Data-colonial knowledge regimes are self-validating through world-reconfiguration rather than testing.
Evidence
There is no empirical test that could verify this vision of social knowledge: it has authority only by virtue of being imposed on a world reconfigured to its own image. As we learned in chapter 4, measures “recreate social worlds.” — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 620
Categorization
- XREF: Echoes measurement-as-world-shaping themes across the reader’s library (communication-as-culture, Innis on bias of communication). — connects to: Data colonialism requires transforming society itself, not just extracting value — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 365; Unaccountable abstract social knowledge functionally serves data-colonialist capitalism. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 453; Datafied social knowledge overrides older forms without being accountable to those it describes. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 367
- DEEPTHINKING: The self-validating totality critique resists one-sentence summary and rewards rereading against the whole ‘data colonialism’ argument.
Broader Connections
- Data colonialism requires transforming society itself, not just extracting value
#expands(0.82) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 365 - Unaccountable abstract social knowledge functionally serves data-colonialist capitalism.
#responds-to(0.71) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 453