Abstract

Starting from S. Zuboff’s book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, the article focuses on the conceptualization of labour within this paradigm. In particular, it analyzes how the involuntary extraction of data from daily experience on which surveillance capitalism is based – through complex processes involving artificial intelligence, algorithms, and behavioral predictive mechanisms – makes the boundary between productive and unproductive actions increasingly blurred and, therefore, raises the question of whether we are dealing with a new form of hidden work or not. After explaining how this mechanism works, the article explores differences with previous conceptualizations of hidden work showing how this time it is different and more related to the potential commodification of every human action.