Book Review: The Costs of Connection: How Data is Colonizing Human Life and Appropriating it for Capitalism

The age of Big Data has frequently been framed as a new frontier in human life, presenting both brand new opportunities and brand new challenges. In The Costs of Connection, Nick Couldry and Ulises A. Mejias articulate an alternative view: the quantified world in which we now live is a product of the continuation and expansion of both colonialism and capitalism: not a new frontier, but the inevitable expansion of an existing one.