Data are a physical raw material requiring sensing, storage, and cleaning infrastructure.

Evidence

A key argument of this chapter is that in the twenty-first century advanced capitalism came to be centred upon extracting and using a particular kind of raw material: data. But it is important to be clear about what data are. In the first place, we will distinguish data (information that something happened) from knowledge (information about why something happened). Data may involve knowledge, but this is not a necessary condition. Data also entail recording, and therefore a material medium of some kind. As a recorded entity, any datum requires sensors to capture it and massive storage systems to maintain it. Data are not immaterial, as any glance at the energy consumption of data centres will quickly prove (and the internet as a whole is responsible for about 9.2 per cent of the world’s electricity consumption). We should also be wary of thinking that data collection and analysis are frictionless or automated processes. Most data must be cleaned and organised into standardised formats in order to be usable. Likewise, generating the proper algorithms can involve the manual entry of learning sets into a system. Altogether, this means that the collection of data today is dependent on a vast infrastructure to sense, record, and analyse. What is recorded? Simply put, we should consider data to be the raw material that must be extracted, and the activities of users to be the natural source of this raw material. Just like oil, data are a material to be extracted, refined, and used in a variety of ways. The more data one has, the more uses one can make of them. — Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, 43

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines data against knowledge and grounds data in material infrastructure — recording, sensors, storage, electricity, cleaning.
• XREF: The data-as-raw-material/oil framing is the central contention Srnicek poses against Zuboff’s surveillance capitalism thesis; the 9.2% electricity figure is a concrete fact to cite. — connects to: Human data requires active configuration and aggregation before it becomes economically valuable. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 45; Data infrastructure lets markets and states produce basic social knowledge for the first time. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 89; Physical space is being redesigned as browse-able environments of sensor data — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 647 (+3 more)

Related

• Human data requires active configuration and aggregation before it becomes economically valuable. (similarity 0.85)
• Pervasive data sensing is built into basic computing architecture, not merely added by platforms. (similarity 0.84)
• Falling recording costs turned data from peripheral to central capitalist resource. (similarity 0.83)
• Researchers aim to translate every physical space and behavior into searchable information (similarity 0.82)
• Data infrastructure lets markets and states produce basic social knowledge for the first time. (similarity 0.82)
• Physical space is being redesigned as browse-able environments of sensor data (similarity 0.81)
• Data is defined by its external storage infrastructure and profit destination (similarity 0.81)
• Google’s surveillance power depends on massive physical data infrastructure (similarity 0.81)
• Data is a social by-product, not a natural substance, captured by distant third parties (similarity 0.80)
• Under surveillance capitalism the product is behavioral data, not the goods themselves (similarity 0.79)
• Renting cloud infrastructure yields data extraction alongside rental income (similarity 0.79)
• Daily life is now comprehensively recorded into a continuous electronic text (similarity 0.78)
• Data centers could consume up to 13 percent of global electricity by 2030 (similarity 0.78)
• Google applies web-indexing methods to physically master reality (similarity 0.78)
• Collecting data with permission for product improvement is capitalism, not surveillance capitalism. (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Google’s surveillance power depends on massive physical data infrastructure #expands (0.85) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 590
• Researchers aim to translate every physical space and behavior into searchable information #expands (0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 650
• Physical space is being redesigned as browse-able environments of sensor data #expands (0.75) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 647