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665 reviews for:
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power
Shoshana Zuboff
3.97 AVERAGE
665 reviews for:
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power
Shoshana Zuboff
3.97 AVERAGE
Audiobook
This book should be a drinking game. Every time she uses the word "unprecedented", take a shot.
I'm conflicted about this book. She really grasps the issues at play here, and paints a dismal picture of how we've sold ourselves out. I, however, am wholly a product of surveillance capitalism and cannot, will not, turn my course. I pledged my allegiance to our Googley Overlord a long time ago.
She has a lot of super clever names for concepts. You can tell she's really proud of ideas like "Big Other" (Big Brother) and The Shadow Book etc. It gets annoying, how pleased she is with herself.
Also, MY GOD this is a needlessly long book. I KNOW she's delved deep in to philosophy and history to grok the patterns, but this book is long enough without those endless eddies and whorls away from the salient topic.
I'm just so glad it's over.
This book should be a drinking game. Every time she uses the word "unprecedented", take a shot.
I'm conflicted about this book. She really grasps the issues at play here, and paints a dismal picture of how we've sold ourselves out. I, however, am wholly a product of surveillance capitalism and cannot, will not, turn my course. I pledged my allegiance to our Googley Overlord a long time ago.
She has a lot of super clever names for concepts. You can tell she's really proud of ideas like "Big Other" (Big Brother) and The Shadow Book etc. It gets annoying, how pleased she is with herself.
Also, MY GOD this is a needlessly long book. I KNOW she's delved deep in to philosophy and history to grok the patterns, but this book is long enough without those endless eddies and whorls away from the salient topic.
I'm just so glad it's over.
As every other review has stated, this book is insanely well researched, detailed, thorough, and probably 30% too long.
It's absolutely chilling and has made me rethink a lot of what I use on the internet on a daily basis, how I contextualize the data I'm feeding to the machine, and what products and services will get my dollars going forward.
It's also a pretty helpless feeling, knowing this is just sort of how we live now, everything is used to sell and sell and sell. My livelihood is also dependent on this economy, being in digital marketing.
It's absolutely chilling and has made me rethink a lot of what I use on the internet on a daily basis, how I contextualize the data I'm feeding to the machine, and what products and services will get my dollars going forward.
It's also a pretty helpless feeling, knowing this is just sort of how we live now, everything is used to sell and sell and sell. My livelihood is also dependent on this economy, being in digital marketing.
This book is unsettling. I almost wish I hadn't read it
“The amateur doesn't appreciate the need for experimentation. He wants his experts to know.”
“What is love except another name for the use of positive reinforcement? Or vice versa.”
“Once in a while a new government initiates a program to put power to better use, but its success or failure never really proves anything. In science, experiments are designed, checked, altered, repeated-- but not in politics... We have no real cumulative knowledge. History tells us nothing. That's the tragedy of a political reformer.”
B.F.S.
“What is love except another name for the use of positive reinforcement? Or vice versa.”
“Once in a while a new government initiates a program to put power to better use, but its success or failure never really proves anything. In science, experiments are designed, checked, altered, repeated-- but not in politics... We have no real cumulative knowledge. History tells us nothing. That's the tragedy of a political reformer.”
B.F.S.
informative
medium-paced
Shoshana Zuboff é um nome que surge amiúde sempre que se fala dos impactos problemáticos das atuais tecnologias de comunicação, nomeadamente as produzidas pelas 4 grandes tecnológicas — GAFA (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon). Tendo lido uma enorme quantidade de coisas boas sobre a autora, que vem com o pedigree da Ivy League, não fiquei depois muito impressionado com o modo como discute a técnica por detrás da tecnologia, parecendo ficar muitas vezes à porta da complexidade desta, focando-se mais nos quadros de impactos macro, muitas vezes desligados da efetiva capacidade das tecnologias. E assim, talvez não seja surpreedente não ter gostado particularmente do seu livro "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism" (2019).
continuar a ler no blog:
https://virtual-illusion.blogspot.com/2022/10/regular-o-capitalismo.html
continuar a ler no blog:
https://virtual-illusion.blogspot.com/2022/10/regular-o-capitalismo.html
informative
slow-paced
slow-paced
I learned a lot. I feel a bit overwhelmed. The book is long, nearly 700 pages. It also really made me rethink how much information we give up for the benefit of "ease" in our day-to-day life (Goodreads is a good example of this).
Here are some of my notes and takeaways:
- Surveillance capitalists' no longer rely on people as consumers; instead, they anticipate the behaviour of populations and groups. This results in users (us) becoming sources of raw material for digital age production. So when people say "Twitter's users are its product" - we aren't, really, we are the people who give them the product (raw data). That being said, individual customers do continue to exist, but for the most part, social relations are no longer founded on mutual exchange. Rather, products/services are merely hosts for the parasites that are surveillance capitalists'.
- The idea of radical indifference isn't one I've explored before, so I'm curious to look into that. And how reliant the market is on this indifference, in its control of knowledge/freedom.
- This book definitely answers the question as to why websites like FB, YouTube, and Twitter would never ever ban the explicitly harmful content (threats, alt-right and other hate groups...) because positives and negatives are equivalent on these sites. The product is snaring everyone, doesn't matter what they're doing or who they are.
- In the "information civilization", the aim is not to dominate nature but rather human nature - the focus has shifted from machines that overcome the limits of bodies, to machines that modify the behaviour of individuals in the service of market objectives.
- "We have to have the will and right to answer the questions: who knows? who decides? who decides who decides?" and I appreciated that the author rejects our inability, ensuring us that we still have time to take action.
This book has given me a lot to think about! I do think it's too long for me to say "Hey, give this one a shot" but if you have the chance, give it a read.
Here are some of my notes and takeaways:
- Surveillance capitalists' no longer rely on people as consumers; instead, they anticipate the behaviour of populations and groups. This results in users (us) becoming sources of raw material for digital age production. So when people say "Twitter's users are its product" - we aren't, really, we are the people who give them the product (raw data). That being said, individual customers do continue to exist, but for the most part, social relations are no longer founded on mutual exchange. Rather, products/services are merely hosts for the parasites that are surveillance capitalists'.
- The idea of radical indifference isn't one I've explored before, so I'm curious to look into that. And how reliant the market is on this indifference, in its control of knowledge/freedom.
- This book definitely answers the question as to why websites like FB, YouTube, and Twitter would never ever ban the explicitly harmful content (threats, alt-right and other hate groups...) because positives and negatives are equivalent on these sites. The product is snaring everyone, doesn't matter what they're doing or who they are.
- In the "information civilization", the aim is not to dominate nature but rather human nature - the focus has shifted from machines that overcome the limits of bodies, to machines that modify the behaviour of individuals in the service of market objectives.
- "We have to have the will and right to answer the questions: who knows? who decides? who decides who decides?" and I appreciated that the author rejects our inability, ensuring us that we still have time to take action.
This book has given me a lot to think about! I do think it's too long for me to say "Hey, give this one a shot" but if you have the chance, give it a read.
adventurous
dark
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced