The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power

Zuboff uses her first chapter to introduce the concept of surveillance capitalism, seeking to ensure that her readers understand the titular concept before presenting her book’s thesis. To familiarize her audience with the term, Zuboff dedicates an entire page mimicking a dictionary entry which breaks down the many different facets and varied definitions of surveillance capitalism. An unprecedented economic order, surveillance capitalism targets human behavior as its raw material to process for profit. In describing how entire human lives are turned into patterns of data and secretly used for others’ benefit, Surveillance Capitalism’s introduction establishes precisely how significant a threat this form of capitalism is to society, democracy, and humanity.

After explaining the dangers of surveillance capitalism, Zuboff presents her thesis. She argues that because surveillance capitalism is unprecedented, society has no tools to defeat its dangers. The current trajectory of modernity has led to the creation of an information civilization, which is confusing to the mass public in its complexity, demanding responsibilities and socio-economic instabilities. The confusion caused by such forces paralyzes the public, making them incapable of fighting off the exploitative reach of surveillance capitalism. In presenting her thesis, Zuboff reflects on the purpose of her book, musing, “[This book] is animated by the conviction that fresh observation, analysis, and new naming are required if we are to grasp the unprecedented as a necessary prelude to effective contest” (20). Thus, Surveillance Capitalism wishes to awaken people to the realities of their current society, educating them on the theory and practice of the oppressive forces at work in their lives, and igniting a fire of resistance within citizens around the globe. Zuboff insists that society is at the precipice of succumbing to surveillance capitalism’s false promises of a technological utopia as it chips away at basic civil liberties and human rights in the process. One of her central themes is that only an educated, aware populace united in solidarity against this force can succeed in fighting its influence. With The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, Zuboff wishes to give people the tools in order to start this process of resistance.

A notable aspect to the introduction is the section explaining the book’s methodology. In seeking to argue that surveillance capitalism is a real and present danger, Zuboff states that she has decided to rely on an interdisciplinary approach, drawing from disciplines such as history, economics, philosophy, and the social sciences to incorporate qualitative analysis alongside quantitative information. Zuboff emphasizes the depth of research she conducted in writing The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. In addition to the multi-disciplinary readings she completed to build her thesis and explore the theory of surveillance capitalism, she explains the 12 years of research she conducted to track the practical, real-life effects of surveillance capitalism. Zuboff conducted interviews with businessmen, entrepreneurs, and staff of various technology companies in both the United States and United Kingdom; hunted down and analyzed patents that technology firms submitted for new innovations; sorted through hours of speeches, interviews, and public presentations by firms’ CEOs; and read through companies’ policies and programs. As such, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism relies on both secondary sources (e.g. histories and theoretical texts) but also on a healthy amount of primary sources (e.g. patents and the interviews Zuboff conducted). Above all, the introduction wishes to make clear that Zuboff is not critiquing the relationship between technology and our society out of any personal vendetta, but rather because her extensive research has brought her to one conclusion: that surveillance capitalism is a real and potentially devastating threat to our society.