Colonial-era information repositories prefigure today’s corporate data centers

Evidence

Speaking of processing centers, it is important to note the role in exploration that the metropolis played as the centralized data bank in which information about colonized territories would be collected, analyzed, and used to assemble maps and other documents. Institutions such as the Casa de la Contratación de las Indias and the Consejo Real y Supremo de las Indias in Spain or the Royal Geographical Society in London would function as information repositories and map production centers at which standardized survey data would be organized into chorographic records and reports on the natural and social history of colonized territories. Other institutions such as the Dutch East India Company maintained extensive botanical gardens to collect knowledge about plant species from the colonies. Centers such as the Society of Jesus in Rome served as clearinghouses of new medical knowledge based on remedies made from New World ingredients, knowledge that would then be disseminated through the connections of these centers to universities. Today, data centers serve similar functions by storing data and “mining” it—a pertinent colonial metaphor—to produce new knowledge for the benefit of corporations. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 313

Categorization

• XREF: Directly feeds the reader’s ‘data colonialism’ frame — maps the historical institution (Casa de Contratación, Royal Geographical Society) onto modern data centers, the core analogical pivot of this rival school. — connects to: The cloud centralizes data ownership in corporations that earlier internet models distributed. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 183; Platform data extraction continues historical colonialism’s logic of appropriation — , The Braided Reading EPUB: 5-Year…, 398; The 4X framework exposes continuity between historical and data colonialism — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 274
• SEED: The ‘mining’ metaphor as colonial inheritance could seed a piece on how data-extraction language smuggles in colonial assumptions about resource ownership.

Broader Connections

• Platform data extraction continues historical colonialism’s logic of appropriation #corroborates (0.82) — , The Braided Reading EPUB, 398
• The 4X framework exposes continuity between historical and data colonialism #corroborates (0.75) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 274