Surveillance capitalism is a new and original economic form unlike any prior capitalism

Evidence

Of course, the emergence of the unprecedented in economic history cannot be compared to a house fire. The portents of a catastrophic fire were unprecedented in my experience, but they were not original. In contrast, surveillance capitalism is a new actor in history, both original and sui generis. It is of its own kind and unlike anything else: a distinct new planet with its own physics of time and space, its sixty-seven-hour days, emerald sky, inverted mountain ranges, and dry water. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 53

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes the book’s core thesis that surveillance capitalism is sui generis, a genuinely new category of economic actor.
• XREF: connects to: Capitalism’s fundamental drivers have not changed despite the information economy; Surveillance capitalism constitutes a privatized market-based collectivism — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1603; Terms like surveillance and platform capitalism misname an unchanged capitalist core — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 150

Broader Connections

• Surveillance capitalism constitutes a privatized market-based collectivism #qualifies (0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1603