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Culture and Economic Life
The Costs of Connection: How Data Is Colonizing Human Life and Appropriating It for Capitalism
Just about any social need is now met with an opportunity to "connect" through digital means. But this convenience is not free--it is purchased with vast amounts of personal data transferred through shadowy backchannels to corporations using it to generate profit. The Costs of Connection uncovers this process, this "data colonialism," and its designs for controlling our lives--our ways of knowing; our means of production; our political participation.
Colonialism might seem like a thing of the past, but this book shows that the historic appropriation of land, bodies, and natural resources is mirrored today in this new era of pervasive datafication. Apps, platforms, and smart objects capture and translate our lives into data, and then extract information that is fed into capitalist enterprises and sold back to us. The authors argue that this development foreshadows the creation of a new social order emerging globally--and it must be challenged. Confronting the alarming degree of surveillance already tolerated, they offer a stirring call to decolonize the internet and emancipate our desire for connection.
Colonialism might seem like a thing of the past, but this book shows that the historic appropriation of land, bodies, and natural resources is mirrored today in this new era of pervasive datafication. Apps, platforms, and smart objects capture and translate our lives into data, and then extract information that is fed into capitalist enterprises and sold back to us. The authors argue that this development foreshadows the creation of a new social order emerging globally--and it must be challenged. Confronting the alarming degree of surveillance already tolerated, they offer a stirring call to decolonize the internet and emancipate our desire for connection.
352 pages, Hardcover
First published August 20, 2019
About the author
Nick Couldry
25 books13 followersNick Couldry is Professor of Media, Communications and Social Theory in the Department of Media and communications at LSE. As a sociologist of media and culture, he approaches media and communications from the perspective of the symbolic power that has been historically concentrated in media institutions.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
October 2, 2022
This is a heady, but (mostly) accessible analysis of the true costs of data colonialism. It’s chilling, but necessary reading.
July 20, 2021
This review is a little unfair, as I've only read the first two chapters and only scanned the rest. This by itself is however telling.
There are three reasons why I didn't get to read it all and why I'm not a fan.
First, the main theme of "The costs of connection" resemples the theme of Zuboffs "Surveillance capitalism" very, very closely. Only The Costs was published a few month after Zuboffs masterpiece and not nearly as good.
Second, and tightly connected to this, Couldry and Mejias don't nail it like Zuboff does. They grasp with some of the same elements without really succeeding in fitting the pieces together. They discuss the "appropriation of personal life through data", much like Zuboff does, and coins this "data colonialism", not only as a parallel to historical colonization but as the modern and elaborated version hereoff. This being tightly connected to a Marxist capitalism critique in which more and more aspects of the world is being subjected to the brutality of market forces. But their attempt to invent new terms and paint the big picture remained unconvincing to me.
Third, the book is written in a way to abstract, academic prose. It's not storytelling and it's too hard to read. Like this (p. 32): "Therefore, our proposal is simple: that just as industrial capitalism, according to Marx, changed society by transforming the universal human activity of work into a social form with an abstract dimension (via the commodification of labor), so capitalism today, in the expansionary phase we call data colonialism, is transforming human nature (that is, preexisting streams of human life in all its diversity) into a newly abstracted social form (data) that is also ripe for commodification."
There are three reasons why I didn't get to read it all and why I'm not a fan.
First, the main theme of "The costs of connection" resemples the theme of Zuboffs "Surveillance capitalism" very, very closely. Only The Costs was published a few month after Zuboffs masterpiece and not nearly as good.
Second, and tightly connected to this, Couldry and Mejias don't nail it like Zuboff does. They grasp with some of the same elements without really succeeding in fitting the pieces together. They discuss the "appropriation of personal life through data", much like Zuboff does, and coins this "data colonialism", not only as a parallel to historical colonization but as the modern and elaborated version hereoff. This being tightly connected to a Marxist capitalism critique in which more and more aspects of the world is being subjected to the brutality of market forces. But their attempt to invent new terms and paint the big picture remained unconvincing to me.
Third, the book is written in a way to abstract, academic prose. It's not storytelling and it's too hard to read. Like this (p. 32): "Therefore, our proposal is simple: that just as industrial capitalism, according to Marx, changed society by transforming the universal human activity of work into a social form with an abstract dimension (via the commodification of labor), so capitalism today, in the expansionary phase we call data colonialism, is transforming human nature (that is, preexisting streams of human life in all its diversity) into a newly abstracted social form (data) that is also ripe for commodification."
January 29, 2022
Nick Couldry is a professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science and Ulises Mejias is a professor at State University of New York at Oswego. With data and digital spaces being more integrated in our lives than ever, the authors argue that the data harvesting practices from corporations (and their apps, platforms, and smart devices) represent a new form of colonialist appropriation. The hidden cost is the extraction of our personal data, the gradual loss of privacy online, exacerbation of systemic inequalities, and a distortion of our ways of knowing (both collective and personal). The authors use decolonial theory and Marxism, among other tools, to understand this problem and how we might be able to get out. The good news is that this program is still in its early stages and there is time to stop it if we collectively fight it.
The language was unnecessarily abstract and fluffy at times. A little academic.
The language was unnecessarily abstract and fluffy at times. A little academic.
November 30, 2019
The data extracted from our lives re-presents us in ways that constitute living. The value extracted from data, according to Nick Couldry and Ulises Mejias, is not just about information but life – and what represents life.
Read more: https://bookoblivion.com/2019/11/28/b...
Read more: https://bookoblivion.com/2019/11/28/b...
March 27, 2021
Anyone who feels dispossessed by the Cloud Empire should have opportunities and spaces to participate in collective research about the shared problems that data now poses for humanity.
More people should read this, so five stars it is.
More people should read this, so five stars it is.
November 8, 2021
Going beyond the familiar and basic techlash narrative, this book connects the trends in the development of modern day platform capitalism & AI to larger historical forces of capitalism and colonialism to argue that the latest technological developments are a continuation of the two.
April 7, 2023
I had high hopes for the important content this book had to offer. Sadly, the writing is so dense and convoluted that it’s miracle anyone can draw meaningful takeaways. The authors should have hired a ghost writer and stuck with the meta-analyses
April 29, 2021
Easy to understand (for a communication student) and long.
January 25, 2024
Don't be fooled by the stars det va bra för att va kurslitt inte mer än så
September 29, 2020
If like it is said, data is the new oil then it's extraction & appropriation shouldn't be surprising. Almost of us think about this analogy as metaphorical rather than real as messiness of oil is radically opposed to the swift and clean extraction of data.
This book documents all the problems of our current data driven society, question of ownership drawing out far more implications about the ownership and distribution of goods and services on the society at large.
The future ( whatever it means anymore) is not worth having if the inequities are worse rather than better.
Highly recommend this book to everyone.
This book documents all the problems of our current data driven society, question of ownership drawing out far more implications about the ownership and distribution of goods and services on the society at large.
The future ( whatever it means anymore) is not worth having if the inequities are worse rather than better.
Highly recommend this book to everyone.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews