Most literature thinks of the relationship between data and society as additive, meaning that data and society are seen as two separate sets of things but which overlap to form an intersection. The literature then goes off to unpack the intersection of the two circles and partners the term data in this manner with terms descriptive of the domain of society -- ownership, control, surveillance, and privacy, to name but a few.Within this book, we want to promote an alternative viewpoint of the relationship between data and society. Rather than explaining how data fits with or contributes to some burning societal issues, we want to explain how data is constitutive of many such issues. The term constitutive is used here in the sense of data having power to institute, establish, or enact society.Our viewpoint means that if you are to properly understand the constitutive nature of data, you must start from first principles and closely examine the nature of data itself. You must also focus on the mechanics of data -- how data is represented and articulated in records or more generally in data structures.Our aim in doing this is to examine the place of data structures across cultures and societies. In doing so, we hope to better understand why we, as humans, make records. In doing this, we can also better understand some of the unintended consequences of the use of records, which particularly plague us in the modern world.
Author(s): Paul Beynon-Davies
Publisher: World Scientific Publishing
Year: 2021
Language: English
Pages: 398
City: Singapore
Contents
About the Author
List of Figures
List of Tables
Prologue
The Data and Society Mix
The Centrality of Records
Records are Boring
Sensemaking and Sensebreaking with Records
Our Mission
A Short Exercise in Sensebreaking
A Quick Overview of the Book
Chapter 1: Making Marks — The Materiality of the Record
Chapter 2: Data Structures
Chapter 3: Identifying Things — The Informativity of the Record
Chapter 4: Making Lists — The Performativity of the Record
Chapter 5: Coordination Problems
Chapter 6: The ‘Life’ of the Record
Chapter 7: Instituting Place, Product, Time and Digital Presence
Chapter 8: Building Ontology
Chapter 9: The Power of Records
Chapter 10: Scaffolding Commerce
Chapter 11: Data-Driven Actors
Chapter 12: The Mechanics of Echo Chambers
Chapter 13: The Modern Panopticon — Data and Surveillance
Chapter 14: Counting Heads
Chapter 15: A Social Ontology of Big Data
Chapter 1 Making Marks
Introduction
Neolithic Data
The Externalisation of Things
Actors
Structures
Messages
Actions
Making Differences Through Structures
The Modulation of Matter or Energy
The Patterning of Structures
Natural, Embodied and Persistent Structures
Natural structures
Embodied structures
Persistent structures
Individual and Collective Memory
Sumerian Clay Tokens
The Rise and Rise of Data
Conclusion
References
Chapter 2 Data Structures
Introduction
Data Structures
The Inka
Khipu
Articulation of Data Structures
Persistent and Non-persistent Data Structures
Sender and receivers
Materiality
Articulation
Forgetting
Actors
Time and space
Agency
Signalling Games
Coding Things
Data Structures and the Inka State
Reversing the Ontological Status of Data Structures
Conclusion
References
Chapter 3 Identifying Things: The Informativity of the Record
Introduction
The Notion of a Sign
The Identifier
Status Functions, Signs and Institutional Facts
What is an Institution?
Personal Identity
Criminal Identification in the British Raj
Personal Identifiers
The Web of Personal Identity
Forms of Personal Identifier
Biometrics
Conclusion
References
Chapter 4 Making Lists: The Performativity of the Record
Introduction
An Infinity of Lists
The Idea of Lists
Lists Matter
Listing Quality
Listing the Holocaust
Scaffolding the Institutional Order
Speech Acts
The Performativity of Lists
Textual Agency
Shortlisting, Blacklisting, Whitelisting and Watchlisting
The Ownership of Data
Conclusion
References
Chapter 5 Coordination Problems
Introduction
Coordination Problems
Kanban
Scrumban
Managing the Semiotics of the Workplace
Designing Data Structures with Coordination in Mind
Conclusion
References
Chapter 6 The ‘Life’ of the Record
Introduction
Institutional Facts and Social Ontology
The Scaffolding of Lists
Data Breakdowns
Identifying the wrong things
Describing things inappropriately
Asserting things that cannot be confirmed
Committing to things that never happen
Directing people to do the wrong things
Vital Signs
Body temperature
Heart rate
Blood pressure
Consciousness
Respiratory rate
Blood oxygen level
The Informative and Performative Nature of a Vital Signs Chart
The Typical Lifecycle of the Record
Key Principles
Data and abstraction
Informing
Articulation and communication
Design
Data systems
Data Privacy and Data Protection
The right to be informed
The right of access
The right to rectification
The right to erasure
The right to restrict processing
The right to data portability
The right to object
Rights in relation to automated decision-making and profiling
Conclusion
References
Chapter 7 Instituting Place, Product, Time and Digital Presence
Introduction
The Notion of a Register and Registry
Identifying Place
Identifying Products
Identifying Events
Identifying Digital Presence
Data Sharing
Conclusion
References
Chapter 8 Building Ontology
Introduction
Objects
Classification and Instantiation
Attribution and Association
Valuing an Object and Forming an Object Class
Association
Generalisation and Specialisation
Aggregation and Decomposition
Institutional Ontology
Metadata
The Metadata of the Web
The Sharing of Documentation Between Institutions
Conclusion
References
Chapter 9 The Power of Records
Introduction
Domesday Book — The Book of the Day of Judgement
Ontology and Deontology
The Deontology of Data Structures
Revisiting Domesday
The Control of Data
Conclusion
References
Chapter 10 Scaffolding Commerce
Introduction
The Notion of Commerce
Money as a Status Function
Transactions
Transaction Costs
The Ledger as a Data Structure
Digital Currency
The Blockchain
Disintermediation Through the Blockchain
Data Security
Conclusion
References
Chapter 11 Data-Driven Actors
Introduction
Decisions and Control
Decisions and Communication
Decision Strategies
AI and Mind
Weak AI
Data-Driven AI
The Opacity of Decisions
Insidious Actors
The Google Search Engine
Conclusion
References
Chapter 12 The Mechanics of Echo Chambers
Introduction
What is Social Media?
Digital Content
Social Networks
Types of Communication in a Social Network
The Value of Social Networks and Social Media
Memes
Truth and Lies
Fake News
Echo Chambers, Online Cliques and the Decline in Civil Society
Conclusion
References
Chapter 13 The Modern Panopticon: Data and Surveillance
Introduction
Station X and Y
The Enigma Machine
Data Interception and Articulation
The Keeping of Records
The Contribution of Station X and Y
The Surveillance Society
Personal Traces
Surveillance Capitalism
Conclusion
References
Chapter 14 Counting Heads
Introduction
Data Structures and Statistics
Population and Sample
Brute Facts and Institutional Facts
A Cautionary Tale — Durkheim and Suicide
Counting COVID-19
Data Science
Conclusion
References
Chapter 15 A Social Ontology of Big Data
Introduction
What is Big Data?
The Conventional Ontology of Data and Data Structures
Scaffolding Big Data
Re-examining the Features of Big Data
Data resolution
Data relatability
Data flexibility
Data structure
Data indexicality
Data exhaustivity
Conclusion
References
Epilogue
Revisiting Our Aims
The Central Theory
Information situations
The formative aspect of a data structure
Data structures
Acts of articulation
The life history of data structures
The informative aspect of a data structure
The performative aspect of a data structure
Cycle of enactment
Scaffolding institutions
Institutional facts
Deontology of data structures
Breakdowns with data structures
Three Examples
Domains
An Institution Is…
References
Bibliography
Index
