The cloud operates as an episteme that pre-organizes social life for datafication

Evidence

The concept of the cloud functions in a similar way. The cloud can be a metaphor to suggest that data is gathered together in a remote location. It can be a template to organize how data is extracted, stored, and analyzed so that it can be managed together “in” the cloud. And the cloud, especially the Cloud Empire, can act as an episteme, a model for knowledge that organizes our social realities—even those that are not datafied—into structures that can facilitate their datafication. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 173

Categorization

• DEFINE: Lays out the three-layer taxonomy of cloud-as-metaphor, cloud-as-template, cloud-as-episteme, a key theoretical distinction for the data colonialism frame.
• XREF: The episteme idea echoes Foucault’s concept of an epoch’s underlying knowledge-structure, and ties to the reader’s attention/platform/surveillance research on how infrastructures pre-shape cognition. — connects to: Billions now organize personal lives around data-dependent platform infrastructures — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 585; The cloud metaphor actively shapes rather than merely describes social reality — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 171; Cloud capital shatters individuals into manipulable fragments of data — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 660 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Cloud capital shatters individuals into manipulable fragments of data #expands (0.85) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 660
• Data extraction infrastructures deform the self that autonomy and freedom depend on #complicates (0.78) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 148