Surveillance capitalism feeds on the social transformations it causes

Evidence

However, it would be wrong to suppose that surveillance capitalism can be grasped solely through the prism of its economic action or that the challenges we face are restricted to discerning, containing, and transforming its foundational mechanisms. The consequences of this new logic of accumulation have already leaked and continue to leak beyond commercial practices into the fabric of our social relations, transforming our relationships to ourselves and to one another. These transformations provide the soil in which surveillance capitalism has flourished: an invasive species that creates its own food supply. In transforming us, it produces nourishment for its own march forward. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1104

It is no surprise that capitalism shapes social relations. A century ago it was the new means of mass production that fashioned mass society in its image. Today, surveillance capitalism offers a new template for our future: the machine hive in which our freedom is forfeit to perfect knowledge administered for others’ profit. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1410

In the course of the last ten chapters I have argued that surveillance capitalism represents an unprecedented logic of accumulation defined by new economic imperatives whose mechanisms and effects cannot be grasped with existing models and assumptions. This is not to say that the old imperatives—a compulsion toward profit maximization along with the intensification of the means of production, growth, and competition—have vanished. However, these must now operate through the novel aims and mechanisms of surveillance capitalism. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1065

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘invasive species that creates its own food supply’ self-reinforcing loop echoes the circular reasoning Zuboff used for behavioral surplus extraction earlier; also resonates with Marx’s analysis of capital. The metaphor could carry an ADDENDUM angle. — connects to: Surveillance capitalism converts everyday shared spaces into objects of commercial inspection — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 445; Users author a public-facing text while surveillance capitalism captures a hidden second text — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 584; Surveillance capitalism is expanding from the web into everyday life — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 806 (+9 more)
• SEED: The invasive-species-that-feeds-on-its-own-transformations metaphor is a strong image for an essay on self-reinforcing extraction loops.
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1104; Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1410; Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1065

Broader Connections

• Surveillance capitalism threatens the inward capacities that sustain social bonds #expands (0.82) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1566
• Surveillance capitalism thrives where individualized consumption meets a hostile neoliberal paradigm #corroborates (0.75) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 96