Terms like surveillance and platform capitalism misname an unchanged capitalist core

Evidence

Why is it that so far we have talked simply of capitalism and not digital capitalism, informational capitalism, communicative capitalism, platform capitalism, or surveillance capitalism, to name some rival terms? The reason is straightforward. No convincing argument has yet been made that capitalism today is anything other than what it has always been: the systematic organization of life so as to maximize value, resulting in the concentration of power and wealth in very few hands. Contemporary societies are marked by the ever-increasing importance of the circulation and processing of information. As we emphasized earlier, this accelerated circulation and extraction of data and information has had profound impacts on the management of business, on the organization of work, and on the integration of social life into the economy. But that is no reason to say that the fundamental drivers of capitalism have suddenly changed; they have not. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 150

Categorization

• XREF: Directly engages the reader’s rival-school framing project: situates data-colonialism against surveillance (Zuboff) and platform-capitalism labels. — connects to: Surveillance capitalism is a new and original economic form unlike any prior capitalism — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 53
• DEFINE: The authors defend choosing plain ‘capitalism’ as the accurate label over five rival ‘-capitalism’ terms.

Broader Connections

• Surveillance capitalism is a new and original economic form unlike any prior capitalism #contradicts (0.85) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 53