Workplace monitoring has grown more intimate than any past surveillance regime.

Evidence

There is a long history of surveillance at work, disproportionately affecting low-paid jobs and disadvantaged populations, but the intimacy of monitoring in today’s datafied workplace is without historical precedent. It fits well, however, with the colonial approach to social knowledge that chapter 4 uncovered in which individual reflection and voice matter little, and only aggregated data counts. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 467

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the surveillance-capitalism literature (Zuboff) but sharpens the colonialism-specific point about aggregated data displacing individual voice. — connects to: The boundary between workplace and workforce surveillance is dissolving — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 229
• SEED: Possible essay angle: the trucker’s onboard recorder as a microcosm of data colonialism replacing bodily self-knowledge with calibrated external data systems.

Broader Connections

• The boundary between workplace and workforce surveillance is dissolving #expands (0.85) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 229