2 Metadata surrogates have more value than what they are surrogates of in a capitalist society

In a capitalist society, governments and corporations construct surrogates of us from the data they mine. And in a capitalist society, that data surrogate is more “real” and has more value than we do because it makes them money.

• Therefore, it is not always a bad thing to have silences in our collections. Sometimes, those silences are necessary. See 1a Archival silence is a good thing when its purpose is protection