Surveillance capitalism subordinates earlier user reciprocities to derivative extraction for others’ aims

Evidence

The summary of these developments is that the behavioral surplus upon which Google’s fortune rests can be considered as surveillance assets. These assets are critical raw materials in the pursuit of surveillance revenues and their translation into surveillance capital. The entire logic of this capital accumulation is most accurately understood as surveillance capitalism, which is the foundational framework for a surveillance-based economic order: a surveillance economy. The big pattern here is one of subordination and hierarchy, in which earlier reciprocities between the firm and its users are subordinated to the derivative project of our behavioral surplus captured for others’ aims. We are no longer the subjects of value realization. Nor are we, as some have insisted, the “product” of Google’s sales. Instead, we are the objects from which raw materials are extracted and expropriated for Google’s prediction factories. Predictions about our behavior are Google’s products, and they are sold to its actual customers but not to us. We are the means to others’ ends. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 298

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the core term ‘surveillance capitalism’ and the conceptual chain from behavioral surplus to surveillance assets to surveillance capital to surveillance economy.
• XREF: The ‘we are the means to others’ ends’ reversal recalls Marx’s commodity fetishism and also echoes the Immodesty piece’s class/identity framing, though the link is thematic. — connects to: Sharing’s semantic unboundedness masks the corporate capture of data — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 514; Framing technology as autonomous disguises who profits from data extraction — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 511; Users author a public-facing text while surveillance capitalism captures a hidden second text — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 584 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

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