Data capture for profit is a recent, quality-of-life-altering development

Evidence

A few words of clarification about the term social quantification sector are needed. When we say social quantification sector, we use the word social to refer to that constantly changing space of relations and interconnections on which the quality of human life depends but whose meaning is endlessly contested in political and civic struggle. When we use the word social, we do not necessarily mean a well-ordered or well-integrated way of living together. For at issue in this whole transformation is precisely the quality of life that human beings will have together in the new capitalist social order. The capture of personal data through social caching and its storage for later profitable use—normal today but two decades ago barely imaginable—has major implications for our quality of life as human beings. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 38

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines their deliberately agonal sense of the ‘social’ that grounds the data-colonialism claim.
• QUESTION: The phrase ‘two decades ago barely imaginable’ — worth pinning the exact inflection point of ubiquitous capture for later profiteering.
• XREF: connects to: Measuring attention as data enables treating it as a monetizable resource; Data colonialism extends profit extraction to every layer of human experience — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 25; Digital platforms hijack life into data whose insights are sold back to us (+13 more)

Broader Connections

• Measuring attention as data enables treating it as a monetizable resource #expands (0.90)
• Bing’s data-capture scale made it profitable for the first time in 2015 #exemplifies (0.90) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 507
• Digital assistants convert inner life into calculable behavioral surplus for others’ profit #expands (0.90) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 796
• Data colonialism extends profit extraction to every layer of human experience #expands (0.85) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 25
• Digital platforms hijack life into data whose insights are sold back to us #expands (0.85)
• Data extraction annexes life processes beyond productive labor #expands (0.85) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 143
• Platforms reconfigure human life to continuously produce extractable data streams. #expands (0.85) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 45
• Data relations extend capital extraction beyond labor into all social life #expands (0.85) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 85
• Corporate data-as-asset rhetoric reframes untapped user data as a trillion-dollar revenue source #expands (0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 506
• Corporate rationality masks everyday data extraction as routine business rather than appropriation #expands (0.80) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 101
• Surveillance is not new; data appropriation networks order all of economic life #complicates (0.80)
• Data is defined by its external storage infrastructure and profit destination #expands (0.80) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 31
• Falling manufacturing profits drove capitalism toward data extraction via platform monopolies #expands (0.80) — Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, 17
• Privacy and data-ownership debates miss why experience becomes behavioral data at all #expands (0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 731
• Data plays the role today that money played in industrial capitalism #expands (0.75) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 278