Surveillance capitalism rests on extreme inequalities of knowledge and power

Evidence

Surveillance capitalism operates through unprecedented asymmetries in knowledge and the power that accrues to knowledge. Surveillance capitalists know everything about us, whereas their operations are designed to be unknowable to us. They accumulate vast domains of new knowledge from us, but not for us. They predict our futures for the sake of others’ gain, not ours. As long as surveillance capitalism and its behavioral futures markets are allowed to thrive, ownership of the new means of behavioral modification eclipses ownership of the means of production as the fountainhead of capitalist wealth and power in the twenty-first century. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 45

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism is brilliant and essential. Shoshana Zuboff reveals capitalism’s most dangerous frontier with stunning clarity: The new economic order of surveillance capitalism founded on extreme inequalities of knowledge and power. Her sweeping analysis demonstrates the unprecedented challenges to human autonomy, social solidarity, and democracy perpetrated by this rogue capitalism. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1686

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distills the core definitional claim: surveillance capital’s power rests on directional knowledge asymmetry (‘from us but not for us’).
• XREF: Directly echoes Marx’s ‘means of production’ framework, reframed as ‘means of behavioral modification’; connects to the reader’s reading on the digital economy as new capitalism. — connects to: Surveillance capitalists now control society’s definitive principle of social ordering through privatized knowledge. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 603; Surveillance capital’s power struggle targets all of society rather than just labor. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 604; Surveillance capitalism conquered through unilateral declarations, not permission seeking — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 564 (+20 more)
• QUESTION: The phrase ‘behavioral futures markets’ surfaces here before being defined — worth chasing how the prediction-market mechanism is specified later in the book.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 45; Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1686

Broader Connections

• Surveillance capitalism operates through Big Other to engineer behavior rather than souls #expands (0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1196
• Surveillance capitalism aims to produce guaranteed outcomes rather than impose behavioral norms #expands (0.75) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 629