We really need to talk about #history, dear Data-will-safe-the-future-folks.
This is a ridiculous take and stunningly disconnected from all the brilliant debates on history of data-science / history of #bigdata in the last years. #histstm
theguardian.com/technology/201…
This is a ridiculous take and stunningly disconnected from all the brilliant debates on history of data-science / history of #bigdata in the last years. #histstm
theguardian.com/technology/201…
There was this in 2017, a great Osiris issue on #Datahistories, asking about the histories of data and data-sets and reminding everyone to have a second look at the question, if big data is the answer. journals.uchicago.edu/toc/osiris/201…
Or one could look at this issue in HSNS, where de Chadarevian & Porter ( and all other authors) where doing an excellent job of 'scrutinizing the data world' hsns.ucpress.edu/content/48/5
Or hey, why not take a look at the history of the fantasy of total archives and the lure of giant data sets (and their promises of overcoming it all) in the past: (excellently introduced by Boris Jardine and Mat Drage) journals.sagepub.com/toc/hhsa/31/5
All to say, historians of science have been working on data and data sets for quite some time. It's a shame they are all but invisible in this take. Yes, historians have always worked with data. Yes, historians will increasingly work with larger data sets (of whatever kind)....
....but historians will also continue to mistrust data, scrutinise the conditions of data production, storage and dissemination and question sweeping claims of trans-historical cycles, laws and patterns. These, as much as the data that underpins them, have their own histories...
and that's why we need the historians of science, technology and medicine to do their job and to ask for example, why calls for more 'objective versions of history' appears to be driven by a budding research endeavour investigating impending doom & disaster (looking at you @cser)
