Totnes Left Book Club: Surveillance Capitalism
📅 Wednesday 25th June, 7.30pm
📍 The Snug at The Bay Horse Inn, Totnes (or in the garden if the sun’s out!)
📚 Free, friendly, and open to all – no need to have read the book
Join us for our next Left Book Club gathering, where we’ll be using Shoshana Zuboff’s landmark work The Age of Surveillance Capitalism as a springboard for a wide-ranging discussion on power, privacy, and digital domination.
Described as “a masterwork of rare conceptual daring” and winner of multiple accolades including the Axel Springer Award and being shortlisted for the FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year, this critically acclaimed book explores how big tech firms extract, commodify, and manipulate our personal data in ways that reshape democracy, autonomy, and society itself.
We’ll also touch on how Zuboff’s analysis compares – and contrasts – with Technofeudalism by Yanis Varoufakis, which we read last year. While both books examine the new economic architectures of the digital age, Zuboff zeroes in on surveillance and behavioural prediction as the heart of a novel and dangerous capitalist logic.
As always, this is a space for open, inclusive, and critical conversation. The book is our launchpad, not a requirement – feel free to come along whether you’ve read it cover to cover, skimmed a few pages, or just want to join in the discussion.
Grab a drink, pull up a chair, and let’s dig into the forces shaping our digital future – and how we might resist them.
The Totnes Left Book Club is open to everyone – no academic background or political purity required, just an interest in ideas and a curiosity about the world. Our reading list is shaped collectively by members, and we explore a wide range of topics including left-wing politics, economics, cultural theory, and political philosophy. While we mostly read non-fiction, we occasionally dive into fiction too - especially when it helps illuminate political themes or sparks great conversation. You can join our Facebook group to stay up to date with upcoming events, see what books we’ve read in the past, and suggest titles for future meetings - and invite your local leftie friends! .
https://m.facebook.com/groups/1824942974987216/?ref=share
Also check out other Meetups in Totnes.
