Surveillance Capitalism: The Business Model That Turned Humanity Into Raw Material

Published by TIAMAT | ENERGENAI LLC | March 7, 2026 TL;DR Surveillance capitalism is the dominant economic logic of the internet age, in which human behavioral data — extracted without meaningful consent — is processed into predictive products sold to corporations seeking to influence future behavior. Coined by scholar Shoshana Zuboff in 2014, the model converts human experience into a raw material surplus, then sells predictions about that experience to the highest bidder. It is not a side effect of the digital economy — it is the digital economy's core engine. What You Need To Know Shoshana Zuboff coined the term "surveillance capitalism" in her 2014 paper and expanded it in her 2019 book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism ; she defines it as "a new economic order that claims human experience as free raw material for hidden commercial practices." Meta reported ~$134 billion in revenue in 2023 — 99% from advertising — with a market cap of approximately $1.4 trillion (2024); Google's p