The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power
Author: Shoshana Zuboff (2019) Publisher: PublicAffairs
A landmark critical analysis of how major technology companies have developed a new economic logic — “surveillance capitalism” — that extracts behavioral data from human activity as a raw material for prediction products and behavioral modification. Zuboff argues that platforms like Google and Facebook have accumulated a form of governing power that enables them to act as quasi-sovereign actors over their user populations.
This book provides theoretical grounding for the Network Nations analysis of “corporate platform sovereigns” in the Network Nations essay. The concept of platforms wielding quasi-sovereign authority over billions of users — setting rules, enforcing norms, shaping behavior through algorithmic systems — is central to the diagnostic that makes Network Nations necessary as a commons-based alternative.
Referenced in: Network Nations essay