Kapital."—Zadie Smith

"Extraordinarily intelligent... Absorbing Zuboff's methodical determination, the way she pieces together sundry examples into this comprehensive work of scholarship and synthesis, requires patience, but the rewards are considerable - a heightened sense of awareness, and a deeper appreciation of what's at stake. A business model that seeks growth by cataloging our 'every move, emotion, utterance and desire' is too radical to be taken for granted. As Zuboff repeatedly says near the end of the book, 'It is not O.K.'"—Jennifer Szalai, NEW YORK TIMES

"The rare volume that puts a name on a problem just as it becomes critical... This book's major contribution is to give a name to what's happening, to put it in cultural and historical perspective, and to ask us to pause long enough to think about the future and how it might be different from today."—Frank Rose, WALL STREET JOURNAL

great history and framing of our current era

the book is long, but worthwhile and though occasionally repetitive and heavy on theory (Foucault, Derrida, Sartre ... ) the book succeeds in providing a framework for this new type of capitalism. A must read for thoughtful individuals in our generation.

Eye opening and helpful for framing current events

I grew up in an analog world, and I bought my first cell phone when I landed my first job after undergraduate studies. The pace of technology change is swift and accelerating, and at midcareer I feel disoriented in the professional world. This book names some of the new games and shines light on their objectives, major players, and strategies to date. It feels like a good time to discuss the effects of surveillance capitalism on humanity and consider other combinations of objectives and strategies going forward.

Seminal work on privacy in the digital age

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism is a masterwork critique on the dangers of unregulated, digital capitalism. Zuboff underscores the importance of social and political resistance to ‘march of inevitability’ that sacrificing our digital privacy for the sake of “progress” represents. This is a seminal work that will be studied for decades to come.

Best listen to with perception filters

An excellent run down of the current commercialization of user Internet interaction by a clearly anti-capitalist and strong pro-privacy advocate. Nice facts that need to heard with filter to screen out her political opinions

Big Other or BFF

Shoshana Zuboff, a social psychologist trained at Harvard, is a brilliant author and deep thinker (her undergraduate work in philosophy was done at the prestigious philosophy department at the University of Chicago) who asks three important questions for the digital age - who knows; who decides; and, who decides who decides. These inquiries, which are omnipresent throughout this book, pertain to the ubiquitous presence of digital data gathering, analysis and monetization that affect all of us by influencing what we buy, what news we see, who we vote for and so much more. This is long recording, but very much worth the time it takes to listen carefully and understand just how we got to where we are and where we might end up if we are not mindful of our humanity in the face of constant surveillance.

This decades most important reading

The author has managed to put her finger on so many critical issues and managed to describe the problem space in digitalization of our world.

It should be read by all interested in digitalization and in addition all educators in order to understand the dilemmas we are facing

Eye opener

A bit rich in prose and vocabulary to consume in the car, but I got through it. One of those life changing books for me like the Fourth Turning (also dense). I had no idea what was going on ten or twenty years ago. I’m glad she shows some hope at the end. Astonishing reveal and she brings receipts.

terrific job

made a long, dense volume very digestible. excellent narrative acapability. awesome must-read book for every one.

Mind blowing

The author introduced a the next chapter of the means of production and the accompanying changes in ownership, labor relationship - not to mention the introduction of human behavior as raw material.

Canary in the preverbal coal mine?

Shoshana has done an incredible job researching and questioning the current and future role of technology and humaneity.