Under surveillance capitalism, the “means of production” serves the “means of behavioral modification.” Machine processes replace human relationships so that certainty can replace trust. This new assembly relies upon a vast digital apparatus, world-historic concentrations of advanced computational knowledge and skill, and immense wealth. The arc of behavioral modification at scale integrates the many operations that we have examined: ubiquitous extraction and rendition, actuation (tuning, herding, conditioning), behavioral surplus supply chains, machine-intelligence–based manufacturing processes, fabrication of prediction products, dynamic behavioral futures markets, and “targeting,” which leads to fresh rounds of tuning, herding, conditioning, and the coercions of the uncontract, thus renewing the cycle.

Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Cap…, loc. 1115