Logistics infrastructure forms the organizational core of contemporary data colonialism

Evidence

One factor that makes the Cloud Empire colonial is the logistical and martial ethos of the enterprise of expansion. Colonialism requires an infra structure that facilitates the movement of resources, and what makes the Cloud Empire colonial is the scale and scope of this worldwide network of extraction and distribution, which is managed through increasingly sophisticated logistics. And we should not forget the debt that the concept and sometimes the practice of logistics owes to the military spirit. The smooth movement of resources along global supply chains is a movement in which corporations and armies have often supported each other during colonial times. To be sure, Amazon does not require its own army, like the East India Company did. But as Deborah Cowen argues, logistics “[map] the form of contemporary imperialism,” and as Ned Rossiter points out, “Increasingly, logistics infrastructure is managed through computational systems of code and software,” that is, through data. Thus, we can see data relations as part of a highly organized system of economic extraction and market penetration, a system founded on logistics. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 161

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s own ADDENDUM article on trees as infrastructure, and to the broader attention/surveillance school’s treatment of platform logistics like Amazon’s fulfillment network. — 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-driven logistics extend scientific management to the whole social domain, not just factories — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 103; Data colonialism is jointly driven by corporate and state power — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 162 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Data colonialism is jointly driven by corporate and state power #expands (0.75) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 162
• Data colonialism is an interlocking six-force system, not just platforms #complicates (0.72) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 582
• Data colonialism replaces cheap resources with cheap social data as its raw material #corroborates (0.72) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 579