Jointly organized with the Perspectives on Work Faculty Research Group
We are told that progress requires human beings to be connected, and that science, medicine and much else that is good demands the kind massive data collection only possible if every thing and person are continuously connected. But connection, and the continuous surveillance that connection makes possible, usher in an era of neocolonial appropriation. In this new era, social life becomes a direct input to capitalist production, and data – the data collected and processed when we are connected – is the means for this transformation. Hence the need to start counting the costs of connection.
Fry Building G.10LT. Woodlands Road, University of Bristol.
A profound exploration of how the ceaseless extraction of information about our intimate lives is remaking both global markets and our very selves. The Costs of Connection represents an enormous step forward in our collective understanding of capitalism’s current stage, a stage in which the final colonial input is the raw data of human life. Challenging, urgent and bracingly original.
— Naomi Klein, Gloria Steinem Chair of Media, Culture and Feminist Studies, Rutgers University