Davenport distinguishes three phases in the development of data analytics: whereas early analytics was essentially “descriptive,” collecting companies’ internal data for discrete analysis, the period since 2005 has seen the emergence of the ability to extract value from large unstructured and increasingly diverse external and internal data sets through “predictive” analytics that can find patterns in what appears to have no pattern. Today’s “analytics 3.0” uses large-scale processing power to extract value from vast combinations of data sets, resulting in a “prescriptive analytics” that “embed[s] analytics into every process and employee behavior." Once the world is seen by capitalism as a domain that can and so must be comprehensively tracked and exploited to ensure more profit, then all life processes that underlie the production process (thinking, acting, consuming, and working in all its dimensions and preconditions) must be fully controlled too. This principle, made possible by technological connection, is the engine that drives the capitalization of human life in its twenty-first-century form, and its remit goes much wider than social media platforms.

Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, loc. 79