Chapter 24: Further Reading — Surveillance Capitalism and AI

Foundational Texts

1. Zuboff, Shoshana. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. PublicAffairs, 2019. The definitive academic and popular account of surveillance capitalism. Zuboff's analysis of how behavioral data became the raw material for a new economic system, how instrumentarian power operates, and what is at stake for human freedom is essential reading for anyone working in technology, media, or policy. Dense but rewarding.

2. Zuboff, Shoshana. "Big Other: Surveillance Capitalism and the Prospects of an Information Civilization." Journal of Information Technology 30 (2015): 75–89. The original academic paper that introduced the surveillance capitalism framework. More accessible than the book for time-constrained readers; available through academic databases.

3. Wu, Tim. The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads. Knopf, 2016. A historical account of the attention economy from the invention of advertising to the social media era. Wu traces how attention became a commercial commodity and what the implications of this commodification are for human experience and democratic culture.

4. Lanier, Jaron. Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now. Henry Holt, 2018. A shorter, accessible critique of social media's behavioral modification architecture by one of Silicon Valley's most prominent critics. Lanier's "BUMMER" framework (Behaviors of Users Modified and Made into an Empire for Rent) is a useful complement to Zuboff's more academic analysis.

AI and Behavioral Advertising

5. O'Neil, Cathy. Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy. Crown, 2016. O'Neil examines how algorithmic systems — including advertising targeting systems — amplify inequality and discrimination. Her analysis of "feedback loops" in which algorithmic decisions create the outcomes they predict is particularly relevant to surveillance capitalism's discriminatory effects.

6. Noble, Safiya Umoja. Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. NYU Press, 2018. An examination of how search algorithms encode and reproduce racial bias, with particular focus on how advertising-funded search creates incentives to surface discriminatory content. Essential reading for understanding the intersection of surveillance capitalism and racial justice.

7. Pariser, Eli. The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You. Penguin Press, 2011. The book that popularized the "filter bubble" concept — the idea that personalization algorithms create information cocoons that reinforce existing beliefs rather than exposing users to diverse perspectives. The analysis remains relevant despite being written before the current era of deep learning recommendation systems.

Workplace Surveillance

8. Andreessen Mapes, Kathleen, et al. "Worker Surveillance: A Review of Practices and Impacts." Work and Occupations, 2023. A comprehensive academic review of the research literature on workplace surveillance, covering health effects, productivity impacts, worker autonomy, and labor relations dimensions.

9. Strategic Organizing Center. "The Injury Machine: How Amazon's Production System Hurts Workers." SOC, 2021. A detailed analysis of Amazon's injury data and its relationship to the algorithmic management system. Freely available at the SOC website. Essential background for the Amazon case study.

10. Kantor, Jodi, and David Streitfeld. "Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace." The New York Times, August 15, 2015. The original in-depth reporting on Amazon's management practices and their effects on workers. The article sparked significant public debate and Amazon's response offers insight into how the company defends its practices.

Public Surveillance

11. Gellman, Barton, and Laura Poitras. "U.S., British Intelligence Mining Data from Nine U.S. Internet Companies in Broad Secret Program." The Washington Post, June 6, 2013. The original reporting on the NSA's PRISM program, based on documents provided by Edward Snowden. Essential context for understanding government use of commercial surveillance infrastructure.

12. Human Rights Watch. "How China's Artificial Intelligence Surveillance Threatens Human Rights Globally." HRW, 2019. A comprehensive report on China's domestic surveillance and the export of surveillance technology to authoritarian governments globally. Contextualizes the Chinese model within a broader international analysis of AI-enabled surveillance and human rights.

13. Valentino-DeVries, Jennifer, et al. "Your Apps Know Where You Were Last Night, and They're Not Keeping It Secret." The New York Times, December 10, 2018. Investigative reporting on the location data broker industry, demonstrating how location data collected by apps is sold and resold through data broker networks. Essential reading for understanding how commercial surveillance data becomes available to government agencies.

Regulatory and Policy Analysis

14. Federal Trade Commission. "Commercial Surveillance and Data Security: Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking." FTC, 2022. The FTC's 2022 notice seeking comment on potential rulemaking to address commercial surveillance practices. The document summarizes the current state of commercial surveillance and identifies specific practices the FTC considers potentially unfair or deceptive. Available at ftc.gov.

15. European Commission. "Digital Services Act — Regulation (EU) 2022/2065." The text of the Digital Services Act, which established comprehensive requirements for online platforms including very large platform obligations related to recommendation systems, advertising targeting, and systemic risk assessment. Available at eur-lex.europa.eu.

16. Andreou, Athanasios, et al. "Measuring the Facebook Advertising Ecosystem." Proceedings of Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS), 2019. An academic measurement study of how Facebook's advertising targeting operates in practice, including documentation of how sensitive categories can be targeted indirectly through behavioral proxies. Demonstrates the gap between Facebook's stated targeting restrictions and what is technically possible.

Children and Digital Media

17. Haidt, Jonathan, and Jean Twenge. "This Is Our Chance to Pull Teenagers Out of the Smartphone Trap." The New York Times, July 31, 2021. A widely read and debated analysis of the relationship between smartphone use, social media, and adolescent mental health, drawing on the same research that features in Facebook's internal documents disclosed by Frances Haugen.

18. Center for Humane Technology. "The Social Dilemma." Film, 2020. A documentary film featuring former employees of major technology companies describing the behavioral design techniques used to maximize engagement. Available on Netflix. Useful for classroom use; critical discussion of the film's framing is valuable for developing media literacy.*

Instructor note: The film presents strong conclusions that exceed the current state of academic consensus in some areas; pair with academic literature for balanced analysis.