Data extraction infrastructure was built decades before social media through relational databases and logistics.

Evidence

The goal of logistics is to use continuously connected data flows to organize all aspects of production across space and time within global commodity chains. It was enabled, decades before social media, by software inventions such as the relational databases that help businesses find patterns in huge data flows across diverse sources and locations. If logistics aims to rationalize production, the recent growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) aims to incorporate consumption—what we do with products after we buy them—into an extended chain of profit extraction through the processing of data. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 49

Categorization

• XREF: Useful data point for the reader’s rival-school mapping: the commercial genealogy of surveillance runs through logistics/IoT, complementing state-surveillance-focused accounts. — 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; Data extraction principles predate social media by decades in globalized capitalism — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 48; Data colonialism’s extractive logic predates social media by decades in globalized industrial capitalism. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 48 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Modern logistics anchored data-extraction infrastructure decades before social media #corroborates (0.95) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 49
• Data extraction principles predate social media by decades in globalized capitalism #expands (0.90) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 48
• Data colonialism’s extractive logic predates social media by decades in globalized industrial capitalism. #corroborates (0.90) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 48
• Platforms are the first business model with data extraction built into their core DNA #contradicts (0.85) — Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, 76
• Data extraction is historically unprecedented yet clarifies through colonial-capitalist continuity. #complicates (0.80) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 33
• Data extraction under the Cloud Empire mirrors historical colonial extraction patterns #corroborates (0.80) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 243
• Digital platform enclosure is continuous with historical land enclosure, transforming relational life into extraction #expands (0.80) — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 126