Boyd & Crawford

This essay challenges the misconceptions that naive advocates for “big data” may have. These misconceptions seem to stem mainly from incorrect assumptions about the nature of the data, as well as biases that other types of research tend to be prone to as well. One point of the essay that I found particularly thought-provoking and not immediately obvious is the fifth provocation, that “just because it is accessible doesn’t make it ethical”. I wonder what standards people can adopt to make sure that the data they are using is ethical to use, since the essay also mentions the shortcoming of standardized rules such as from the IRB.

Drucker

Drucker makes the insightful claim that what we commonly refer to as “data” is in fact better described as “capta”, since the mere action of capturing data requires at least some sense of purpose when deciding to capture it in a certain format. The extent that I read up to was the end of “Humanities Approached to Graphical Display”; it makes me wonder if Drucker will provide convincing examples to justify their skepticism of our enthusiasm for digital visualization, as I didn’t feel that this argument was sufficiently supported at least in this part of the reading.