[Image: iStock/ipopba]
A month ago, on the occasion of the publication of our book Data Rules Reinventing the Market Economy (2024, The MIT Press), we published a piece on Times Higher Education.
The piece is a little manifesto that explains why we need to approach the study of data from a point of view other than that of statistics and data science, a point of view that does justice to the variety of functions that data perform in current contexts of work, business, and politics.
Thoughtful people of all the world unite! ✊
The article is behind a paywall but is free after registration and can be accessed here
Below a brief excerpt:
“The developments that have made the internet a widespread channel of transaction and communication have also made data a pervasive component of personal life and a ubiquitous medium that organisations use to structure and conduct their operations. Originally developed to manage administrative and analytical tasks, these techniques have since consolidated into a new body of knowledge known as data science.
As a scientific field, data science represents a mix of statistical methods and computer programming. It is increasingly called upon to predict and manage such diverse things as interaction patterns on social media, city traffic flow, crime detection rates, insurance risks, health care demand and consumer behaviour. And over the past two decades, many higher education institutions have introduced data science programmes that enrol increasing numbers of students.
Impressive as data science is, it treats data as technical elements that can unproblematically be piled up and computed. This overlooks the interests, specific purposes, attitudes and presuppositions that drive data generation and use. While data may appear to be unquestionable carriers of facts, they are nonetheless human inventions and inevitably encode particular interests, purposes, perspectives on the world and unspoken biases. Data-making always involves arbitrary decisions on what to record and why.”
Continue to read it at:
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/blog/we-need-social-science-data
