Meet the US scholar who diagnosed ‘surveillance capitalism’

Zuboff speaking to a reporter in her home in Maine. Zuboff is the author of 'The Age Of Surveillance Capitalism', a book about how tech companies collect and use personal data. — AP

A year ago, Shoshana Zuboff dropped an intellectual bomb on the technology industry. She hasn’t stood still since.

In a 700-page book, the Harvard scholar skewered tech giants like Facebook and Google with a damning phrase: “surveillance capitalism”. The unflattering term evokes how these companies vacuum up the details of our lives, make billions from that data and use what they’ve learned to glue our attention more firmly to their platforms.