The Age of Surveillance Capitalism- By Shoshana Zuboff

[Guest longinvestor]

Just finished reading this massive book, 700 pages. Shoshana Zuboff is an American author, Harvard professor, social psychologist, philosopher, and scholar. She is the author of the books In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power and The Support Economy: Why Corporations Are Failing Individuals and the Next Episode of Capitalism, co-authored with James Maxmin.

 

Well researched, Zuboff’s sources for the book include primarily court documents, ex-employees and publicly available interviews of top brass of the leading big tech firms. My own take is that she’s a bit verbose,

repetitive but yet insightful. I found myself ignoring some of her opinion while enjoying her research. At 700 pages, she’s gone quite deep and quite broad into this topic of increasing interest as witnessed by the recent passage of prop 24 in CA. Unsurprisingly she’s been active in putting Prop 24 on the ballot.

 

Whatever our opinion on this, I am predicting that Zuboff goes down as a pioneer especially should the privacy movement gain legs and society reins back the massive surveillance regime of the past two decades.

 

I listened the audiobook.

 

Recommendation: Read a book summary, or an interview of the author and decide if you still want to read the book. You’ll gain some insight that you likely didn’t have.