The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power
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The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
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Narrated by:
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Nicol Zanzarella
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Written by:
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Shoshana Zuboff
About this listen
The challenges to humanity posed by the digital future, the first detailed examination of the unprecedented form of power called "surveillance capitalism", and the quest by powerful corporations to predict and control our behavior.
In this masterwork of original thinking and research, Shoshana Zuboff provides startling insights into the phenomenon that she has named surveillance capitalism. The stakes could not be higher: a global architecture of behavior modification threatens human nature in the 21st century just as industrial capitalism disfigured the natural world in the 20th. Zuboff vividly brings to life the consequences as surveillance capitalism advances from Silicon Valley into every economic sector. Vast wealth and power are accumulated in ominous new "behavioral futures markets", where predictions about our behavior are bought and sold, and the production of goods and services is subordinated to a new "means of behavioral modification". The threat has shifted from a totalitarian Big Brother state to a ubiquitous digital architecture: a "Big Other" operating in the interests of surveillance capital. Here is the crucible of an unprecedented form of power marked by extreme concentrations of knowledge and free from democratic oversight. Zuboff's comprehensive and moving analysis lays bare the threats to 21st-century society: a controlled "hive" of total connection that seduces with promises of total certainty for maximum profit—at the expense of democracy, freedom, and our human future. With little resistance from law or society, surveillance capitalism is on the verge of dominating the social order and shaping the digital future—if we let it.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2019 Shoshana Zuboff (P)2019 Hachette AudioYou may also enjoy...
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What the critics say
An International Bestseller
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
A Financial Times Best Book of the Year
A Sunday Times (UK) Best Business Book of the Year
Selected by Barack Obama, Zadie Smith (in the Wall Street Journal), Jia Tolentino (in the New Yorker), Elif Shafak (in the Guardian), and Ana Botin (in Bloomberg) as one of the best books of 2019
Finalist for the Financial Times/McKinsey Best Book of the Year Award
"If a book's importance is gauged by how effectively it describes the world we're in, and how much potential it has to change said world, then in my view it's easily the most important book to be published this century... Zuboff is concerned with the largest act of capitalist colonisation ever attempted, but the colonisation is of our minds, our behaviour, our free will, our very selves. Yet it's not an anti-tech book. It's anti unregulated capitalism, red in tooth and claw. It's really this generation's Das Kapital."—Zadie Smith
"Extraordinarily intelligent... Absorbing Zuboff's methodical determination, the way she pieces together sundry examples into this comprehensive work of scholarship and synthesis, requires patience, but the rewards are considerable - a heightened sense of awareness, and a deeper appreciation of what's at stake. A business model that seeks growth by cataloging our 'every move, emotion, utterance and desire' is too radical to be taken for granted. As Zuboff repeatedly says near the end of the book, 'It is not O.K.'"—Jennifer Szalai, NEW YORK TIMES
"The rare volume that puts a name on a problem just as it becomes critical... This book's major contribution is to give a name to what's happening, to put it in cultural and historical perspective, and to ask us to pause long enough to think about the future and how it might be different from today."—Frank Rose, WALL STREET JOURNAL
What listeners say about The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Ronald Landheer-cieslak
- 2022-09-05
Lengthy, detailed, repetitive
While a thorough demonstration of the mechanisms and effects of surveillance capitalism, the author could have essentially said the same thing and conveyed the same urgency with half the words. It’s interesting, but a more succinct argument would have been more convincing
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Greg C
- 2019-06-13
Your life in a fish bowl.
Facebook, Twitter, Google are collecting your information, testing, twisting and selling it all to the highest bidder. And that is just the beginning. ..........
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Itwasonlyme
- 2019-10-25
Excellent Listen
This is a well researched relevant read. Many insights. Historical context and personal stories combined.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Paul
- 2020-11-16
One of the most important works of our generation.
On par with the profound impact of Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations”.
