Metamorphosis of the Self: Technology, Identity, and Power in Late Modernity, with Shoshana Zuboff

Large technology companies have become ubiquitous. Chances are, you've landed on this page thanks to the services provided by one of them. Each of Shoshana Zuboff's major books has marked a new era in technological society. Her latest book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future in the New Frontier of Power, synthesizes years of research and reflection to reveal a world in which technology users are neither customers, nor employees, nor products. They are the raw material for new manufacturing and sales processes that define a new economic order: the surveillance economy. This surveillance economy marks the birth of the latest form of capitalism, which she calls surveillance capitalism, and entails profound transformations in the way power is exercised in contemporary society. As our personal data is increasingly commercialized and institutional orders clash, democracy itself is being put to the test. In keeping with the theme of this year's conference on political theory, this talk will focus on the effects of Big Tech companies on individual subjects. What are they doing to us? How is our very conception of the self transformed
by Big Tech? What are the political implications of the increasing commercialization of human experience? These are just some of the questions Soshana Zuboff's talk will seek to address.

Winner of the Axel Springer Award, Shoshana Zuboff is the Charles Edward Wilson Professor Emerita at Harvard Business School and a former Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School.