Cloud capital shatters individuals into manipulable fragments of data

Evidence

Possessive individualism has always been detrimental to mental health. Technofeudalism made things infinitely worse when it demolished the fence that used to provide the liberal individual with a refuge from the market. Cloud capital has shattered the individual into fragments of data, an identity comprised of choices as expressed by clicks, which its algorithms are able to manipulate. It has produced individuals who are not so much possessive as possessed, or rather persons incapable of being self-possessed. It has diminished our capacity to focus by co-opting our attention. We have not become weak-willed. No, our focus has been stolen. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 660

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s attention/surveillance thread and to Zamyatin’s We, where selfhood is dismantled into state-controlled fragments. — connects to: Billions now organize personal lives around data-dependent platform infrastructures — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 585; Digital platforms hijack life into data whose insights are sold back to us; The cloud operates as an episteme that pre-organizes social life for datafication — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 173 (+12 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 660

Broader Connections

• Data extraction infrastructures deform the self that autonomy and freedom depend on #expands (0.92) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 148