Slavery and surveillance data relations differ in kind yet share a crucial structural commonality

Evidence

We will certainly not be claiming that all forms of damage to the space of human autonomy are the same. There is a world of difference between slavery’s direct and violent ownership of bodies and minds and the more indirect forms of surveillance and dataveillance that characterize contemporary data relations. Still, they have something crucial in common. We seek to identify what that is, building on excellent work done by many authors in sociology, communications, and legal theory, including Mark Andrejevic, Julie Cohen, Oscar Gandy, Karen Levy, and David Lyon. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 486

Categorization

• XREF: This frames the book’s core analogy distinguishing data colonialism’s scope claim from earlier slavery analogies. Connects to the reader’s attention/surveillance reading list, particularly the ‘data colonialism as rival frame’ project. — connects to: Datafied labor regimes resemble slavery only in surveillance continuity, not in status — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 715; Physical branding of enslaved Africans functioned as early biometric surveillance technology — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror…, 199; Slavery’s management rationalities seeded the data-optimization mindset of modern capitalism — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 43

Broader Connections

• Datafied labor regimes resemble slavery only in surveillance continuity, not in status #qualifies (0.85) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 715
• Slavery’s management rationalities seeded the data-optimization mindset of modern capitalism #expands (0.82) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 43
• Physical branding of enslaved Africans functioned as early biometric surveillance technology #exemplifies (0.78) — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 199