Talking Politics

We talk to Shoshana Zuboff about The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, her game-changing account of what's gone wrong with the world of big tech and how to fix it. What is surveillance power and why is it destroying the things we value? How have we allowed this to happen? Where will the resistance come from? Plus we ask whether the real problem here is technology or capitalism itself. With John Naughton.Talking Points: In her new book Zuboff writes, “"surveillance capitalists know too much to qualify for freedom.”What is the relationship between knowledge, freedom, and capitalism?The neoliberal argument is that markets must be free because they are so complex that they are ineffable. No one knew anything, so everyone must be free.Today, the major tech companies are claiming the same thing. But in fact, these same arguments are the opposite of what Hayek and Smith intended because surveillance capitalists make it their business—literally—to know everything.S