Dispossession may be an act of “simple robbery” in theory, but in fact it is a complex, highly orchestrated political and material process that exhibits discernible stages and predictable dynamics. The theory of change exhibited here systematically transfers knowledge and rights from the many to the few in a glorious fog of Page’s “automagic.” It catalogues public contest as the unfortunate but predictable outcry of foolish populations who exhibit a knee-jerk “resistance to change,” wistfully clinging to an irretrievable past while denying an inevitable future: Google’s future, surveillance capitalism’s future. The theory indicates that opposition must simply be weathered as the signature of the first difficult phases of incursion. It assumes that opposition is fleeting, like the sharp yelp of pain when a Novocain needle first pierces the flesh, before numbness sets in.

Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Cap…, loc. 495