The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

A Sunday Times Top 10 Bestseller. A New York Times Notable Book of the Year. One of Barack Obama's Best Books of the Year. A 2020 Orwell Prize Finalist. A 2019 Financial Times Business Book of the Year Finalist. “This is without a doubt the most important book published this century. I find it hard to take any young activist seriously who isn't familiar with Zuboff's central ideas.” Zadie Smith, The Guardian - The challenges facing humanity in the digital future, and the first detailed examination of the unprecedented form of power called “surveillance capitalism,” and the quest of powerful corporations to predict and control us. The wild optimism of the early internet is over. The technologies that were supposed to liberate us have deepened inequality and exacerbated divisions. Tech companies collect our online information and sell it to the highest bidder, be it government or retailer. Profits now depend not just on predicting our behavior but on modifying it. How will this fusion of capitalism and digital shape our values ​​and define our future? Shoshana Zuboff shows that we are at a crossroads. We still have the power to determine what kind of world we want to live in, and what we decide now will shape the rest of the century. Our choices: either allow technology to enrich the few and impoverish the many, or exploit it and distribute its benefits. "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism" is a profound study of the danger of unprecedented power isolated from democratic oversight. As it explores the impact of this new capitalism on society, politics, business, and technology, it reveals the conflicts that will define the next phase of capitalism and the meaning of an information civilization. Most importantly, it shows how we can protect ourselves and our societies and ensure that we are masters of the digital world, not its slaves.