Conclusion: Contradictions and Alternatives to Data Commodification

Abstract

In Chapter 7 the authors discuss alternatives for controlling monopolies, imagining alternative technological forms, recognising public wealth and value and the role of data for democratic development. While acknowledging current initiatives for curbing corporate power through digital taxation policies, they also outline the long-term limits of such thinking, primarily because it does not challenge the surplus value extraction model held together by the capture of public wealth and legal forms aiding commodification and capital reproduction. Instead, they argue that what is needed is a broader notion of surplus, stretching beyond surplus value, covering other social forms of production, along with redistribution of outputs for various democratic purposes, as well as public attentiveness to technological forms conducive to democratic aims and outcomes.