Data’s commodifiability rests on abstracting away individual distinctiveness

Evidence

Whether immediately commodifiable or not, the data extracted has potential value in a wider space of equivalence in which the individual’s distinctive properties as a data source can be ignored (this abstractness is exactly how Marx understood commodification to operate). The commodification of exchangeable data is the end goal of data relations and is, as Matthew Crain notes, “the root of [their] power imbalances.” — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 139

Categorization

Category: Definitional Content

• DEFINE: Defines commodification in data relations as the abstraction of individual properties into exchangeable equivalence — the Marxian logic applied to data.
• XREF: Connects to other critiques of data extraction (Zuboff’s surveillance capitalism; Couldry’s own prior work) as well as to the reader’s rival-school reading on data colonialism.

Related

• Data’s abstract interchangeability, Marx’s commodification logic, is the root of data-relation power imbalances. (similarity 0.91)
• Data does not become a commodity until extraction processes demarcate it (similarity 0.85)
• Capitalism is indifferent to the origin of the data it exploits for value. (similarity 0.84)
• Data relations are the social form that makes data extraction seem natural and normal (similarity 0.83)
• Data capitalism’s colonial character rests on unequal global economic power. (similarity 0.82)
• Data colonialism requires transforming society itself, not just extracting value (similarity 0.82)
• Micro-level data relations are rendered commonsensical by extractive rationalities (similarity 0.82)
• Data colonialism can only be understood within the longer history of colonialism and capitalism (similarity 0.81)
• Data colonialism fuses economic and cognitive power in an order as durable as capitalism (similarity 0.81)
• Marx’s trinity of fetishized objects now gains data as a fourth (similarity 0.81)
• Data relations expand by removing all limits to data appropriation (similarity 0.80)
• Data colonialism must be theorized by combining, not choosing among, critical frameworks (similarity 0.80)
• Data extraction stabilizes only when naturalized as a normal social form. (similarity 0.80)
• Datafication ideology removes the obstacles that once limited capital’s extraction from life streams. (similarity 0.80)
• Data relations are becoming as naturalized as labor relations (similarity 0.80)