Reviews and Comments

I've been making my way through this (audio)book for a year or so. I realised some 15 hours in that it didn't make sense because the files weren't organised correctly (my bad). Because I listened to bits and pieces out of order, I had to work extra hard to get the concepts, which I'm glad for now even though it sucked. Zuboff's analysis here is fantastic. Her breakdown of the machinations of "surveillance capitalism" is one of the most significant contributions to understanding how this particular "species" of capitalism works that I think we are likely to get this half of the twenty-first century. And "we" sure need it.

The book falls short on political solutions however, and the way it's written was frustrating to say the least. Zuboff's faith in markets, even market capitalism, knocks more creative solutions out of her grasp reacting to attacks on liberal democracy, rather than straining for more democratic ways of governance and being in the world.

This book makes a fantastic comparison read alongside Jairus Victor Grove's thrilling/disturbing/enlightening/strange optimism generating Savage Ecology: War and Geopolitics at the End of the World (wyrms.de/book/79246/s/savage-ecology). Stay tuned for my review of that whenever I finish it.