Now the story of surveillance capitalism moves in this new direction. In Part II, I invite you to rekindle your sense of astonishment as we follow the trail of this second economic imperative defined by the prediction of human behavior. The prediction imperative enlarges the complexity of surplus operations as economies of scale are joined by economies of scope and economies of action. These new disciplines drive surveillance capitalism far into the intimate reaches of our daily lives and deep into our personalities and our emotions. Ultimately, they compel the development of highly inventive but resolutely secret new means to interrupt and modify our behavior for the sake of surveillance revenues. These operations challenge our elemental right to the future tense, which is the right to act free of the influence of illegitimate forces that operate outside our awareness to influence, modify, and condition our behavior. We grow numb to these incursions and the ways in which they deform our lives. We succumb to the drumbeat of inevitability, but nothing here is inevitable. Astonishment is lost but can be found again.

Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Cap…, loc. 612