Falling recording costs turned data from peripheral to central capitalist resource.

Evidence

Data were a resource that had been available for some time and used to lesser degrees in previous business models (particularly in coordinating the global logistics of lean production). In the twenty-first century, however, the technology needed for turning simple activities into recorded data became increasingly cheap; and the move to digital-based communications made recording exceedingly simple. Massive new expanses of potential data were opened up, and new industries arose to extract these data and to use them so as to optimise production processes, give insight into consumer preferences, control workers, provide the foundation for new products and services (e.g. Google Maps, self-driving cars, Siri), and sell to advertisers. All of this had historical precedents in earlier periods of capitalism, but what was novel with the shift in technology was the sheer amount of data that could now be used. — Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, 44

Categorization

• XREF: The claim that cheapened recording, not surveillance intent, drove the data economy is the causal mechanism that differentiates Srnicek from Zuboff’s emphasis on surveillance as the driver. — connects to: Data plays the role today that money played in industrial capitalism — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 278; Capitalism is poised to consume its last remaining outside via data — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 68; Falling manufacturing profits drove capitalism toward data extraction via platform monopolies — Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, 17

Related

• Falling manufacturing profits drove capitalism toward data extraction via platform monopolies (similarity 0.86)
• Data plays the role today that money played in industrial capitalism (similarity 0.86)
• Data are a physical raw material requiring sensing, storage, and cleaning infrastructure. (similarity 0.83)
• Sharing-economy platforms fuse data extraction with labor at unprecedented scale (similarity 0.82)
• Platform competition shifts from price to data as the competitive criterion (similarity 0.81)
• Platforms are the first business model with data extraction built into their core DNA (similarity 0.81)
• Traditional manufacturing was information-lossy, necessitating the platform model. (similarity 0.81)
• Data infrastructure lets markets and states produce basic social knowledge for the first time. (similarity 0.80)
• Renting cloud infrastructure yields data extraction alongside rental income (similarity 0.80)
• Data is a social by-product, not a natural substance, captured by distant third parties (similarity 0.80)
• Capitalism is indifferent to the origin of the data it exploits for value. (similarity 0.80)
• Industrial platforms extract data to cement monopolies over global manufacturing (similarity 0.79)
• Data is defined by its external storage infrastructure and profit destination (similarity 0.79)
• Data relations extend capital extraction beyond labor into all social life (similarity 0.79)
• A platform’s structural position gives it privileged access to record interactions (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Capitalism is poised to consume its last remaining outside via data #expands (0.72) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 68
• Falling manufacturing profits drove capitalism toward data extraction via platform monopolies #qualifies (0.70) — Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, 17