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Surveillance capitalism creates two “electronic texts”. The first is the public-facing text which consists in the benefits conferred by the surveillance capitalists’ services, expressed in their self-regarding mission statements. The “universe of information and connection [they] bring to our fingertips” (posts, blogs, likes, photos, spreadsheets, music, tweets etc).

The first text is a sort of Trojan Horse, serving as the “supply operation” for the second, shadow text. Everything we contribute to the first text becomes a target for surplus extraction via the shadow text. This is the ultimate purpose of the services and is hidden from view and only for the purview of the surveillance capitalists.

In this text, our experience is dragooned as raw material to be accumulated and analyzed as means to others’ market ends. The shadow text is a burgeoning accumulation of behavioural surplus and its analyses, and it says more about us than we can know about ourselves. Worse still, it becomes increasingly difficult, and perhaps impossible, to refrain from contributing to the shadow text. It automatically feeds on our experience as we engage in the normal and necessary routines of social participation.

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (2019): 185