Here is Zuboff’s definition of surveillance capitalism:
Surveillance capitalism… is the foundational framework for a surveillance-based economic order: a surveillance economy.
What does this mean?
We are no longer the subjects of value realization. Nor are we, as some have insisted, the “product” of Google’s sales. Instead, we are the objects from which raw materials are extracted and expropriated.
In short, what industrial capitalism did with physical nature, surveillance capitalism did with human nature.
What’s the problem with that, you might ask? Well, think about the impact of the industrial revolution on physical nature.
As Zuboff says,
The essence of the exploitation here is the rendering of our lives as behavioral data for the sake of others’ improved control of us.
Control and, obviously, modification.
I have to run to class now but tell me, does anybody need page numbers for the quotes? I can provide them if necessary.