Until the last few minutes of human history, each life was foretold in blood and geography, sex and kin, rank and religion. I am my mother's daughter. I am my father's son. The sense of the human being as an individual emerged gradually over centuries, clawed from this ancient vise. Around two hundred years ago, we embarked upon the first modern road where life was no longer handed down one generation to the next according to the traditions of village and clan. This “first modernity” marks the time when life became “individualized” for great numbers of people as they separated from traditional norms, meanings, and rules. That meant each life became an open-ended reality to be discovered rather than a certainty to be enacted. Even where the traditional world remains intact for many people today, it can no longer be experienced as the only possible story.

Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Cap…, loc. 104