Because of this transformation, our sense of who we are is assembled in a strange and tangled fashion. The machinery of ordinalisation attends carefully to individuals rather than coarse classes or groups. By doing so, it appears to liberate people from the constraints of social affiliations and to judge them for their distinctive qualities and contributions. It promises incorporation for the excluded, recognition for the creative, and just rewards for the entrepreneurial. And yet this emancipatory promise is delivered through systems that classify, sort and, above all, rank people with ever-greater precision and on a previously unimaginable scale. The resulting social order is a sort of paradox, characterised by constant tensions between personal freedom and social control, between the subjective elan of inner authenticity and the objective forces of external authentication. It gives rise to a certain way of being, a new kind of self, whose experiences are defined by the push for personal autonomy and the pull of platform dependency.

Sounds like their point is we were emancipated from being defined by our social connections and place in society. This was done by data identifying our intrinsic properties that exist without our social connections.

This is in line with the west’s (North American) ever increasing individualism. A trend that many suggest has gone too far, and is harming individuals, along with the rest of society.