Surveillance capitalism emerged gradually and initially read as incidental corporate missteps

Evidence

I began to study the emergence of what I would eventually call surveillance capitalism in 2006, interviewing entrepreneurs and staff in a range of tech companies in the US and the UK. For several years I thought that the unexpected and disturbing practices that I documented were detours from the main road: management oversights or failures of judgment and contextual understanding. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 51

Categorization

• XREF: Establishes the empirical origin story of the book’s central concept, useful groundwork for the defining account the reader is after. — connects to: Corporations advance surveillance incrementally and furtively rather than all at once — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 501; Surveillance capitalism deliberately exploits its historical conditions rather than arising accidentally — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 65; Belated 2000 privacy legislation could have made surveillance capitalism largely illegal. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 363 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Surveillance capitalism deliberately exploits its historical conditions rather than arising accidentally #contradicts (0.85) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 65