Sometimes I think all attempts to distinguish, using a typology or not,
helpful from harmful data is a displacement of the political question of
"in whose hands"?
Even Carlo's responses, loaded with reference to "wrong hands" and
"unchosen few" return always to the hope that there is invasive and
non-invasive data. For me the problem is that all data is intimate because,
for better or for worse, people have intimate relationships with things
(e.g. the street they grew up on, on Open Street Maps)...or if you want to
split hairs, they care very much about things because things mediate their
intimate connection with themselves and others.
I actually think that the data-oil analogy is apt for exactly the same
reason. They both muddle inside and outside, and their use affects everyone
negatively in the long run while giving many, many people (in massive
disproportion, according to their existing wealth) the means to more
expedient accomplishment of their short term goals.
This is because data is the "how" and not the "what" of meaningful action.
It does not and can not set an agenda for human beings at the outset (much
like sense data is meaningful for an organism only on the basis of its
preexisting organization, what it loves and what it hates). Data justifies
agendas and facilitates their coming to fruition.
Data "scientists" and entrepreneurs who claim that data suggests courses of
action simply seek to use the veil of technology, attributing their already
sickeningly disproportionate power over others to the machine's suggestions
about what's next. Data is a tool of interpretive/ideological power. I
think this is the brunt of the claim that data has taken over the
predictive ability of the humanities.
I find "impressionist data approaches" a very potentially fruitful avenue.
Thank you, Geert. It brings to mind two possibilities, the first
(unrealistic one) is that people who already have the (computing) power to
interpret swathes of big data use interpretive lenses...say, psychoanalytic
or other humanitarian ones, in order to think twice (or three or n times)
about how behavior does not equal intention. Currently the predictive
"power" of data can tell us e.g. that an alcoholic is likely to have
another drink but obviously doesn't say anything about how much he wants to
stop.
The second is an impressionist approach..but not to "data". I guess it's an
impressionist approach to *the projects for which data, that is always
personal in the sense that it affects us collectively, are used. *I am not
a data naturalist in the sense Joe describes (matter, energy, data), or
rather, agree that biodata is the only natural form of data. Data emerges
as relevant from the world soup to something that already has an agenda (be
it an organism, a corporation, a country). So, I wish for a world of
project proposals - agendas laid bare - which people can support by giving
the power of their data and data collection means. Some crypto projects
seem to want to go in this direction but then become instead for routes to
trivially monetize data, browser by browser, or only enable collective
choice through data about token holding. There are plenty of data commons
frameworks, and Elinor Ostrom has some excellent writings from a couple
decades ago on managing contributions and use of e.g. university archives.
I don't know what this looks like "out in the wild", but maybe it's the
difference between Facebook's emotional manipulation study and the
standards for consent required of researchers using human subjects? If only
the market were regulated, and had the associated humility, of this
standard of consent! I guess the message to data "scientists" is: if you're
really a scientist, let research standards regulate you! We dare you!
-Emaline
On Sun, Apr 24, 2022 at 10:27 AM Joseph Rabie
wrote:
> The denunciation of Big Data published by Geert Lovink a few weeks ago
> continues to fidget uncomfortably in my mind (as with Carlo, it would
> seem). While Geert makes a convincing case for throwing off the tyrannical
> shackles that data enslaves us with, his position is very much absolutist.
> He does not propose a categorisation of data typologies, that might allow
> one to distinguish between what is harmful, and what has proven to be
> helpful. The condemnation is categoric. And while Geert does not appear to
> call for the abolition of all data, he definitely considers it a negative
> thing whose place in society must be severely curtailed.
>
> This assertion of the globally negative nature of data has been the
> occasion for some contradictory musings on my part. Is data part of the
> capitalistic-industrial complex that is destroying the planet, as Geert
> writes? Or does it have redeeming features, or much more than that, can one
> possibly consider data as being a component of the “natural” order of
> things?
>
> There are continual comparisons between how the mind handles data and the
> way computers do it. It has
