Shoshana Zuboff

Who

American professor, Harvard Business School emerita.

Core Idea

"Surveillance capitalism" — the economic logic by which behavioral data is extracted from human experience, processed into predictions, and sold to modify future behavior. This is a new form of power, not just a new business model.

Key Works

• The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (2019)

Relevance

The vocabulary. "Behavioral modification at scale" is what platforms do. When you talk about how interfaces govern behavior, or how attention is monetized, Zuboff's framework is underneath it. Also useful for clients in civil society — the surveillance capitalism argument explains why organizational communications in surveilled environments require different thinking.

Connected To

• Michel Foucault — surveillance capitalism extends the panopticon into economic logic
• Byung-Chul Han — Han's psychopolitics is the governance-through-desire complement to Zuboff's extraction
• Lawrence Lessig — code as law → code as capital extraction mechanism
• Manuel Castells — who controls behavioral data controls network switches
• Eva Illouz — emotional data is the raw material surveillance capitalism harvests

Notes