The human factor — why data is not enough to understand the world
In a world shaped by one AI, artificial intelligence, we need a second AI, too — anthropology intelligence, writes Gillian Tett in the Financial Times.
Insights curated by Experientia, the international UX consultancy
Insights curated by Experientia, the international UX consultancy
Category Data
Shoshana Zuboff explains why you should care about privacy
In a wide-ranging interview with Lauren Jackson of the New York Times, the author of “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism” talks about why people should pay attention to how big tech companies are using their information.
[Book] Living in Data
In this provocative book, Jer Thorp brings his work as a data artist to bear on an exploration of our current and future relationship with data, transcending facts and figures to find new, more visceral ways to engage with data.
[Book] Data Lives
A book about the life of data and living with data.
Towards an anthropology of data
Special issue of the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
[Book] Privacy is Power
The first book to call for the end of the data economy. Carissa Veliz exposes how our personal data is giving too much to big tech and governments, why that matters, and what we can do about it.
[Book] All data are local
In our data-driven society, it is too easy to assume the transparency of data. Instead, we should approach data sets with an awareness that they are created by humans and their dutiful machines, at a time, in a place, with the instruments at hand, for audiences that are conditioned to receive them, says Yanni Alexander Loukissas, Assistant Professor of Digital Media in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at Georgia Tech.
[Report] Shaping Choices in the Digital World
This report addresses the entire digital ecosystem by giving some operational recommendations to strengthen the control and choice to which users are entitled.
[Book] Too Smart
In Too Smart, Jathan Sadowski looks at the proliferation of smart stuff in our lives and asks whether the tradeoff - exchanging our personal data for convenience and connectivity - is worth it. Who benefits from smart technology?
Why data is never raw
“Except in divine revelation, data is never simply given, nor should it be accepted on faith,” writes Nick Barrowman in The New Atlantis. “How data are construed, recorded, and collected is the result of human decisions – decisions about what…
Intel anthropologist Dawn Nafus interview on the use of data and technology in medical contexts
In an age where we can collect and store (forEVER) every second of every day, how much do we truly need to learn? To react? To do good deeds that benefit society? Assuming we champion that, what does it mean…
How do we make smart cities civic?
Engagement Lab, an applied research and design lab associated with Emerson College that investigates and creates media and technology to reduce disparities in civic participation, announced via a twitter thread the launch of Making a Smart City Civic, an open…
Sidewalk Toronto has only one beneficiary, and it is not Toronto
Jim Balsillie, former chairman and co-CEO of Research In Motion, doesn’t mince his words in discussing the new Google-affiliated waterfront development Sidewalk Toronto: What happens with Toronto’s waterfront infrastructure will have profound and permanent impacts on the digital rights and…
Uninformed consent
Leslie K. John, a behavioral scientist at Harvard Business School, is specialized in the psychology of privacy decisions. In this excellent cover story for the Harvard Business Review, she analyzes why people are so bad at making decisions about their…
Datafication and data fiction: Narrating data and narrating with data
Datafication and data fiction: Narrating data and narrating with data Paul Dourish, Edgar Gòmez Cruz Big Data & Society Journal Sage Publications, July 4, 2018 Creative Commons Attribution, Non Commercial 4.0 License Data do not speak for themselves. Data…
Two reports on people’s attitudes and understanding of digital technologies
Doteveryone, a UK think tank that champions responsible technology for the good of everyone in society [similar to Milan’s newly founded Digital Culture Center], published two reports this year: the first one, The Digital Attitudes Report, explores how the British…
“Thick data” sees the market future when big data can’t
“Customers are really the most unpredictable, the most unknown, and the most difficult-to-quantify thing for any business,” said Tricia Wang, ethnographer and co-founder of Sudden Compass, in an interview during the IBM Data Science for All event in NYC. She…
Google’s Director of User Experience on the power of ethnography in an era of Big Data
Elizabeth Churchill, Google’s Director of User Experience argues that there has never been a better time for an ethnographic embrace and a reconfiguration of what it means to render meaning into big and small data. We have, she says, an…
Data ethnographies: how do people live with data?
Data Ethnographies is a Lab of the Digital Ethnography Research Centre (DERC), at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. Data Ethnographies investigates the implications of the increasing ubiquity of data in everyday lives and worlds. We approach data from an ethnographic…
Anthropologist Sally Applin on the automation of qualitative methods
Anthropology and its methodologies cannot easily be automated. However, both design and engineering based organizations are attempting it. Anthropologist Sally A. Applin argues that this is based in part on historic legacy systems, a misunderstanding of the ethnographic toolkit, and…