You need to consume this book.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Margaret Walton-Roberts
- 2019-09-05
Intense and detailed analysis
Zuboff presents an intense and detailed analysis of the ability of tech companies like google and facebook to extract surplus behavioural value through their all encompassing systems of surveillance capitalism. They make massive profits by exploiting the effective legal-free zone that currently exists in terms of digital world. Throughout Zuboff asks "who knows, who decides, and who decides who decides". The answers are pretty disheartening, but also still unknown. This is the beginning of this story, as she tells us at the end of this long and sometimes overwhelming book. There are some tips on how we can be the friction in this story of the seemingly untrammeled power and free reign of the tech giants, but overall I felt a bit overwhelmed and powerless at the end of this read. I would recommend it though for anyone who wants to know how this unchecked power is threatening our autonomy, freedom and ability to make our own futures.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 2023-01-31
This one’s for the academics
This book brings up some really fascinating and important points! However I think it’s important to point out that the author is a long standing Harvard professor and the book reads as one extremely long academic article. If you have experience with or enjoy consuming academic styles of writing or have a background in this subject matter I would definitely recommend this book! Unfortunately I don’t think the general masses will find the information in this book easy to consume which is sad as there are many important points for the public to consider.
The audio recording also has a bit of a robotic vibrato to it. It was easy to get over eventually but distracting at first.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Alexander
- 2020-09-18
A must read. This will be textbook material in thirty years.
Did you know that google street view cars logged on to unencrypted wifi networks and downloaded all available data?
Did you know that roomba vacuum cleaners map your floor then sell your floor plan data?
Did you know that google Homes offer free telephone service so that your audio can be recorded and transcribed and fed to machine learning so google can better predict your behaviour?
Did you know that Machine learning AIs can calculate your personality score as accurately as psychologists, track your mood and predict your behaviour in order to target tailored adds to you when you are most permissible? Facebook bragged about their ability to identify vulnerable high school students to potential investors in Australia.
Did you know that Facebook tracked over 700 million reads of factually false "fake news" articles during the 2016 US elections? They had the capacity to identify and remove these, but they operate under what Zuboff calls "radical indifference" where driving traffic and collecting data are more important than preventing Anti-democratic actions even if taken by foreign governments.
Did you know that Facebook performed experiments demonstrating that they can actively change users moods by manipulating their news and instagram feeds? This allows them to not only target advertising but also manipulate users into a more permissive state.
This book is what would happen if Naomi Kline wrote about Facebook and Google. Fascinating, horrifying and chock full of important information. Zuboff Writes in a style similar to Kline, but with less self reflection and a more explicit structure while crafting a fluid synthesis of philosophical considerations and historical facts starting from the inception of data mining at the origins of Google covering everything from developmental psychology to the origins of totalitarianism to a treatise on BF Skinner's work and projections on the future.
I'm going to buy a paper copy of this book so I can read it more carefully.
Nicol Zanzarella is one of my favourite narrators for non-fiction. Excellent performance and pacing.
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2 people found this helpful
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Michael Petsalis
- 2020-03-03
Poignant, Relevant, Frightening - and too long.
The author details the concept of surveillance capitalism and how companies such as Google and Facebook use it to generate otherworldly profits, and manipulate us without our knowledge. It is an all together frightening book that gets into extreme detail to explain what the perpetrators Of surveillance capitalism are actually doing to us, quite purposefully and with no qualms about the consequences on our humanity.
I fear unfortunately that the author will not achieve her goal to get people to stand up to this. The book is extraordinarily long and detailed, and not easily consumable by most readers today.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Brennen
- 2020-02-18
Required reading for research
Really enjoyed this book. It’s great to have heard such compelling arguments, and accounts, of the need for us to critically explore our digital future. Remember: Who knows? Who decides? Who decides who decides?
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Hermes
- 2020-09-09
Full of keen observations on a timely subject.
So, I will definitely listen again.
Content (not 'overall'): 5/5
Narration: 4.5/5
Writing: 3.5/5
Zuboff's book does have some ideology behind it, though I'm not sure what. At first Ihought for sure she was hard left, later I thought hard right. Maybe she's just hard sensible.
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