Social quantification is a subsector of the wider ICT business sector

Evidence

Although our main focus is companies that seek to profit from the capitalization of our social lives, it is important to keep in mind the relation that the social quantification sector has to the larger ICT sector, and indeed to the wider business world, in its use of ICTs. Plainly stated, without the tools and business models of the ICT sector, the social quantification sector would not exist. … The point is that the social quantification sector is more of a subsector of the entire ICT business sector, useful in identifying specific activities and approaches that revolve around the capturing of everyday social acts and their translation into quantifiable data, which is then analyzed and used for the generation of profit. The point also is that in the era of data colonialism, the ICT sector is working ever more closely with all forms of business within the wider Cloud Empire. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 186

Plainly stated, without the tools and business models of the ICT sector, the social quantification sector would not exist. A company such as IBM—which predates any social media company by decades—may today be involved in specific aspects of social quantification (IBM owns weather.com, for instance). But its scope is oriented mostly to business applications, including consulting and cloud computing. For these reasons, companies like IBM may not feature prominently in our discussion of social quantification, although this should not obscure the fact that the amount of digital data generated by businesses exceeds the amount of data generated by the social quantification sector (even though the two are intersecting). The point is that the social quantification sector is more of a subsector of the entire ICT business sector, useful in identifying specific activities and approaches that revolve around the capturing of everyday social acts and their translation into quantifiable data, which is then analyzed and used for the generation of profit. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 186

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the scope and position of the ‘social quantification sector’ relative to the entire ICT sector, useful for precisely bounding the data colonialism frame.
• XREF: The term ‘Cloud Empire’ and the framing of a totalizing ICT infrastructure connects to the reader’s broader surveillance/platform-capitalism reading. — connects to: The social quantification sector spans device makers, platforms, brokers, and data-reliant firms — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 36; Social quantification is a core policy goal and geopolitical arena in China — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 50; Automation-triggered falling profit rates push capital toward social quantification as a new revenue stream — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 167 (+1 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 186