... a doorstop of a book, an intensively researched, engagingly written chronicle of surveillance capitalism’s origins and its deleterious prospects for our society ... [The book's contents] may sound a little heady, like perhaps an overseasoned stew of po-mo economic jargon, but Zuboff will have you asking for another helping long before the book’s end ... Zuboff’s capacious book has room for minority opinions and other forms of dissent. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism may lack a straightforward political program — Zuboff comes across as a liberal, albeit not one who slots neatly on the left-right axis — but it is loaded with useful economic, technological and anthropological analysis ... orks of technology criticism are often expected to provide a few hundred pages of doomsaying before providing a concise final chapter in which the Gordian knot of our problems is neatly and improbably cut. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, with its near-700-page footprint, is thankfully not that kind of book.

It’s a testament to how extraordinarily intelligent her book is that by the time I was compared to an elephant carcass, I resisted the urge to toss it across the room ... Zuboff... has a dramatic streak that could come off as simply grandiose if she didn’t so painstakingly make her case ... Zuboff can get overheated with her metaphors; an extended passage with tech executives as Spanish conquistadors and the rest of us as indigenous peoples is frankly ridiculous, even if I can understand how Zuboff thought the phrase 'rivers of blood' would get her urgency across ... Absorbing Zuboff’s methodical determination, the way she pieces together sundry examples into this comprehensive work of scholarship and synthesis, requires patience, but the rewards are considerable — a heightened sense of awareness, and a deeper appreciation of what’s at stake.

Her book is not without flaws. It is far too long, often overwrought, and employs far too much jargon. Its treatment of Google, which dominates the first half, will strike anyone who has spent time in the industry as too conspiracy-minded, even for those disposed to be critical. Other books...offer more technically sophisticated coverage of much of the same territory. But I view all of this as forgivable, because Zuboff has accomplished something important. She has given new depth, urgency, and perspective to the arguments long made by privacy advocates and others concerned about the rise of big tech and its data-collection practices. By providing the crucial link between technological surveillance and power, she makes previous complaints about 'creepiness' or 'privacy intrusions' look quaint. This is achieved, in part, through her creation of a vocabulary that captures the significance of tech surveillance ... Viewed broadly, Zuboff has made two important contributions here. The first is to tell us something about the relationship between capitalism and totalitarian systems of control. The second is to deliver a better and deeper understanding of what, in the future, it will mean to protect human freedom.

A long, sprawling book ... While Zuboff’s assessment of the costs that people incur under surveillance capitalism is exhaustive, she largely ignores the benefits people receive in return — convenience, customization, savings, entertainment, social connection, and so on. The benefits can’t be dismissed as illusory, and the public can no longer claim ignorance about what’s sacrificed in exchange for them ... a full examination of surveillance capitalism requires as rigorous and honest an accounting of its boons as of its banes ... Zuboff is prone to wordiness and hackneyed phrasing, and she at times delivers her criticism in overwrought prose that blunts its effect. A less tendentious, more dispassionate tone would make her argument harder for Silicon Valley insiders and sympathizers to dismiss. The book is also overstuffed. Zuboff feels compelled to make the same point in a dozen different ways when a half dozen would have been more than sufficient. Here, too, stronger editorial discipline would have sharpened the message ... Whatever its imperfections, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism is an original and often brilliant work, and it arrives at a crucial moment, when the public and its elected representatives are at last grappling with the extraordinary power of digital media and the companies that control it ... challenges assumptions, raises uncomfortable questions about the present and future, and stakes out ground for a necessary and overdue debate. Shoshana Zuboff has aimed an unsparing light onto the shadowy new landscape of our lives. The picture is not pretty.

Zuboff...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.

The rare volume that puts a name on a problem just as it becomes critical ... There are times when Ms. Zuboff seems melodramatic. Her case is stronger when she marshals facts than when she ratchets up the rhetoric. Yes, we stand to lose a lot. But this book’s major contribution is to give a name to what’s happening, to put it in cultural and historical perspective, and to ask us to pause long enough to think about the future and how it might be different from today.

[Zuboff] is not the first to expose the iniquities of Big Tech, but she is the most comprehensive and impassioned ... This is an important book, the most thorough take down of Big Tech I have read. It is, however, too long and too eccentric. Descriptions of her personal journey do not add to Zuboff’s authority and nor does the broadening of her case to include the usual demon of neoliberalism and, for some reason, the riots in Britain in 2011. She should do a shorter, punchier version if she really wants to promote resistance and outrage among the ordinary punters...

... [an] important new book ... Combining in-depth technical understanding and a broad, humanistic scope, Zuboff has written what may prove to be the first definitive account of the economic – and thus social and political – condition of our age.

Zuboff’s massive The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (at 700-plus pages) will surely become a pivotal work in defining, understanding and exposing this surreptitious exploitation of our data and, increasingly, our free will ... She meticulously demonstrates how Google, initially a financially struggling search engine, pioneered surveillance capitalism ... [a] slow, focused burn ... her concluding hope is that her dense, thoughtful, at times furious text might be the start of needed public resistance, a determined push to make technology work for, not against us. Her articulate analysis is a badly needed fortification for launching such an effort ... Zuboff’s is the essential, if at times challenging text.

Exhaustive, often repetitive ... thoughtfully examines the economic and philosophical implications of surveillance capitalism ... A big, sprawling, and alarming case for 'the darkening of the digital dream.' This will appeal to specialists; general readers will wish it were much shorter.