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662 reviews for:
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power
Shoshana Zuboff
3.97 AVERAGE
662 reviews for:
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power
Shoshana Zuboff
3.97 AVERAGE
informative
reflective
slow-paced
DNF - this is such an important topic and Zuboff clearly did a lot of really great research… but this book needed WAY more editing. I was about to burst a blood vessel trying to slog through the academic jargon and melodramatic turns of phrase, and it was just so LONG. This should’ve been way more accessible to readers—everyone deserves to know what’s happening to their data. SparkNotes and Crash Course, this one’s for you.
this book fucked me up. alexa i will kill you. i am scared.
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
I read this keeping in mind a friend who said capitalism is largely a neutral force, if not a force of good - it spurs human advancement through innovation based on demand. If people were willing to pay for a new service or product that would benefit them, make their lives easier or better, and if businesses were able to provide that in exchange for money, why not? Capitalism, he said, has led to many great innovations, like vaccines (not sure about that one) and customised products (well, he did get this right, but after reading this book, I'm not sure if this is a good thing anymore).
As I am new to economics, I struggle with understanding capitalism, and I have accepted explanations like the above in the past. I suppose I am jumping the gun a little by going straight into the giant of a book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism to understand capitalism and its critique. Zuboff however has structured her argument very clearly, and if you can wrap your head around the massive amount of information, and sit with the dread and horror, this is a very gratifying read. Being surveilled however is not foreign to us since the past decade or so. We know that in order to get customised services, smart homes, social media algorithms, search engines, and well, basically anything nowadays, we have to give data in return.
The kicker then for me personally is to realise that we are not just providing personal information and behavioural data for advertising, but also that some of the behavioural data are being declared as proprietary behavioural surplus and being used to teach AI to predict and change our behaviour for the benefit of these companies.
Who knows? Who decides? And who decides who decides? is Shoshana Zuboff's question for us in the age of surveillance capitalism. Zuboff coined the term and was the first to map out the concept (you can view an interview with here here). She lays out her case that we have been rapidly moving towards a world where practically all our information are collected and used by a handful of very powerful companies. They have unilaterally decided that they know, they decide, and they decide who decide, and has plowed through, past legal sanctions that have yet to catch up.
"In an information civilization, societies are defined by questions of knowledge — how it is distributed, the authority that governs its distribution and the power that protects that authority. Who knows? Who decides who knows? Who decides who decides who knows? Surveillance capitalists now hold the answers to each question, though we never elected them to govern. This is the essence of the epistemic coup. They claim the authority to decide who knows by asserting ownership rights over our personal information and defend that authority with the power to control critical information systems and infrastructures."
Zuboff makes the point that wandered far from the capitalism of the earlier days where it was about natural supply and demand. Instead, this has been replaced with surveillance. Surveillance has been creeping in at an exponential rate, as Zuboff found, the amount of data is also more predictive than the actual data itself, and the more data a company can collect, the more powerfully and accurately it can predict behaviours, personalities, beliefs, and more of the population. With the rising Internet of Things around us, the a network of physical objects connected to the internet such as our fridges, toys, fitbits, smart tvs, and so on, surveillance is everywhere and harder to break out off.
Additionally, with accurate predictions about our behaviour, companies are now able to using behavioural conditioning to reward and encourage some behaviours, and decrease certain behaviours, often without us knowing or in a way which we cannot escape. Social media of course is the biggest example of this.
Zuboff finally makes the proposal that this form of capitalism is anti-democratic, far from the old capitalism where there is less asymmetry of power and knowledge. What is worse is that we currently have no regulatory oversight of these private companies - they are effectively doing what they want at this point. And because the modus operandi of surveillance capitalism is to reach into every crevice of human behaviour to reach the totality of data and complete certainty of behaviour, it is going to be hard for capitalists to self-regulate.
I guess my thoughts after 6 months deep into thinking about surveillance capitalism is - how did we come to this and why are we standing for it? Through which ideology do we want to be living life? It's not, as the layman conversation usually goes - a choice between having many convenient, free, and useful tools, while giving up a little privacy, or going back to 'back whenst" there isn't any of such things but having more privacy than we do now. There are many takeaways one can get from this book but for me it's the dangerous precedence set that we are allowing a couple of powerful men in Silicon Valley decide what is 'right' for the world and the speed of which they are deciding. Totality and certainty of behaviour - literally never has that been achieved before and if a couple of people get to have that, what sort of power are we handing to them?
As I am new to economics, I struggle with understanding capitalism, and I have accepted explanations like the above in the past. I suppose I am jumping the gun a little by going straight into the giant of a book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism to understand capitalism and its critique. Zuboff however has structured her argument very clearly, and if you can wrap your head around the massive amount of information, and sit with the dread and horror, this is a very gratifying read. Being surveilled however is not foreign to us since the past decade or so. We know that in order to get customised services, smart homes, social media algorithms, search engines, and well, basically anything nowadays, we have to give data in return.
The kicker then for me personally is to realise that we are not just providing personal information and behavioural data for advertising, but also that some of the behavioural data are being declared as proprietary behavioural surplus and being used to teach AI to predict and change our behaviour for the benefit of these companies.
Who knows? Who decides? And who decides who decides? is Shoshana Zuboff's question for us in the age of surveillance capitalism. Zuboff coined the term and was the first to map out the concept (you can view an interview with here here). She lays out her case that we have been rapidly moving towards a world where practically all our information are collected and used by a handful of very powerful companies. They have unilaterally decided that they know, they decide, and they decide who decide, and has plowed through, past legal sanctions that have yet to catch up.
