Data Grab

"In the present day, Big Tech is extracting resources from us, transferring and centralizing resources from people to companies. These companies are grabbing our most basic natural resources--our data--exploiting our labor and connections, and repackaging our information to control our views, track our movements, record our conversations, and discriminate against us. These companies tell us this is for our own good, to build innovation and develop new technology. But in fact every time we unthinkingly click "Accept" on a set of Terms and Conditions, we allow our most personal information to be kept indefinitely, repackaged by companies to control and exploit us for their own profit. Each chapter of respected technology scholars Ulises Mejias and Nick Couldry's compelling book opens with a story of an ordinary person going about their life until they come up against technology taking their data: a migrant trying to reach Europe where drones are patrolling borders, a woman in the Philippines working for a software company that takes screenshots of her monitor, a food delivery driver in a Chinese city racing against an algorithm. All of these people could be us; the story of what tech companies are doing is a global story that is impossible to escape. Mejias and Couldry explain why postindustrial capitalism cannot be understood without colonialism, and why race is a critical factor in who benefits from data colonialism, just as it was for historic colonialism. In this searing, cutting-edge guide, two leading global researchers and founders of the concept of data colonialism reveal how history can help us understand the emerging future--and how we can fight back"--