MixedThe Washington Post\"Anyone looking for a systematic treatment of Silicon Valley’s political and economic power will probably be disappointed. Zucked does dabble in the recent history of Silicon Valley and the country to explain how both have turned libertarian, substituting civic engagement at the heart of a vibrant democracy with user engagement at the heart of Facebook’s outsize balance sheet. Such analytical efforts, however, mostly stay on the surface. McNamee is much more convincing on the inner workings of Silicon Valley ... Not all of these parts [in the book] are equally enjoyable. McNamee’s penchant for sharing the life stories of his latest associates and his constant name-dropping often get in the way ... McNamee doesn’t quite provide answers [to what the future of the Internet holds], either, but we can hope that Zucked will trigger just the kind of debate needed to find them.\
Shoshana Zuboff
MixedThe BafflerZuboff...was one of a cohort of thinkers to argue that a new era—some called it \'post-industrial,\' others \'post-Fordist\'—was upon us. It is from within that analysis—and the initial positive expectations it engendered—that Zuboff’s current critique of surveillance capitalism has emerged. It’s also why her latest tome often ventures, in content and language alike, into the turf of the melodramatic ... There’s little doubt that Zuboff’s Copernican revolution is a step backward in our understanding of the dynamics of the digital economy. But even erroneous analytical frameworks can produce beneficial social effects ... Recast as a warning against \'surveillance dataism,\' the book holds up quite well. Anti-data-ist prophecy allows Zuboff to deflect accusations of tautology by downplaying explanations related to capitalist imperatives. Instead, she can claim that \'instrumentarian power\' actually consolidates a broader political logic—perhaps, of Foucault’s \'governmentality\'—which turns capitalist firms into mere pawns in the game of disciplining human behavior.
