Burnham’s cowardice is a cautionary tale. We are living in a moment when surveillance capitalism and its instrumentarian power appear to be invincible. Orwell’s courage demands that we refuse to cede the future to illegitimate power. He asks us to break the spell of enthrallment, helplessness, resignation, and numbing. We answer his call when we bend ourselves toward friction, rejecting the smooth flows of coercive confluence. Orwell’s courage sets us against the relentless tides of dispossession that demean all human experience. Friction, courage, and bearings are the resources we require to begin the shared work of synthetic declarations that claim the digital future as a human place, demand that digital capitalism operate as an inclusive force bound to the people it must serve, and defend the division of learning in society as a source of genuine democratic renewal.

Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Cap…, loc. 1657