As Google’s Chief Economist, Hal Varian is noted for his significant influence in developing personalized technology and the concept of digital assistants. He played a pivotal role in shaping surveillance capitalist operations and extensive automation predictions.

Mark Zuckerberg is the co-founder and CEO of Facebook, highlighted for his contributions to surveillance capitalism through experiments on social media behaviors. His actions impact psychological and societal dynamics in the digital age.

B. F. Skinner was a psychologist known for radical behaviorism theories and as a former Harvard professor during Zuboff’s graduate years. His behavioral experiments laid foundational ideas that influence modern surveillance capitalism tactics.

Alex Pentland, a former director at MIT’s Media Lab, advanced Skinner’s radical behaviorism into the digital realm. He founded a company that developed devices for tracking productivity, exemplifying modern applications of behavior prediction.