Data-driven logistics extend scientific management to the whole social domain, not just factories

Evidence

Another deep continuity with classic Marxist accounts comes from the data-driven possibilities of management control over production. The core of how industrial capitalism transformed work was not technological but social. The organization of work came under the exclusive control of management and, as such, became controllable at every stage of performance. Traditional industrial management remained limited, however, to mechanical data collection based in observation or form filling. By contrast, data-driven logistics, built on infrastructures of connection and fueled by artificial intelligence, convert all aspects of production—far beyond the factory walls and in every corner and moment of a transnational supply chain—into a managed assembly line. The new infrastructure of data processing that sustains data relations extends so-called scientific management in ways that recall classic diagnoses of industrial capitalism: “The image of the process, removed from production to a separate location and a separate group, controls the process itself.” Through data, capitalism begins to govern the whole social domain with management logic, another aspect of its annexation of human life. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 103

The core of how industrial capitalism transformed work was not technological but social. The organization of work came under the exclusive control of management and, as such, became controllable at every stage of performance. Traditional industrial management remained limited, however, to mechanical data collection based in observation or form filling. By contrast, data-driven logistics, built on infrastructures of connection and fueled by artificial intelligence, convert all aspects of production—far beyond the factory walls and in every corner and moment of a transnational supply chain—into a managed assembly line. The new infrastructure of data processing that sustains data relations extends so-called scientific management in ways that recall classic diagnoses of industrial capitalism: “The image of the process, removed from production to a separate location and a separate group, controls the process itself.” Through data, capitalism begins to govern the whole social domain with management logic, another aspect of its annexation of human life. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 103

Categorization

• XREF: Management control extending to the whole social domain parallels claims in the attention/surveillance tradition about platform-level behavioral governance. — connects to: Modern logistics anchored data-extraction infrastructure decades before social media — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 49; Logistics infrastructure forms the organizational core of contemporary data colonialism — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 161; Supply chain capitalism exploits heterogeneous local practices rather than flattening them — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory: A Marxist…, 285
• SEED: Angle: supply-chain datafication as the frontier where management logic annexes everyday life beyond the wage relation.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 103

Broader Connections

• Logistics infrastructure forms the organizational core of contemporary data colonialism #expands (0.80) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 161
• Supply chain capitalism exploits heterogeneous local practices rather than flattening them #qualifies (0.70) — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 285