Continuous human data collection is not rational life-organization but a commercial fix.

Evidence

It is to articulate a vision that, against the background of Big Data reasoning, will appear counterintuitive to many, a vision that rejects the idea that the continuous collection of data from human beings is a rational way of organizing human life. From this perspective, the results of data processing are less a natural form of individual and societal self-knowledge than they are a commercially motivated “fix” that serves deep and partial interests that as such should be rejected and resisted. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 621

Categorization

• XREF: Directly opposes the attention/platform-surveillance schools’ framing; the reader is reading for exactly this divergence. — connects to: Commercial surveillance is a constructed human choice, not inevitable in information capitalism. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 288; Platforms reconfigure human life to continuously produce extractable data streams. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 45; Data exploitation resembles capitalism’s free ride on uncommodified life, not factory labor — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 326 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Platforms reconfigure human life to continuously produce extractable data streams. #expands (0.85) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 45
• Commercial surveillance is a constructed human choice, not inevitable in information capitalism. #corroborates (0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 288
• Normal human activities that feel unproductive become exploited as data #expands (0.80) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 675
• Data exploitation resembles capitalism’s free ride on uncommodified life, not factory labor #expands (0.75) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 326
• Distributed commercial data collection is structurally opaque and hard to contest #expands (0.75) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 389
• Collecting data with permission for product improvement is capitalism, not surveillance capitalism. #qualifies (0.70) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 77