Shoshana Zuboff discloses the capital framework that exists in the digital world. Surveillance capitalism is essentially shifting the democratic possibilities that control human behavior. Different big technology corporations in Silicon Valley have assigned material worth to data on human behavior. Surveillance capitalism is different from information capitalism in that it is based on the commodification of behavioral analysis and threatens the development of our current socioeconomic order. Zuboff expands on the ideas of Castells, Marx, and Tessa Morris-Suzuki that capitalism is, in part, a story of intensification and abstraction. The new form of information capitalism is based on this concept and is the most recent step in capitalism’s pursuit of abstraction, albeit in a much more intense and technologically advanced manner.
Zuboff disagreed with the position of Castells that information capitalism was using digital technology to shift from an agricultural to an industrial society, maintaining that it was not a big deal. She stated that it would later advance to digital capitalism, which is applied by Silicon Valley and is often misconceived by people. Surveillance capitalism is not an arbitrary term since surveillance must be actions that are considered indecipherable and undetectable and aim to misdirect us using our digital traces. Google, Apple, and Facebook have used various strategies to trap us, demonstrating that surveillance is not a healthy form of capitalism.
Big Data dominance, prompted by neoliberal globalization, has compelled these massive, fundamental, and incongruent changes to information capitalism. At the moment, these companies, their interests, and concerns are increasingly in charge of the Internet’s fundamental architecture and security. As such, digital capitalism, which emerged in the early 2000s, uses and exploits digital capabilities to achieve its goals, such as selling data to businesses to maximize people’s value in their businesses.
Surveillance capitalism provides the raw material for big tech companies, like Google and Facebook, for their highly lucrative digital products, such as Google’s Nest Security. Zuboff maintains that people’s misconceptions about surveillance capitalism play a big part in making these companies continue to thrive. For example, Google discovered how to capture more behavioral data than it needed for operations and used it to develop prediction products for its commercial customers, which were generally advertisements. Beyond IT firms, the Internet’s economic logic has expanded to new surveillance-based ecosystems in practically every economic sector, from finance to automobiles to education, to every smart and personalized product and service.