Data colonialism annexes human life itself to capital
Evidence
If historical colonialism annexed territories, their resources, and the bodies that worked on them, data colonialism’s power grab is both simpler and deeper: the capture and control of human life itself through appropriating the data that can be extracted from it for profit. If that is right, then just as historical colonialism created the fuel for industrial capitalism’s eventual rise, so too is data colonialism paving the way for a capitalism based on the exploitation of data. Human life is quite literally being annexed to capital. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 28
We can capture the core of our double argument most succinctly by characterizing data colonialism as an unprecedented mutual implication of human life and digital technology for capitalism. None of this would have been possible without the emergence in the past three decades of a radically new technological infrastructure for connecting humans, things, and systems, known generally as the internet. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 51
Categorization
- XREF: Directly contrastable with attention/surveillance frames: where those locate power in capturing attention or monitoring behavior, this claims the proprietary object is human life via data, not attention or surveillance per se. — connects to: Data colonialism expands capitalism by absorbing previously uncommodified life streams — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 68; Data colonialism extracts ever more layers of human life as raw material — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 66; Data colonialism extracts human life as data for profit through data relations. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 32 (+9 more)
- DEEPTHINKING: The claim that data annexation is simpler and deeper than territorial annexation — because it captures life itself rather than territory — is a dense theoretical pivot worth sitting with for a rival-school reading.
- DEFINE: Gives the book’s core definitional move: data colonialism as ‘unprecedented mutual implication’ — a precise scope for the contested construct.
- corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 28; Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 51
Broader Connections
- Data colonialism expands capitalism by absorbing previously uncommodified life streams
#corroborates(0.90) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 68 - Data colonialism extracts ever more layers of human life as raw material
#corroborates(0.88) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 66 - Data colonialism extracts human life as data for profit through data relations.
#corroborates(0.86) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 32