Information capitalism requires semantic compression of behaviors into countable data tags.

Evidence

The interface is the imaginary portal to the circulation of information. Along with our imaginary illusions and cathected images, what the circuit propels is data, which must be harvested from more semantically full and/or ambiguous relations in order to then be exchanged. Philosopher Bernard Stiegler describes this compositing process as one of “discretization,” a flattening that advances the data revolution: to arrive at countable quanta of information, behaviors and words must be compressed into tags. — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 72

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Stiegler’s ‘discretization’ as the process of compressing behavior and words into countable data quanta — a key mechanism undergirding the ‘immediacy’ aesthetic.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s own argument about mediation as politically necessary: discretization names the capitalist antipode to mediation — the flattening that immediacy naturalizes. — connects to: Sharing’s semantic unboundedness masks the corporate capture of data — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 514; Micro-level data relations are rendered commonsensical by extractive rationalities — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 297