The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power

Description

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. Shoshana Zuboff's interdisciplinary breadth and depth enable her to come to grips with the social, political, business, and technological meaning of the changes taking place in our time. We are at a critical juncture in the confrontation between the vast power of giant high-tech companies and government, the hidden economic logic of surveillance capitalism, and the propaganda of machine supremacy that threaten to shape and control human life. Will the brazen new methods of social engineering and behavior modification threaten individual autonomy and democratic rights and introduce extreme new forms of social inequality? Or will the promise of the digital age be one of individual empowerment and democratization? The Age of Surveillance Capitalism is neither a hand-wringing narrative of danger and decline nor a digital fairy tale. 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 civilization in the twenty-first century. The stark issue at hand is whether we will be the masters of information and machines or its slaves. Title Page......Page 2 Copyright......Page 3 Table of Contents......Page 5 Dedication......Page 7 The Definition......Page 8 INTRODUCTION......Page 9 1 Home or Exile in the Digital Future......Page 10 PART I THE FOUNDATIONS OF SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM......Page 31 2 August 9, 2011: Setting the Stage for Surveillance Capitalism......Page 32 3 The Discovery of Behavioral Surplus......Page 65 4 The Moat Around the Castle......Page 98 5 The Elaboration of Surveillance Capitalism: Kidnap, Corner, Compete......Page 126 6 Hijacked: The Division of Learning in Society......Page 171 PART II THE ADVANCE OF SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM......Page 190 7 The Reality Business......Page 191 8 Rendition: From Experience to Data......Page 222 9 Rendition from the Depths......Page 242 10 Make Them Dance......Page 277 11 The Right to the Future Tense......Page 310 PART III INSTRUMENTARIAN POWER FOR A THIRD MODERNITY......Page 329 12 Two Species of Power......Page 330 13 Big Other and the Rise of Instrumentarian Power......Page 353 14 A Utopia of Certainty......Page 374 15 The Instrumentarian Collective......Page 390 16 Of Life in the Hive......Page 417 17 The Right to Sanctuary......Page 445 CONCLUSION......Page 462 18 A Coup from Above......Page 463 Acknowledgments......Page 491 About the Author......Page 495 Praise for "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism"......Page 496 Detailed Table of Contents......Page 499 Notes......Page 505 Index......Page 664