Surveillance capitalism economies of scale apply to extraction, not production

Evidence

It is important to note the vital differences for capitalism in these two moments of originality at Ford and Google. Ford’s inventions revolutionized production. Google’s inventions revolutionized extraction and established surveillance capitalism’s first economic imperative: the extraction imperative. The extraction imperative meant that raw-material supplies must be procured at an ever-expanding scale. Industrial capitalism had demanded economies of scale in production in order to achieve high throughput combined with low unit cost. In contrast, surveillance capitalism demands economies of scale in the extraction of behavioral surplus. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 274

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces and defines the ‘extraction imperative,’ a core term of the book’s framework.
• SHARE: Worth sending to anyone working on platform economics — the Ford/vs/Google production-vs-extraction contrast is crisp and quotable.
• XREF: connects to: Extraction imperative forces relentless automated tracking and framing experience as free raw material — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1067; Behavioral surplus extraction forms the core logic of surveillance capitalism — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 70

Broader Connections

• Behavioral surplus extraction forms the core logic of surveillance capitalism #expands (0.85) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 70