Noteworthy Information

[Advanced] Sociotechnical Imaginaries of Different Data Futures

This was such a treat to read and was quite interesting to imagine how as MyData community we can envision new imaginaries: "I suggest that these struggles and reactions are openings for thinking about different data futures through what I call an experiment in citizen data. It is an experiment that reconsiders relations between states, citizens and digital technologies in the production of data and statistics by imagining a new political subjectivity, that of the data citizen."

[Simple] Invisible Women

In Invisible Women, campaigner and writer Caroline Criado Perez brings gender data to the fore. Although it sells itself as a book about data bias, it’s more of a book about data on bias, a catalogue of the facts and figures that document persistent gender inequalities in society.

Data Commons & Data Trust

How do data trusts relate to data commons? When trying to make sense of the many data governance models and data sharing arrangements in existence this question comes up a lot. This article gives some basic insights into the relationship between a data commons and a data trust.
And the author (Anouk Ruhaak) also compiled a comprehensive reading list about the topic of Data Trusts.

Business & Government Intermediate read

The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It

A little-known start-up helps law enforcement match photos of unknown people to their online images — and “might lead to a dystopian future or something,” a backer says.

I Needed the Discounts

Novelists, poets and artists imagine life in the age of surveillance.

Recommended Reading

Two book recommendations:

  • Privacy in the Modern Age: The Search for Solutions (2015) - check out also other interesting books at the EPIC (Electronic Privacy Information Center) bookstore
  • Dead Souls (1842) - An absurd and hilarious satire. Good for the discussion who - if any - owns mydata, or about ethics. And sometimes too close to the real life. More also on Wikipedia

Data agency at stake: MyData activism and alternative frames of equal participation

Data activism has emerged as a response to asymmetries in how data and the means of knowledge production are distributed. This article examines MyData, a data activism initiative developing principles for a new technical and commercial ecosystem in which individuals control the use of personal data.

Our Data Future

Our digital environment is changing, fast. Nobody knows exactly what it’ll look like in five to ten years’ time, but we know that how we produce and share our data will change where we end up. We have to decide how to protect, enhance, and preserve our rights in a world where technology is everywhere and data is generated by every action.

Privacy matters because it empowers us all

Don’t just give away your privacy to the likes of Google and Facebook – protect it, or you disempower us all.

1st Reading Club Took Place

This week the first reading club was held on Thursday and a number of interesting things were posted subsequently: @Fredrik Löfman posted an Economis article (Is Google an evil genius?) and an interesting article series on data-rights related issues. @Antti 'Jogi' Poikola proposed to read and discuss Laron Lanier, Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now next.

Reading Club - Shoshana Zuboff: The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

The first reading club chat is in the coming week on July 11th.


Questions Asked

Individuals Intermediate read

Because of Social Media, Are We Reading Fewer Books?

A user wrote:

"Twitter did something that I would not have thought possible: It stole reading from me," argues a former New Yorker writer (who was once nominated for the Pulitzer Prize). In a new piece in the Atlantic this week, they argue that Twitter "hacked itself so deep into my circuitry that it interrupted the very formation of my thoughts..."

I'm still haunted by a free 37-minute documentary I saw two years ago on YouTube called Bookstores: How to Read More Books in the Golden Age of Content. It followed Max Joseph, the former host of the TV show Catfish (and the documentary's director) as he spoke to several reading experts (including a speed reader) about how he could form better habits. But at one point he calculates he was spending 20 minutes a day just on news, plus another 30 minutes a day on social media — which adds up to 304 hours a year that could've been spent reading books. (Enough time to read 30 books a year.)

Are we reading fewer books because of social media?