Data Grab: The New Colonialism of Big Tech and How to Fight Back

In their new book, “Data Grab,” Ulises A. Mejias and Nick Couldry argue that the role of data in society must be understood not only as a development of capitalism, but also as the start of a new phase in human history that rivals in importance the emergence of historic colonialism. This new form of “data colonialism” gives shape to a social order based not on the extraction of natural resources or labor, but rather on the appropriation of human life through data. Resisting it will require strategies that decolonial thinking has foregrounded for decades.