Really interesting so far.
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Why can't I read all these books!? 🍋🟩
🍵 Lots of nonfiction, literary fiction, poetry, classical literature, speculative fiction, magical realism, etc.
📖 Beaucoup de non-fiction et de fiction, de poésie, des classiques, du spéculatif, du réalisme magique, etc.
💬 they/them ; iel/lo 💌 Find me on Mastodon: silvan.cloud/@gersande
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Gersande La Flèche's books
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2025 Reading Goal
50% complete! Gersande La Flèche has read 6 of 12 books.
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Gersande La Flèche commented on The Unaccountability Machine by Dan Davies
Part-biography, part-political thriller, The Unaccountability Machine is a rousing exposé of how management failures lead …
Push and pull, suggest, nudge, cajole, shame, seduce: Google wants to be your copilot for life itself. Each human response to each commercial prompt yields more data to refine into better prediction products. (..). The stakes are high in this market frontier, where unpredictable behavior is the equivalent of lost revenue.
— The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff (18%)

andbenn reviewed The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff
I knew it was bad, but ... wow
5 stars
I had no idea this book was this large when I borrowed it from a library. It somehow hit my list and came up in rotation. It's 700 pages, but just over 500 pages of content. The rest is reference material, notes and bibliography.
The author does a fantastic way of describing the recent history of data surveillance and how it's been monetized. We aren't really the product, but are the objects where raw material is mined for prediction engines that attempt to figure out how we will act or nudge us to act.
The first part deals with big tech. There's a part about totalitarianism, then moving into recent psychology and how all these are tied together.
Expect 10-15+ hours of reading with this. Value!
This made me and keeps me thinking. Wonderful book, but probably not for all.

Vital Analysis; Uninspiring Dreaming
3 stars
I've been making my way through this (audio)book for a year or so. I realised some 15 hours in that it didn't make sense because the files weren't organised correctly (my bad). Because I listened to bits and pieces out of order, I had to work extra hard to get the concepts, which I'm glad for now even though it sucked. Zuboff's analysis here is fantastic. Her breakdown of the machinations of "surveillance capitalism" is one of the most significant contributions to understanding how this particular "species" of capitalism works that I think we are likely to get this half of the twenty-first century. And "we" sure need it.
The book falls short on political solutions however, and the way it's written was frustrating to say the least. Zuboff's faith in markets, even market capitalism, knocks more creative solutions out of her grasp reacting to attacks on liberal democracy, rather …
I've been making my way through this (audio)book for a year or so. I realised some 15 hours in that it didn't make sense because the files weren't organised correctly (my bad). Because I listened to bits and pieces out of order, I had to work extra hard to get the concepts, which I'm glad for now even though it sucked. Zuboff's analysis here is fantastic. Her breakdown of the machinations of "surveillance capitalism" is one of the most significant contributions to understanding how this particular "species" of capitalism works that I think we are likely to get this half of the twenty-first century. And "we" sure need it.
The book falls short on political solutions however, and the way it's written was frustrating to say the least. Zuboff's faith in markets, even market capitalism, knocks more creative solutions out of her grasp reacting to attacks on liberal democracy, rather than straining for more democratic ways of governance and being in the world.
This book makes a fantastic comparison read alongside Jairus Victor Grove's thrilling/disturbing/enlightening/strange optimism generating Savage Ecology: War and Geopolitics at the End of the World (wyrms.de/book/79246/s/savage-ecology). Stay tuned for my review of that whenever I finish it.
Gersande La Flèche commented on The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff
This book is extremely dense and I'm reading it on the metro or during study breaks. However, the more I read, the more I'm alarmed, and I consider myself someone who has been relatively immersed in these issues, since the late 00s.
Gersande La Flèche started reading The Unaccountability Machine by Dan Davies

Dan Davies: The Unaccountability Machine (Hardcover, 2024, Profile Books Limited)
The Unaccountability Machine by Dan Davies
Part-biography, part-political thriller, The Unaccountability Machine is a rousing exposé of how management failures lead organisations to make catastrophic errors. …
As competition intensifies, surveillance capitalists learn that extracting human experience is not enough. (..). New automated protocols are designed to influence and modify our behaviour at scale as the means of production is subordinated to a new and more complex means of behaviour modification.
— The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff (Page 2)
For all of Google's technological prowess and computational talent, the real credit for its success goes to the radical social relations that the company declared as facts, beginning with its disregard for the boundaries of human private experience and the moral integrity of the autonomous individual.
— The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff (Page 2)
Dense language snowballing a little here.
Gersande La Flèche replied to leifur's status
@leifur I hear really good things!!!
That surveillance capitalism is a logic in action and not a technology is a vital point because surveillance capitalists want is to think that their practices are inevitable expressions of the technologies they employ.
— The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff (2%)
Gersande La Flèche started reading The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff
Was mentioned in the recent Philosophy Tube video essay. Am reading very slowly during Pomodoro breaks from exam prep.
Gersande La Flèche wants to read Thyme Travellers by Sonia Sulaiman
Thyme Travellers collects fourteen of the Palestinian diaspora’s best voices in speculative fiction. Speculative fiction …
This would have made it on my TBR for the title alone, but also this looks rad as heck.
Gersande La Flèche commented on L'affaire Jeanson: l'engrenage by Alain Gravel
Suivez le fil de cette enquête où Alain Gravel nous emmène dans la tête de …
Je vole à travers les pages, le cœur un peu brisé.
Gersande La Flèche started reading L'affaire Jeanson: l'engrenage by Alain Gravel

Alain Gravel: L'affaire Jeanson: l'engrenage (Paperback, français language, Voix Parallèles)
L'affaire Jeanson: l'engrenage by Alain Gravel
Suivez le fil de cette enquête où Alain Gravel nous emmène dans la tête de Geneviève Jeanson. Tentez vous-même de …