Shoshana Zuboff

Zuboff argues that the product is not the free service we use but us: our movements, searches and journeys turned into raw material for predicting what we will do next. She called it «behavioural surplus», and its value grows the better it anticipates — and the more it manages to nudge — what we do.

Applied to the city the argument is direct: sensors, cameras, transit cards and mobility apps produce that surplus at urban scale. Zuboff warns that the issue is not individual privacy but power: whoever predicts the behaviour of a population can modify it without asking anyone's permission.