In Technology Is Not Neutral, Stephanie Hare provides a practical overview of the complex topic of technology ethics. This is an accessible introduction that guides the reader through common questions, including whether technology can be neutral, where…
Category: Data
Book Review: Life After Privacy: Reclaiming Democracy in a Surveillance Society by Firmin DeBrabander
In Life After Privacy: Reclaiming Democracy in a Surveillance Society, Firmin DeBrabander argues that rather than seeking to safeguard and revive privacy in the digital age, we should instead focus on becoming engaged citizens who contribute to a democ…
Book Review: Profit Over Privacy: How Surveillance Advertising Conquered the Internet by Matthew Crain
In Profit Over Privacy: How Surveillance Advertising Conquered the Internet, Matthew Crain explores the historical rise of surveillance advertising, showing how today’s digital landscape was shaped by decisions taken in the 1990s. Revealing the emergen…
Book Review: Platform Socialism: How to Reclaim our Digital Future from Big Tech by James Muldoon
In Platform Socialism: How to Reclaim our Digital Future from Big Tech, James Muldoon explores how to bring about a reorganisation of the digital economy through the social ownership of digital assets and democratic control over digital infrastructure …
Unlocking linked real-world data presents opportunities to improve public health
The COVID-19 pandemic has surfaced the potential and risks of linked real word datasets to accelerate and produce new improvements in public health. In this post, Matthew Franklin, Dan Howdon, Suzanne Mason, Tony Stone, Monica Jones, outline the opport…
Book Review: Social Media and the Automatic Production of Memory: Classification, Ranking and the Sorting of the Past by Ben Jacobsen and David Beer
In Social Media and the Automatic Production of Memory: Classification, Ranking and the Sorting of the Past, Ben Jacobsen and David Beer explore how social media platforms are reshaping our processes of memory-making, with algorithms increasingly deter…
Seeing the world like Wikipedia – What you should know about how the world’s largest encyclopedia works.
Wikipedia has become focal point in the way in which information is accessed and communicated within modern societies. In this post, Zachary J. McDowell and Matthew A. Vetter discuss the principles that have enabled Wikipedia to assume this position an…
The vaccine passport debate reveals fundamental views about how personal data should be used, its role in reproducing inequalities, and the kind of society we want to live in
Helen Kennedy draws on evidence from the Living With Data survey to link public attitudes to data collection and use to views on Covid-19 vaccine passports. Finding widespread concern about the involvement of commercial technology companies in such ini…
Book Review: What Do We Know and What Should We Do About Social Mobility? by Lee Elliott Major and Stephen Machin
In What Do We Know and What Should We Do About Social Mobility? Lee Elliott Major and Stephen Machin give an account of the long experience of social mobility in the UK, its barriers and a possible way out. Offering a strong base for those who are new …
Book Review: The Crowdsourced Panopticon: Conformity and Control on Social Media by Jeremy Weissman
In The Crowdsourced Panopticon: Conformity and Control on Social Media, Jeremy Weissman explores the role of ‘peer-to-peer’ surveillance through social media and how this is increasingly shaping our behaviour. This is a welcome addition to the scholarl…