Data relations are becoming as naturalized as labor relations

Evidence

Data relations are the emerging social form through which data colonialism as an extractive process gets stabilized between individuals, groups, and corporations, and so it comes reliably to contribute to capitalism’s emerging new social order. By “data relations” we do not mean relations between data but the new types of human relations that data as a potential commodity enables. In time, data relations are likely to become as naturalized as labor relations. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 132

Categorization

• DEFINE: Core definitional construct for the rival school: data relations as the social form stabilizing extraction.
• XREF: Directly parallels the labor-relations vocabulary of political economy that the attention-surveillance school borrows from; useful for mapping overlaps. — connects to: Platform work fuses data relations with labor relations at unprecedented scale — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 87; Data relations are the social form that makes data extraction seem natural and normal — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 132; Data colonial extraction persists by converting data relations into durable social relations — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 84 (+4 more)
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: does naturalization of data relations claim a historical parallel with how wage-labor relations became naturalized in earlier centuries?

Broader Connections

• Data relations are the social form that makes data extraction seem natural and normal #expands (0.92) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 132
• Knowledge production now structures social order as labor once did #exemplifies (0.90) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 582
• Data colonial extraction persists by converting data relations into durable social relations #expands (0.85) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 84
• Micro-level data relations are rendered commonsensical by extractive rationalities #exemplifies (0.82) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 297
• Data acquires extractability only through socially constructed relations, not as a natural given #corroborates (0.78) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 133
• Machines are analyzed as social relations, not as natural objects #corroborates (0.75)