So-called adaptive learning is today being offered by commercial providers as a “personalized” advance on the education of the predatafication era. Older, pre–Big Data education is depicted now as a “factory-model” under which all children had to receive the same content in the same manner (IBM Education), impeding “a deliberate and continuous approach to the improvement of learning and teaching” (Pearson).

Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, loc. 532