"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 marketplace that aims at nothing less than predicting and modifying our everyday behavior--where we go, what we do, what we say, how we feel, who we're with. The consequences of surveillance capitalism for us as individuals and as a society vividly come to life in The Age of Surveillance Capitalism's pathbreaking analysis of power. The threat has shifted from a totalitarian 'big brother' state to a universal global architecture of automatic sensors and smart capabilities: A 'big other' that imposes a fundamentally new form of power and unprecedented concentrations of knowledge in private companies--free from democratic oversight and control"--

Introduction. Home or exile in the digital future -- Part I. The foundations of surveillance capitalism. August 9, 2011 : setting the stage for surveillance capitalism ; The discovery of behavioral surplus ; The moat around the castle ; The elaboration of surveillance capitalism : kidnap, corner, compete ; Hijacked : the division of learning in society -- Part II. The advance of surveillance capitalism. The reality business ; Rendition : from experience to data ; Rendition from the depths ; Make them dance ; The right to the future tense -- Part III. Instrumentarian power for a third modernity. Two species of power ; Big Other and the rise of instrumentarian power ; A utopia of certainty ; The instrumentarian collective ; Of life in the hive ; The right to sanctuary -- Conclusion. A coup from above.