Can the human and social sciences correct for the limits of the social quantification sector’s emerging model of the world? Or might much of the social sciences already be complicit in this hollowing out of the social? This claim might shock those who see in “datafication . . . an essential enrichment in human comprehension” or “a great infrastructural project that rivals” the Enlightenment’s Encyclopédie. But let’s get beyond the hype and look at what is actually going on in the social sciences today.

Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, loc. 431