Re: <nettime> Proposition on Peak Data

Dear nettimers,

thanks a lot for all your interesting contributions so far to the ‘peak data’ debate. My contribution was a simple proposition, indeed, borrowing from the peak oil metaphor. I shied away from an a-historical, ontological, metaphysical approach about data-in-general or data-as-such. For me data is a specific regime, a discourse, a powerful one, mostly used by the powers to be against their subjects for reasons of extraction or surveillance. Some years ago our INC institute published a Theory on Demand collection entitled Data for Good. Even my best friends work with data, it’s the air we breath. It was not my point to condemn collaegues as collaborators with the enemy. Peak data should be read as a thought experiment about an another world that’s possible in which databases are forgotten, sensors fall into disrepair and a car can again be just a car. Data speak is part of a data regime, which can crumble. Aside of this, there is the obvious pleasure of seeing complex data systems decay, almost instantly.

Andreas, the reference you dug up from Borges is a beautiful one. These are the stories we need to tell, the ones that give hope. Data are abstract, and often we fail to transform the structural violence into compelling stories. However, automated systems (including DAOs) are increasingly desastrous for millions, in particular those that control borders, jobs opportunities, housing, education. Michael, if only scientists would use gathered data, the world would be a different place. Yet, we all know that data collection methods are contested (see the climate debate). I personally think that we do not need more data evidence, but that’s me… Data inflation sets in at some point and it then becomes a questions how many more decades we need to convince others with data.

John writes: “It is not that data are 'emitted' by things in the world, or that it exists independently of human action, but rather I would argue that data are created/generated by measurement, by the interaction of things with data gathering mechanisms.” I agree. Data do not exist outside of the capture apparatus and measurement paradigms embedded in them. However, this is the data age. Decades ago people talked about information. Or signs (often in other contexts, but with similar issues). Data are the elementary particles of our time. First there were atoms, then neurons... etc. These particles once functioned in the past century as models to explain our world, well beyond quantum physics.

We should pick up on Sean’s proposals about the capture, storage and processing of social media. Have a look at heroic yet failing effort of archive.org and you start to understand that 80% if not 95% of internet traffic is not stored at all (for public access, that is). It is not my immediate concern that future historians will no longer have access to social media platforms (or perhaps only a tiny slice of it). Books may survive for a while but even a simple and small archive like the one of nettime may not survive more than a few decades. Some will find this a relief. My tweets will disappear very soon. This provokes the now or never culture we’re in to become even more dominant.