There is a new blog being used for collaboration between a group of researchers working in the area of ‘The social life of digital-data objects‘. It’s being coordinated by Evelyn Ruppert. Here is some information about the site, and here are the details about a project they are currently working on. It looks like there are going to be some big developments in the area of ‘big data’ over the next couple of years. The project associated with this group of researchers looks like it could have a big impact. They say this about this project on socialising big data:
We seek to develop a ‘social literacy’ about big data rather than re-iterating the need to respond to ‘the data deluge,’ by locating the successes and failures of the turn to data in ways that recognise their constitution in diverse social practices and specific situations.
This is an important distinction that I’m sure will move the debates on into some new territories. I’m just reading a short postscript that I’ve included in my book, it tries to show how my book relates to this big data debates (the book is nearly ready to send off to the publishers, ill probably add some reflections on this soon). But I’ve tried to address some of these questions more directly in this open access piece on the use of social media by-product data. I’ve got a piece on the social life of data, which I wrote a while ago with Roger Burrows, coming out soon in Theory, Culture & Society.
Thinking culture 