Data infrastructure lets markets and states produce basic social knowledge for the first time.

Evidence

Because data reinterprets the traces of the everyday world, large-scale data processing recalibrates social knowledge, with the consequences depending on the type of market society under analysis. In liberal market societies, the new data infrastructure involves for the first time market institutions in producing basic social knowledge. But in state-led market societies, such as China, the state acquires a remarkable new tool to direct the production of social knowledge in its own interests. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 89

Categorization

• XREF: The liberal-versus-state-market split mirrors the regime typology common in surveillance studies (e.g. China’s social credit vs. Western commercial surveillance) and could map onto how the data-colonialism frame handles geopolitical variation. — connects to: Human life as organized through data is the new direct input of capitalism — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 160; Data plays the role today that money played in industrial capitalism — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 278; Data are a physical raw material requiring sensing, storage, and cleaning infrastructure. — Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, 43

Broader Connections

• Human life as organized through data is the new direct input of capitalism #expands (0.82) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 160
• Data plays the role today that money played in industrial capitalism #corroborates (0.78) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 278
• Data are a physical raw material requiring sensing, storage, and cleaning infrastructure. #expands (0.78) — Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, 43