This was the crucible of mass society, its hierarchical authority, and its centralized bureaucratic forms of public and private power, all of it haunted by the specters of conformity, obedience, and human standardization. Lives were defined by institutions that mirrored industrial organization: schools, hospitals, and even aspects of family and domestic life, in which ages and stages were understood as functions of the industrial system, from training to retirement.

Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Cap…, loc. 1108