The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff

all recorded, rendered as data, processed, analysed, bought, bundled and resold like sub-prime mortgages...not some dystopian imagining of the future, but the present... the totality of information about our every thought, word and deed... traded for profit in new markets based on predicting our every need – or producing it... tech giants unilaterally declared that these previously untapped resources were theirs ... beyond merely strip-mining our intimate inner lives, it seeks to shape, direct and control them ...

psychologist BF Skinner’s development of operant conditioning ... extrapolated ... a politics rooted in total social control ... rejected the very idea of freedom, replacing it with guaranteed outcomes and individual conformity ... embraced ... from the boardrooms ... to governments seeking to both “nudge” their populations towards “better” decisions, and to surveil their inner moods and desires for any signs of deviance, dissent or radical intent...

people are very willing to give up their private information in return for ... ease of use... access to friends and information. Zuboff recasts the conversation ... “decision rights”... fundamentally usurped by predictive, data-driven systems...

substitution of algorithmic certainty for ... participatory, democratic society