The digital economy has given rise to a saying that seems to perfectly capture the times we live in: “data is the new oil”. In this Eldorado 2.0 of the digital economy, tech giants like Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Apple, known as Big Tech, collect user data. And they do it more or less in front of their eyes.

Later, however, like the refining of crude oil, the system became extremely sophisticated, and this data was seriously exploited to make money. It has gone from collecting to processing, from processing to harmonizing, and from harmonizing to manipulating consumption habits.

It’s a spiral that continues to grow and, at the top, it seems to be barely revving its engines as artificial intelligence (AI)-based systems are already “warming up” to the edge.

The term that best describes these practices and the system they share is surveillance capitalism.

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