ABSTRACT
Data has become central and essential for increasingly more sectors of contemporary capitalism. Industries focused on technology, infrastructure, finance, manufacturing, insurance, and energy are now treating data as a form of capital. This chapter contributes to the study of data within contemporary capitalism by analysing data as a form of capital. The goal of transforming everything into data and the search for new sources of data echoes imperialist modes of accumulation. In short, as capitalism faces crises of accumulation, there is a need to find new sources of value and new places to offload good. The focus on data and datafication should not be seen as usurping financialisation, but rather as adding new sources of value and new tools of accumulation. Much of the valuable data capital extracted from the world is about people—their identities, beliefs, behaviours, and other personal information. This means that accumulating data often goes hand-in-hand with increasingly invasive systems for probing, monitoring, and tracking people.
