The general register is not only a manual for recording human resources within the factory, but also an important basis for social governance and policy formulation. It is essentially a protective record of young laborers, created by factories in response to government policy requirements to protect the basic rights of young laborers. By recording information about young laborers, the archive became a tool to help the working population be seen and to regulate the labor order, but state intervention in young labor during the early and mid-nineteenth century was limited and segmented, and many factories were not really placed under effective surveillance (Kirby,2017).

This paper-based recording can be seen as an early form of the process of “datafication”, the structuring of social behavior through numbers and information (Bowker and Star, 1999). With the advent of digital technology, today's workers are no longer confronted with handwritten paper registers, but with digital recording mechanisms based on algorithms, sensors and real-time monitoring systems. There has been a fundamental shift from paper registers filled out by employers to automated data collection and analysis by platform systems, cameras, GPS, and APP backends (Mettler, 2014).

With the advent of the internet age, in this society dominated by digital technology, people's understanding of the value of data is also undergoing transformation. Data is now regarded as a new form of capital equivalent to financial capital (Sadowski, 2019). Under the data capitalism built on this premise, issues such as excessive data collection and misuse have begun to surface. For individuals, data security and personal safety are equally important. The evolution of modern labour laws in the United Kingdom demonstrates that the focus of legal protection has shifted from traditional safeguards for personal safety to the protection of personal information rights.

This evolution can be broadly divided into three phases. From 1901 to 1974, data collected about workers primarily focused on protecting their physical well-being, such as regulating minimum working ages and improving workplace conditions. Between 1984 and 1998, with the rise of electronic records, there was growing concern about the risks associated with the accumulation of personal data, shifting the legal focus from the body to information. Since 2010, legislation has entered a period of rights consolidation and increased employer responsibility, expanding protections against discrimination and other forms of harm. This evolution reflects a shift from controlling workers' physical labour to managing and safeguarding their personal data in the digital age.