The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (eBook)

It's quite possible that the single most important book about politics, economics, culture and society in this century is Shoshana Zuboff's The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. She explains with far more power than anyone has done before the emergence of a whole new form of capitalism based on the expropriation of the personal data we freely give to vast corporations. It's the Das Kapital for our times.

It is a stunning research on "information civilisation", concentration of power and the sinister exploitation of our data at the expense of our freedom, which are no doubt some of the most pressing issues of our times. But more than that, this is a fascinating and wise and honest exploration of what it means to be human in the digital age and why we need to fight back. Technology is way too important to leave it to tech companies, which are clearly becoming tech monopolies. We all need to become part of this important discussion, and for that to happen, we need to ask the right questions. This book is a brilliant way to do that.

Groundbreaking, magisterial ... unmissable

An exceptional and necessary book about the information civilisation we have become

A panoramic exploration of one of the most urgent issues of our times, Zuboff reinterprets contemporary capitalism through the prism of the digital revolution, producing a book of immense ambition and erudition. Zuboff is one of our most prescient and profound thinkers on the rise of the digital. In an age of inane Twitter soundbites and narcissistic Facebook posts, Zuboff's serious scholarship is great cause for celebration

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

[It] will surely become a pivotal work in defining, understanding and exposing this surreptitious exploitation of our data and, increasingly, our free will ... essential

Something you need

An intensively researched, engagingly written chronicle of surveillance capitalism's origins and its deleterious prospects for our society ... This is the rare book that we should trust to lead us down the long hard road of understanding

Magisterial, indispensable

a vital analysis of the digital economy and our place in it.

Ground-breaking, magisterial and synthetically brilliant

I will make a guarantee: Assuming we survive to tell the tale, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism has a high probability of joining the likes Adam Smith's The Wealth of Natiions and Max Weber's Economy and Society as defining social-economics texts of modern times. It is not a 'quick read;' it is to be savored and re-read and discussed with colleagues and friends. No zippy one-liners from me, except to almost literally beg you to read/ingest this book

The defining challenge for the future of the market economy is the concentration of data, knowledge, and surveillance power. Not just our privacy but our individuality is at stake, and this very readable and thought-provoking book alerts us to these existential dangers. Highly recommended

Easily the most important book to be published this century. I find it hard to take any young activist seriously who hasn't at least familarised themselves with Zuboff's central ideas.

everyone needs to read this book as an act of digital self-defense.

Examined with force and almost cunning insight what is yet to come

From the very first page I was consumed with an overwhelming imperative: everyone needs to read this book as an act of digital self-defense. With tremendous lucidity and moral courage, Zuboff demonstrates not only how our minds are being mined for data but also how they are being rapidly and radically changed in the process. The hour is late and much has been lost already - but as we learn in these indispensable pages, there is still hope for emancipation

a must read for anyone interested in power, politics, technology and the future of our fragile democracies. Zuboff is a brilliant mind who connects the dots like no other.

A bold, important book ... Combining in-depth technical understanding and a broad, humanistic scope, Zuboff has written what may prove to be the first definitive account of the economic - and thus social and political - condition of our age.

Groundbreaking ... Aiming to apply Marx's account of surplus value in a time when capital is accumulated through knowledge-based technology, she has given us an illuminating critical perspective on the regime of surveillance under which we all now live

It's the Das Kapital for our times, setting out with clarity and urgency the implications of an economic system in which an elite can predict, and therefore manipulate, every shift in our desires. But Zuboff is no fatalist and her book should give us courage to, as it were, take back control.

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

Comprehensive and impassioned ... an important book