(18) CoC—Ch. 3, 83-112

3 The Coloniality of Data Relations

In this chapter, we use the framework of exploring, expanding, exploiting, and exterminating to conduct a transhistorical comparison of dispossession.

“We will be arguing in this chapter that the social relations embodied in data are part of a broader colonial (and not merely capitalist) legacy. This legacy involves a more extreme degree of alienation than usually recognized within a traditional Marxist perspective, because subjects are estranged not only from the products of their labor but from their own personhood, their basic realities as living beings. They are, in short, dispossessed of something basic that belongs to them, through an appropriation carried out through the extraction of data.”

“Specifically, this chapter will argue that historical colonialism and data colonialism share some fundamental structures that ground the resource appropriations and social relations of each: the way the colonized subject is conceptualized and how colonialism shapes the way the colonized think of themselves; the naturalization of certain modes of ruling subjects; and the legitimation of certain types of knowledge with their associated claims to power, including a specific conceptualization of time and space that ends up universalizing a specific worldview.”

“If historical colonialism was an appropriation of land, bodies, and natural resources, data colonialism can be understood as an appropriation of social resources, one that represents both a progression of capitalism and its return, potentially, to more brutal forms of exploitation.”

“Just as historical colonialism reorganized all aspects of the lives of its subjects (from the economic and political to the psychological and spiritual), data colonialism makes the entirety of our existence available to capitalism.”

“Let us then conceive of colonialism and capitalism as two sides of the same coin: one side enacting dispossession in a brutal and rampant manner and the other normalizing this process by relegating it to the outside (outside the present, outside the civilized, outside the measurable, and so on).”

	The point? Show the old so we can see parallels in the new.
	But also to show that capitalism and colonialism can work together but are not the same things and that when combined the outcome is a pernicious version of both.

Data Colonialism as Appropriation and Neoextractivism

Dispossession via appropriation (of “natural/free for taking” resources) and extraction that convert life, particularly human life, into profit centers for capitalism.

Data is now appropriated in that way – – as though it is naturally occurring and free for the taking.

Data “is the by-product of social interactions that are mediated by digital technologies, a by-product that is captured and processed by a third party that is not intimately involved with the people in the interaction and indeed can operate at many removes from them through the market for selling data.”

Data gets transformed, sliced and diced, by way of analysis. This processing introduces new values to the raw material via “extraction.”

The process is made possible by economic, legal, developmental, cultural and technical rationality is that frame activities with data as legitimate.

The 4X’s of Data Extractivism

Logic as in a video game, in this case – – in this book – – explained using historical examples of colonialism.

Explore, Expand, Exploit, and Exterminate

“extermination in data colonialism is better understood not as the elimination of entire peoples but as the gradual elimination of social spaces that can exist outside data relations.’

“The mission statements of social quantification companies do not mention anything about extermination of natives, but like Spanish law, they adopt a very generous and helpful attitude toward those whom they seek to subjugate. They purport to “bring the world closer together” (Facebook) and to “enable people and businesses throughout throughout the world to realize their full potential” (Microsoft). 

They also aim to “give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers” (Twitter). Google has policies that promote values of transparency, user choice, and responsibility—including a “responsible manufacturing” policy and even a “conflict minerals” policy,” both of which regulate the sourcing of manufacturing materials from war-free locations.

Amazon wants to be a place where “customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online,” and Airbnb imagines a “magical world” in which “everyone of us can belong anywhere” and we “can be anything we want.” Intuit, which sells financial software to individuals, declares that they want to change their users’ lives “so profoundly, they couldn’t imagine going back to the old way.”

What the 4X’s Will Mean to Digital Natives

“the term digital natives (generations who have always grown up with the internet) starts to take on a more sinister meaning: meaning: those whom data relations have dispossessed.”

From Counterhistories to Counterpresents

“worldwide ethical liberation project” 94 that challenges the universalism of a Western form of reason. In essence, creating counterpresents implies engaging in media practices that question how notions of “progress,” “civilization,” or “innovation” are equated with data relations as conceptualized by corporate interests.”

“Creating counterpresents would also mean reclaiming the agency of the colonized data subject.”