Understanding Surveillance Capitalism

Surveillance capitalism is defined as a new economic system that reinterprets personal human experience as raw material for generating behavioral data. This system diverges from traditional capitalism by transforming private experiences into commodities without individuals' consent, allowing businesses to create predictive models based on these data. Such data, termed 'behavioral surplus,' derives from activities beyond what is necessary for service improvement, making it an extensive resource for analyzing and forecasting consumer behavior. Consequently, these predictive models, or 'prediction products,' enable companies to monetize insights about future human actions, primarily benefiting the corporations that sell them rather than the individuals whose data is being used.