Data can be added to Marx’s fetishized trinity as the fruit of life processes

Evidence

As discussed in the previous chapter, data colonialism is what happens when human life becomes an input for capitalism. That human life should acquire this particular status under a capitalist system is not strange or new. After all, capitalism seeks to commodify everything, so everything potentially becomes its input. But how “everything” is defined at a specific historical moment is what requires attention. What is unique about our historical moment, we argue, is that human life as organized through data relations becomes the direct input of capitalism, a condition that we describe as specifically and newly colonial. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 160 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Natural resources, or cheap nature, could be exploited by colonialists and capitalists only through employing cheap labor, which framed the productive capacity of a certain class of human beings (first slaves and then workers) as exploitable also. Like cheap nature, cheap social data can be fully capitalized only through the exploitation of cheap labor. But as we argued in chapter 1, data relations are not labor relations in the strict sense of the word. Jason Moore explains that “capitalism must commodify life/work but depends upon the ‘free ride’ of uncommodified life/work to do so.” Similarly, with data colonialism, the exploitation that occurs through social quantification has less to do with the kind of exploitation that happens in a factory and more with the “free ride” that capitalism benefits from when extracting wealth from our broader social lives. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 326 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

This progressive opening up of human life to externally driven data extraction is what we mean by the capitalization of human life without limit. In this phrase, we recognize Marx’s long-standing insight that capitalism has always sought to manage human life for the maximization of profit; at the same time, we emphasize that data colonialism absorbs new aspects of human life streams directly into the productive process. It is not that social limits to life’s capitalization can no longer be imagined—indeed, the whole point of this book is to argue for the necessity of such limits—but that, as things currently stand, much corporate discourse fails to recognize any limits except those that it sets itself. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 68 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Human life as organized through data is the new direct input of capitalism — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 160; Data colonialism expands capitalism by absorbing previously uncommodified life streams — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 68; 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 (+1 more)

Related

• Human life as organized through data is the new direct input of capitalism (similarity 0.95)
• Data colonialism expands capitalism by absorbing previously uncommodified life streams (similarity 0.93)
• Data extraction extends capitalism’s exploitation to all human life, echoing colonial raw-material logic (similarity 0.92)
• Data exploitation resembles capitalism’s free ride on uncommodified life, not factory labor (similarity 0.92)
• Data colonialism extracts ever more layers of human life as raw material (similarity 0.91)
• Data colonialism completes capitalism’s shift from extracting nature to extracting social life. (similarity 0.90)
• Data colonialism fuses economic and cognitive power in an order as durable as capitalism (similarity 0.90)
• Data extraction is historically unprecedented yet clarifies through colonial-capitalist continuity. (similarity 0.90)
• Data colonialism annexes human life itself to capital (similarity 0.89)
• Data colonialism’s raw material is human life itself, not territory or labor (similarity 0.89)
• Data colonialism extends neoliberal ideology by appropriating all of life, not just non-market spheres. (similarity 0.89)
• Capitalism is poised to consume its last remaining outside via data (similarity 0.88)
• Data extraction annexes life processes beyond productive labor (similarity 0.88)
• Data colonialism is a literal process, not merely a metaphor (similarity 0.88)
• Datafication ideology removes the obstacles that once limited capital’s extraction from life streams. (similarity 0.88)

Broader Connections

• Human life as organized through data is the new direct input of capitalism #corroborates (0.80) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 160
• Data exploitation resembles capitalism’s free ride on uncommodified life, not factory labor #corroborates (0.78) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 326
• Data colonialism expands capitalism by absorbing previously uncommodified life streams #expands (0.75) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 68