Seamless data flows breed opaque inequality and uncontrolled surveillance

Evidence

Insisting on boundaries to the continuous flow of data (the principle of seamfulness) means insisting that human reason should always be able to impose limits on that flow, because data’s goal should ultimately be to serve human, not artificial, life. Nothing we have argued in this book rules out the search for social uses of data that genuinely remain under the control and monitoring of citizens themselves. We have instead offered ample evidence that the emerging social order built from seamless data flows in the interests of capital is becoming toxic to human beings through two means: (1) the highly targeted but almost entirely opaque forms of inequality that it authorizes in the name of greater social knowledge and resource efficiency and (2) the uncontrolled surveillance of human life on which it is premised. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 607

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the book’s core principle of ‘seamfulness’ as the insistence on boundaries to data flow.
• SEED: The claim that seamless data flows ‘authorize’ targeted inequality could seed an essay comparing seamfulness as a design principle against attention-economy maximalism.
• XREF: connects to: Automated data environments override mutual expectations and unsettle liberal privacy — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 560; Data value depends on local negotiation and control rather than universal surveillance — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 595; Privately controlled data extraction produces social classifications that entrench inequality — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 443 (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Privately controlled data extraction produces social classifications that entrench inequality #corroborates (0.92) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 443
• Distributed commercial data collection is structurally opaque and hard to contest #corroborates (0.88) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 389
• Inequality serves surveillance capitalism as a lever for extracting consent #expands (0.82) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 800
• Surveillance capitalism exploits both extraction and our voluntary surrender via interfaces #expands (0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 734