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title: MX01
tags: data and digital culture, mini exercise
---

# MX01
*Adam Kiil Naldal* – *3857 characters*
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How are you interacting with data? Based on the first week assigned readings, reflect on what is new to you (or something you haven’t thought of)? Discuss why do we need to understand data (critically).
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In my day to day life I interact with (digital) data in various different ways. I do, occasionally, deal directly with data. By directly I mean I am actively reading the recorded data represented numerically and/or I am actively manipulating that data by hand or using different tools for analysis and representation. Mostly, this type of interaction with data is a part of my studies, but sometimes I do it as part of personal projects as well. Mainly, however, data is something that I access and produce in indirect ways, meaning that the data is almost always represented as something else (in the case of me consuming or using data) or extracted without my control or oversight (in the case of the data produced about me when I interact with digital services). This means that most of the data I interact with I either produce (through other activities), consume, or use (through algorithms and software, as in the case of google maps e.g.) without me really having any say in how that data is produced (and therefore how it represents my activity) or indeed how the data is deployed to deliver the media I consume or the information services I use. The readings and in particular the comments made by Ranjit Singh about data as infrastructure brought a new perspective to my understanding of how complex systems theory intersects with the ideas about user-, consumer- and civil rights. Especially the idea that when data and data-systems become infrastructure it might not make sense to view the people whose lives this infrastructure affects as “users” of that data or data-system but rather as “people who live with” this infrastructure. When viewed this way systems like the CPR-registry and the data behind the fare-reduction system of Rejsekort seem better described (and potentially more meaningfully analysed) as a piece of infrastructure rather than a product or service I am a user of.

There are of course many reasons why we need to understand data critically. Having spent the past semester-and-a-half studying critical data studies, I have perhaps acquired a stronger foundation for answering this question from an academic perspective. Firstly, a classical humanist argument could be made that understanding the ways that data is generated and used about the individual should be understood by that individual, in order for that individual to have the autonomy that is ethically imperative for the classical humanist ideas about the rights of the individual to have power over their own place in society. Especially since data as infrastructures are so tightly woven into the fabric of society. Secondly, there is an argument that is very much in line with original critical theorists like Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer. That argument being that as data suffuses culture and is used as a powerfull tool by large corporations and governments alike, it is very important to be able to understand the ways that data is used to to gain and maintain power just like it is important to understand how propaganda works for Adorno. A more modern twist on this last argument is that most of the people in a position to use data for their own power around the world are wealthy ethnically privileged men, including state leaders and owners of large tech corporations, and there is therefore a concern about how data can perpetuate inequalities in society. To combat that, we need a critical understanding of data to build on.

There are of course many other reasons why we need to understand data and how it is used (other than simply for knowledge’s own sake), but suffice it to say that we need to understand data because of similar reasons to why we need to understand psychology, sociology, politics, economics, or any other field of social science: because it is an important part of how our societies are shaped, changed and maintained.