The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power

Zuboff confronts the fact that surveillance capitalism differs from market capitalism in three ways: it declares its rights to unbridled freedom and knowledge; it has no interest in reciprocities with the public; and it wants to establish a global, collectivist society, built through Big Other and radical indifference. The concluding chapter then seeks to look at each of these differences and ask if surveillance capitalism is “merely” capitalism, or something else.

While market capitalism stakes its claim to freedom, it embraces ignorance of a kind. Everybody’s lack of knowledge about where the market is going justifies market capitalism’s insistence on the freedom to act. Surveillance capitalism, on the other hand, demands freedom and knowledge. Zuboff argues that this dual ownership of freedom and knowledge means that surveillance capitalism cannot hide under the same argument that market capitalism does to escape regulation. She states, “Surveillance capitalists know too much to qualify for freedom” (467).

Turning to the second difference of reciprocity, which is a hallmark of market capitalism, surveillance capitalism abandons this relationship with the public. Zuboff observes that surveillance capitalism doesn't rely on people as consumers anymore; instead, private businesses are the customer. In this model, the public is turned into an object to exploit and is merely seen as the source of raw material—its behavioral data surplus. Thus, surveillance capitalism is independent from the people, whereas market capitalism relies on the people.

The third and final difference involves surveillance capitalism’s vision of a collectivist future. This collectivist “hive” is a society where surveillance capitalists have a successful hold over knowledge and freedom, making them “society’s self-appointed masters” (472). The hive is built and maintained by radical indifference, a concept in surveillance capitalism’s ideology that disregards the ethics involved in owning the world’s knowledge. Surveillance capitalists ignore the potentially harmful messages of online content as long as the body of content is consistently growing, eventually reaching the size of an all-encompassing network.

Zuboff posits that all three of these facets reflect surveillance capitalism’s antidemocratic nature. She asserts that surveillance capitalism, in its quest to destroy democracy and dominate society, can only be properly referred to as one thing: tyranny. Although she acknowledges that her classification of surveillance capitalism as tyranny conjures frightening images of the future, Zuboff does not end her chapter on a negative note. Instead, she emphasizes that everybody has a role to play in fighting this future, urging that the collective might of the public can—and must—serve as the friction that slows the coercive forces of surveillance capitalism.

Zuboff draws her book to a close by evoking the image of the Berlin Wall. Describing how the Wall fell because of the ferocious cries of those in East Berlin who insisted on an end to oppression, Zuboff encourages her readers to do the same, proclaiming that the public must work together to assert a collective declaration in favor of a democratic digital future.