Digital political economy is thus a balancing act between technical materiality of data and the digital world, and political economic realities of the economy and the social world.
In this series, a uniting theme is going to be balancing the societal transformations we can see as a result of digital technology and data with the political economy which persists within that same society.
The platform is a strong starting point taiwan rcs data in any discussion of digital political economy. But it is not the starting point; it is not fundamental. Rather, the platform – and much else in digital political economy – is a by-product of data and the datafication of the world. In this series, I will start with data and build from there. Specifically, I’m going to begin with a seemingly simple question: what are data?
I’m going to think about data from quite a philosophical perspective. Do data always exist, and are simply waiting to be discovered? Or are data something we create, and if so, are there any limits on creation? Is it fair to compare data to oil or money, and can neutral data exist, this is an oxymoronic idea? Should we think about natural data and social data differently, and just what exactly is information!? I don’t believe there are firm answers to any of these questions (though I do believe there is a ‘folk’ understanding of data which governs much of the digital economy), but by exploring some of the ideas which emerge from asking them, I hope to demonstrate the importance of a philosophical theory of data within digital political economy.