This document corresponds to The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff. The text analyzes the emergence of a new economic model called “surveillance capitalism,” characterized by the massive extraction of data from human experience to transform it into predictive products traded on behavioral futures markets. The work explains how technology companies such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon developed and expanded this model, based on the collection, analysis, and modification of human behavior for commercial purposes.
The text addresses key concepts such as behavioral surplus, behavioral futures markets, instrumental power and instrumentalism, knowledge asymmetries, behavior modification, the surveillance economy, and the transformation of industrial capitalism into informational capitalism. It also examines the ethical, political, and social implications of this system, especially in relation to democracy, individual autonomy, human rights, and the sovereignty of the people.
It emphasizes that surveillance capitalism not only predicts behaviors but also seeks to actively shape them through ubiquitous digital architectures (smart devices, digital platforms, automated systems). The text presents this phenomenon as an unprecedented threat to human nature in the 21st century, comparable to the impact of industrial capitalism on the environment in previous centuries.
The analysis includes the role of large technology corporations in consolidating this model and explains how social dependence on the internet facilitates the normalization of commercial surveillance.
