![The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power: Barack Obama's Books of 2019 by [Zuboff, Shoshana]](https://images-fe.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41As8KY5zuL._SY346_.jpg)
Review
Reveals capitalism's most dangerous frontier with stunning clarity...A masterpiece of rare conceptual daring, beautifully written and deeply urgent.
-- "Robert B. Reich, New York Times bestselling author"Everyone needs to read this book as an act of digital self-defense...Zuboff demonstrates not only how our minds are being mined for data but also how they are being rapidly and radically changed in the process.
-- "Naomi Klein, New York Times bestselling author"The rare volume that puts a name on a problem just as it becomes critical.
-- " Wall Street Journal"Unmissable...The Age of Surveillance Capitalism shines a searing light on how this latest revolution is transforming our economy, politics, society-and lives.
-- " Financial Times (London)"[A] comprehensive work of scholarship and synthesis...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.'
-- "New York Times"Product Description
THE TOP 10 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
Shortlisted for the FT Business Book of the Year Award 2019
'Easily the most important book to be published this century. I find it hard to take any young activist seriously who hasn't at least familarised themselves with Zuboff's central ideas.' - Zadie Smith, The Guardian
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 us.
The heady optimism of the Internet's early days is gone. Technologies that were meant to liberate us have deepened inequality and stoked divisions. Tech companies gather our information online and sell it to the highest bidder, whether government or retailer. Profits now depend not only on predicting our behaviour but modifying it too. How will this fusion of capitalism and the digital shape our values and define our future?
Shoshana Zuboff shows that we are at a crossroads. We still have the power to decide what kind of world we want to live in, and what we decide now will shape the rest of the century. Our choices: allow technology to enrich the few and impoverish the many, or harness it and distribute its benefits.
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism is a deeply-reasoned examination of the threat of unprecedented power free from democratic oversight. As it explores this new capitalism's impact on society, politics, business, and technology, it exposes the struggles that will decide both the next chapter of capitalism and the meaning of information civilization. Most critically, it shows how we can protect ourselves and our communities and ensure we are the masters of the digital rather than its slaves.
