Harvard Business School professor emerita Shoshana Zuboff argues in
her new book that the Valley’s wealth and power are predicated on an insidious,
essentially pathological form of private enterprise—what she calls
“surveillance capitalism.” Pioneered by Google, perfected by Facebook, and now
spreading throughout the economy, surveillance capitalism uses human life as
its raw material. Our everyday experiences, distilled into data, have become a
privately-owned business asset used to predict and mold our behavior, whether we’re
shopping or socializing, working or voting.