Description
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.
Author: Nick Couldry, Ulises A. Mejias
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 08/20/2019
Pages: 352
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.25lbs
Size: 8.90h x 6.00w x 1.10d
ISBN13: 9781503609747
ISBN10: 150360974X
BISAC Categories:
- Social Science | Privacy & Surveillance (see also Political Science | Privacy
- Computers | Social Aspects
- Business & Economics | Free Enterprise & Capitalism
About the Author
Nick Couldry is Professor of Media, Communications and Social Theory at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Ulises A. Mejias is Associate Professor of Communication Studies and Director of the Institute for Global Engagement at the State University of New York, College at Oswego.