Tale on capitalism of surveillance. Notes on the margins

The article speaks on the recent book by Shoshana Zuboff on capitalism of surveillance. However, it aims at better understanding of the subject rather than at promotion of the book. The analytical approach to the substance helps to expose new phenomena and, especially, new notions that build Zuboff’s vision of recent configuration of capitalism. Her story in brief says, that digitalization and smart machines enable behavioral invigilance of persons active online, often without them being conscious either without their acceptance, in aim to make and sell predictions.Those who own smart machines create targeting algorithms, going beyond what users are willing to reveal. The article deals with following questions: Along with development of digital technologies and artificial intelligence, is the change rightly described as information society? Is Zuboff’s stress on invigilation by intelligent machines actually true and based on facts? Is the finding, that capitalism of surveillance has no precedence, enough to claim that this means historical regularities matter no more? As far as the last question concerned, after comparing Zuboff’s argumentation with some synthetized knowledge on capitalism, the response must be negative.