Today's "managerial" capitalism has grown hopelessly out of touch with the people it should be serving. The Support Economy explores the chasm between people and corporations and reveals a new society of individuals who seek relationships of advocacy and trust that provide support for their complex lives.

Unlocking the wealth of these new markets can unleash the next great wave of wealth creation, but it requires a radically new approach--"distributed" capitalism. The Support Economy is a call to action for every citizen who cares about the future.

A Harvard social scientist documents the pitfalls and promise of computerized technology in business life, warning that advanced information technologies present us with a fateful choice: to continue automation at the risk of robbing workers of gratification and self image, or to informate and empower ordinary working people to make critical and collaborative judgments.

Shoshana Zuboff's interdisciplinary breadth and depth enable her to come to grips with the social, political, business, and technological meaning of the changes taking place in our time. We are at a critical juncture no less important than the early twentieth-century battle between the Progressive movement for fairer and broader economic distribution and the concentrated, narrow interests of the robber barons and the trusts.

Today, we confront the vast power of the giant high-tech companies and government, the hidden economic logic of surveillance capitalism, and the propaganda of machine...