Costs of Connection
by Nick Couldry
Nick Couldry exposes 'data colonialism'—how tech giants extract personal data to fuel a new phase of capitalist exploitation
"Apps, platforms, and smart objects capture and translate our lives into data, then extract information that is fed into capitalist enterprises".
Editorial Summary
The Costs of Connection uncovers the process of 'data colonialism' and its designs for controlling our lives—our ways of knowing, our means of production, and our political participation. Nick Couldry, Professor of Media, Communications and Social Theory at the London School of Economics, and co-author Ulises A. Mejias present a radical critique connecting historical colonialism to contemporary data extraction. The book argues 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, then extract information that is fed into capitalist enterprises and sold back to us. Drawing on Marx, Foucault, and decolonial theory, the authors connect classic social theory with contemporary analyses of data justice.
Perspective
"Reading Costs of Connection reframes every "free" digital service you use — the book makes colonialism's logic feel recognizable in the present tense, which is both intellectually powerful and deeply uncomfortable. Couldry and Mejias's distinctive contribution is the colonial analogy itself: not as polemic but as a precise analytical framework showing how data extraction follows the same structural logic as historical resource extraction. Social scientists, critical technologists, and anyone who wants the most theoretically rigorous critique of surveillance capitalism will find this more intellectually demanding — and more rewarding — than Zuboff."
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