The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power
by Shoshana Zuboff · first published 2018
58% recommend42% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Thorough analysis of how Google and other big platforms profit from collecting user data and modifying behavior at scale. Suits readers wanting to grasp the scale of the privacy problem, though it is not a how-to.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
"Shoshana Zuboff, named "the true prophet of the information age" by the Financial Times, has always been ahead of her time. Her seminal book In the Age of the Smart Machine foresaw the consequences of a then-unfolding era of computer technology. Now, three decades later she asks why the once-celebrated miracle of digital is turning into a nightmare. Zuboff tackles the social, political, business, personal, and technological meaning of "surveillance capitalism" as an unprecedented new market form. It is not simply about tracking us and selling ads, it is the business model for an ominous new m
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The Age of Surveillance Capitalism is going to be a seminal book. I am looking forward to receiving my personal copy tomorrow (release is January 15).
on “‘The Age of Surveillance Capitalism’ Review” ↗List plain text (from https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2019-...) “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power,” by Shoshana Zuboff “The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company,” by William Dalrymple “Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud…
on “Obama lists his favorite books of 2019” ↗…(GPS-wise), how often we play them, the collective profiling of us based on what we download in general...and many other things we don't even know about. After listening to Shoshana Zuboff's audiobook 'The Age of Surveillance Capitalism' - the most important book I have ever read on technology - I am very aware of this. The data companies don't want us to be aware of what they're doing to us. I'm not condoning piracy, and I believe…
on “GitHub reinstates Popcorn Time code” ↗…will be, and Google and Facebook have shown you can make tens of billions off of personal data and attention. To me it's fundamentally immoral. To see the terrifying endgame to all this, check out "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism" by Shoshana Zuboff.
on “Apple, FedEx and the cookie apocalypse” ↗While the article mentioned McNamee and "Zucked", on the topic of behavioral manipulation strategy by big tech, there's a much better, more thorough recent book: The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff, a professor emerita of economics at Harvard. It's an excellent analysis of what big tech is doing, and where it's heading. Just one quote from an interview in this review: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jan/20/shoshana-...…
on “Facebook was called a 'chaos factory' and maker of 'data voodoo dolls'” ↗If you are legitimately interested in understanding this train of thought, I highly recommend checking out the book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff (sp?)
A lot of this is described in the book ‘The Age of Surveillance Capitalism’ by author Professor Shoshana Zuboff[1]. There’s also a good documentary on Netflix (I forget which, I think it’s ‘The Great Hack’[2]), explaining how the ‘Cambridge Analytica’ scandal utilised personal…
on “After a week at my mom’s house I'm getting ads for her toothpaste brand” ↗…be so surface level for anyone with even a passing familiarity with the problem that it wasn't worth my time. What really helped me was these two books: (1) The Attention Merchants by Tim Wu (2) The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshanna Zuboff and the nextdns.io installed on all my devices. I literally blocked Reddit, et al to break the cycle of "I just woke up so I'mm scroll until I'm fully awake" and then oops -- an hour…
on “Why do you waste so much time on the internet?” ↗A book i can highly recommend is "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism" by Professor Shoshana Zuboff from the Harvard Business School. TLDR "commercial purposes" include selling data in bulk to government agencies, which could not seize such data without a warrant and judicial…
on “TikTok Spied on Forbes Journalists” ↗This article reviews Shoshana Zuboff's The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (https://www.amazon.com/Age-Surveillance-Capitalism-Future-Fr...). A worthwhile and detailed analysis of modern social computer systems and the issues associated with survveillance. The question is,…
on “NY Times Review: Age of Surveillance Capitalism Review” ↗Worth reading in this regard: Shoshana Zubhoff's The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. https://www.amazon.com/Age-Surveillance-Capitalism-Future-Fr...
on “Ask HN: Is there any social network you trust?” ↗1. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, by Shoshana Zuboff https://www.worldcat.org/title/age-of-surveillance-capitalis... 2. The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company,…
on “Obama lists his favorite books of 2019” ↗I am about 1/3 through reading “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism” by Shoshana Zuboff and while it is a very long read, I recommend it as good survival reading. I have never been as concerned about privacy as I am about manipulation and forced social engineering. For…
on “Big tech is testing you” ↗If you haven't read it already, I highly recommend "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism" by Shoshana Zuboff. It's not exactly a 'how to' manual for privacy, but it is helpful for understanding the scale of the problem.
on “Google tracking a bike ride past a burglarized home made the rider a suspect” ↗There is a very good book that I am reading that might change your mind: The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power by Shoshana Zuboff. Another book I really recommend is Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing - Resisting the Attention Economy. You make good points…
on “No cookie consent walls, scrolling isn’t consent, says EU data protection body” ↗