Your behaviour is the raw material. Your prediction is the product.
Literal meaning: Surveillance capitalism is Shoshana Zuboff’s term for the economic logic in which human behavioural data is extracted, processed, and sold as prediction products. The raw material is human experience. The product is influence over future behaviour.
Origin: Zuboff published the foundational paper in 2015 and the full argument in The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (2019). She traces the origin to Google’s 2001 decision to mine search query data for advertising targeting — a decision made without user knowledge or consent — and documents how this logic spread to Facebook, the broader platform economy, and beyond.
The economic logic in which human behavioural experience is claimed as raw material, processed into prediction products, and sold — named and analysed by Shoshana Zuboff in 2019.
The Appeal: The commercial logic funds free services. The prediction products enable advertising targeting that generates the revenue that pays for search, social media, and communication infrastructure that billions of people use daily. The trade — free services for behavioural data — produces genuine value.
The Friction: In the Society and Power context, surveillance capitalism is a political-economic architecture, not merely a business model. Technofeudalism — Varoufakis’ extension — argues that surveillance capitalism has created a new class of cloud lords who extract behavioural rent from populations who have no exit. Panopticon — Bentham via Foucault — is the structural model: surveillance that shapes behaviour without requiring continuous observation. Broligarchy is the social class that has accumulated political power through surveillance capitalism’s commercial success. Muskism is the governance vision that follows when the surveillance capitalists become politically dominant.
Why This Matters: Surveillance capitalism in the Society and Power context names the economic foundation of a new political order. Once you see it as political architecture rather than business model, the question is not “how do I opt out?” but “what governance structures would make opting out meaningful?”
Related terms: Technofeudalism · Panopticon · Broligarchy · Muskism · Brussels Effect · Algorithmic Violence · Cyberfeminism
Read more:
- The Age of Surveillance Capitalism — Zuboff, S. (2019). PublicAffairs
- Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism — Varoufakis, Y. (2024). Penguin / Bodley Head