"In an information civilization, societies are defined by questions of knowledge — how it is distributed, the authority that governs its distribution and the power that protects that authority. Who knows? Who decides who knows? Who decides who decides who knows? Surveillance capitalists now hold the answers to each question, though we never elected them to govern. This is the essence of the epistemic coup. They claim the authority to decide who knows by asserting ownership rights over our personal information and defend that authority with the power to control critical information systems and infrastructures."
Zuboff makes the point that wandered far from the capitalism of the earlier days where it was about natural supply and demand. Instead, this has been replaced with surveillance. Surveillance has been creeping in at an exponential rate, as Zuboff found, the amount of data is also more predictive than the actual data itself, and the more data a company can collect, the more powerfully and accurately it can predict behaviours, personalities, beliefs, and more of the population. With the rising Internet of Things around us, the a network of physical objects connected to the internet such as our fridges, toys, fitbits, smart tvs, and so on, surveillance is everywhere and harder to break out off.
Additionally, with accurate predictions about our behaviour, companies are now able to using behavioural conditioning to reward and encourage some behaviours, and decrease certain behaviours, often without us knowing or in a way which we cannot escape. Social media of course is the biggest example of this.
"This assembly is a market project: its purpose is to fabricate predictions, which become more valuable as they approach certainty. The best predictions feed on totalities of data, and on the strength of this movement towards totality, surveillance capitalists have hijacked the division of learning in society. They command knowledge from the decisive pinnacle of the social order, where they nourish and protect the shadow text: the urtext of certainty. This is the market net in which we are snared."
Zuboff finally makes the proposal that this form of capitalism is anti-democratic, far from the old capitalism where there is less asymmetry of power and knowledge. What is worse is that we currently have no regulatory oversight of these private companies - they are effectively doing what they want at this point. And because the modus operandi of surveillance capitalism is to reach into every crevice of human behaviour to reach the totality of data and complete certainty of behaviour, it is going to be hard for capitalists to self-regulate.
"In another decisive break with capitalism's past, surveillance capitalists abandon the organic reciprocities with people that have long been a mark of capitalism's endurance and adaptability. Symbolized in the twentieth century by Ford’s five-dollar day, these reciprocities hearken back to Adam Smith’s original insights into the productive social relations of capitalism, in which firms rely on people as employees and customers... Surveillance capitalism goes further. It [...] also formally rescinds any remaining reciprocities with its societies."
I guess my thoughts after 6 months deep into thinking about surveillance capitalism is - how did we come to this and why are we standing for it? Through which ideology do we want to be living life? It's not, as the layman conversation usually goes - a choice between having many convenient, free, and useful tools, while giving up a little privacy, or going back to 'back whenst" there isn't any of such things but having more privacy than we do now. There are many takeaways one can get from this book but for me it's the dangerous precedence set that we are allowing a couple of powerful men in Silicon Valley decide what is 'right' for the world and the speed of which they are deciding. Totality and certainty of behaviour - literally never has that been achieved before and if a couple of people get to have that, what sort of power are we handing to them?
A few dubious sources, but otherwise Zuboff is right on the money
DNF—this book was a totally nightmare and far too scary to read. Especially since we basically live in a pre-dystopic fascist nightmare.
The author presents a powerful thesis to view the new technologies and industries that made a business out of our personal data. She first sees this change in the historical perspective of prior shifts in how we create wealth and value. In the feudal times we discovered the value of extracting wealth by accumulation and ownership of land. In the industrial phase we extracted value out of physical materials and labor. According to the author we are entering a new phase where the largest companies are generating wealth out of our personal information. In a relatively lawless situation, they are not only taking our information without our permission, but finding newer ways where we voluntarily give up more and more of our private lives to be commoditized and turned into profit.
Her arguments are strong and her evidence is often compelling. However, it is a book written by an activist, where every sentence is loaded with adjectives and metaphors that exposes her hatred for these businesses and practices. As a result, as with any activist book, it will reach her audience who are already convinced of her argument, but may fail to reach those who are not convinced yet, or trying to make up their mind. While her examples are mostly appropriate, in many cases she takes it too far and I had a hard time accepting them as valid. She also commits the activist’s mistake of almost completely ignoring the true benefits of some these technologies. Thus potentially alienating people who are not already in her camp.
I, for one, would have preferred a more scholarly tone and a more balanced portrayal. There is a wealth of powerful thoughts here, but they get a little diluted by her rhetorics and one-sided analysis. This is a very complex subject, and any simplistic analysis will not resolve the issue of whether we are better off with all the information this surveillance system is producing, or we would rather guard our privacy and give up on the benefits. We should also be very careful about equating this loss of privacy with the questionable issue of free will.
Her arguments are strong and her evidence is often compelling. However, it is a book written by an activist, where every sentence is loaded with adjectives and metaphors that exposes her hatred for these businesses and practices. As a result, as with any activist book, it will reach her audience who are already convinced of her argument, but may fail to reach those who are not convinced yet, or trying to make up their mind. While her examples are mostly appropriate, in many cases she takes it too far and I had a hard time accepting them as valid. She also commits the activist’s mistake of almost completely ignoring the true benefits of some these technologies. Thus potentially alienating people who are not already in her camp.
I, for one, would have preferred a more scholarly tone and a more balanced portrayal. There is a wealth of powerful thoughts here, but they get a little diluted by her rhetorics and one-sided analysis. This is a very complex subject, and any simplistic analysis will not resolve the issue of whether we are better off with all the information this surveillance system is producing, or we would rather guard our privacy and give up on the benefits. We should also be very careful about equating this loss of privacy with the questionable issue of free will.
dark
informative
reflective
medium-paced
DNF not because I didn't like it, but because eventually it felt like I got the point and had no motivation to continue. It's been years, I need to DNF something for once in my life, and maybe some day when I'm feeling academic I'll try again.