Insisting on boundaries to the continuous flow of data (the principle of seamfulness) means insisting that human reason should always be able to impose limits on that flow, because data's goal should ultimately be to serve human, not artificial, life. Nothing we have argued in this book rules out the search for social uses of data that genuinely remain under the control and monitoring of citizens themselves. We have instead offered ample evidence that the emerging social order built from seamless data flows in the interests of capital is becoming toxic to human beings through two means: (1) the highly targeted but almost entirely opaque forms of inequality that it authorizes in the name of greater social knowledge and resource efficiency and (2) the uncontrolled surveillance of human life on which it is premised.

Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, loc. 607