#catherine d'ignazio

[sanguinarysanguinity]

At the same time that these [redlining] maps were being made, the insurance industry, for example, was implementing similar data-driven methods for granting (or denying) policies to customers based on their demographics. Zoning laws that were explicitly based on race had already been declared unconstitutional; but within neighborhoods, so-called covenants were nearly as exclusionary and completely legal. This is a phenomenon that political philosopher Cedric Robinson famously termed racial capitalism, and it continues into the present in the form of algorithmically generated credit scores that are consistently biased and in the consolidation of “the 1 percent” through the tax code, to give only two examples of many. What’s more, the benefits of whiteness accrue: “Whiteness retains its value as a ‘consolation prize,’” civil rights scholar Cheryl Harris explains. “It does not mean that all whites will win, but simply that they will not lose.”

Catherine D'Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein, Data Feminism

Final quote is from Cheryl L. Harris, “Whiteness as Property,” Harvard Law Review 106, no. 8 (1993)

[shepaintsred]

As my body moves deep into the circle, I begin to question the truth of the map...and what it represents.  I also question my privilege. My body pulls out of an invention of geography and technology, a line.  I am becoming more and more curious about the edges.

[mez-rperez]

Reviving my coding skills

Data Visualization Fellowship Weeks 2 & 3

If there is one thing I got out of my Computer Science degree, it is audacity. I'd say it is what helped me survive that major (and all it entails). Turns out, it comes in handy for my research as well!

So I'm in week three of the data visualization program and I have begun to really test my coding skills, which I haven't used (strictly speaking) in years. I spent most of week 2 reading/thinking, mostly because I was in the middle of travel and presenting at a conference.

The space was helpful! I read two insightful (and short!) articles recommended by the mentors, which were Feminist Data Visualization by Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein, and The Theory/Data Thing Commentary by Geoffrey C. Bowker. Both were extremely helpful, but the D'Ignazio and Klein piece really helped with my thinking around how I go about constructing this work. Namely, acknowledging the standpoint that I am taking and how that is reflected in the work/final visualization. This is something I've thought about a bit with regard to positionality statements in writing, but it is different (for me) to be undertaking this sort of project with that in mind.

This week, however, was spent trying to re-learn Python syntax. I'm sure I'm not the first person to experience this, but it's funny that I can remember what I'm able to do with that language/the libraries and then proceed to Google "how to launch jupyter notebook" because while I know what it is and what it can do... I can't remember what to type in on the terminal.

So I'll say that while it took a little longer than I expected, I have a first draft of a data set I can use for my project! Using the Wayback Machine Internet Archive, I collected job titles, locations, year posted, and links to SpaceX job descriptions for a given day in June for 2014-2019. There are still some major limitations to this set, and I'm still trying to figure out how to get 2020-23 since they changed up the page in 2020. Its a start though! I'm adding a screenshot of my excel file so you can get an idea of what I'm working with.

While I work on this technical aspect of my project, I am still turning over in my mind how I want to define a "STEM job," if I still want to. There are a lot of pitfalls to this, most importantly being that I am personally against the idea of delineating this. Of course, I'm still going to think this through, but it's challenging.

Up next will be getting the rest of the data (2020-23) and to start visualizing it. A big question for me is what is missing, as in where can I possibly expand beyond how I'm thinking of this project. I hope to be able to share soon my first visualizations to see what comes up for people!

Anyway, thanks for reading!

[fundgruber]

people who work with data are alternately called unicorns (because they are rare and have special skills), wizards (because they can do magic), ninjas (because they execute complicated, expert moves), rock stars (because they outperform others), and janitors (because they clean messy data)

Catherine D'Ignazio and Lauren Klein: 5. Unicorns, Janitors, Ninjas, Wizards, and Rock Stars Principle #5 of Data Feminism is to Embrace Pluralism. Data feminism insists that the most complete knowledge comes from synthesizing multiple perspectives, with priority given to local, Indigenous, and experiential ways of knowing.

[librarycards]

Rather than valorizing the neutrality ideal and trying to expunge all human traces from a data product because of their bias, feminist philosophers have proposed a goal of more complete knowledge. Donna Haraway’s idea of the god trick comes from a larger argument about the importance of developing feminist objectivity. It’s not just data visualization but all forms of knowledge that are situated, she explains, meaning that they are produced by specific people in specific circumstances—cultural, historical, and geographic. Feminist objectivity is a tool that can account for the situated nature of knowledge and can bring together multiple—what she terms partial—perspectives. Sandra Harding, who developed her ideas alongside Haraway, proposes a concept of strong objectivity. This form of objectivity works toward more inclusive knowledge production by centering the perspectives—or standpoints—of groups that are otherwise excluded from knowledge-making processes. This has come to be known as standpoint theory. To supplement these ideas, Linda Alcoff has introduced the idea of positionality, a concept that emphasizes how individuals come to knowledge-making processes from multiple positions, each determined by culture and context. All of these ideas offer alternatives to the quest for a universal objectivity—which is, of course, an unattainable goal.

Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein, Data Feminism.

[emphasis added]

[exitwound]

The point here is that one does not need street names for navigation until one has strangers in the landscape. Likewise, data do not need cleaning until there are strangers in the dataset … once the data scientists involved in a project are not from within the community, once the place of analysis changes, once the scale of the project shifts, or once a single dataset needs to be combined with others—then we have strangers in the dataset.

Catherine D'Ignazio and Lauren Klein, Data Feminism

[ucflibrary]

Women’s History Month began as a week-long celebration in Sonoma, California in 1978 which was centered around International Women’s Day on March 8. A year later during a women’s history conference at Sarah Lawrence College, participants learned how successful the week was and decided to initiate similar in their own areas. President Carter issued the first proclamation for a national Women’s History Week in 1980. In 1987, Congress (after being petitioned by the National Women’s History Project) passed Pub. L. 100-9 designating March as Women’s History Month. U.S. Presidents have issued proclamations on Women’s History Month since 1988.

 The Libraries will be hosting two virtual events to celebrate Women’s History Month for 2021. The first is a talk by Nicholson School of Communication faculty member, Dr. Kimberly Voss, called “Make No Mistake, Florida is Crucial”: Sen. Lori Wilson and the Equal Rights Amendment, which discusses efforts to ratify the ERA in Florida. The second is a panel discussion called Women & Academia in the Time of COVID where five UCF faculty and administrators will discuss the impact of the COVID pandemic and remote learning on their teaching, scholarship, service loads and personal lives. Both events are free and open to the public. Click on the links to register to attend.

 We have created a list of books about women, both history and fiction, suggested by staff. Please click on the read more link below to see the full book list with descriptions and catalog links. And don’t forget to stop by the John C. Hitt Library to browse the featured bookshelf on the main floor near the Research & Information Desk for additional Women’s History Month books.

 A Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton Porter Elnora Comstock grows up on the banks of Limberlost Swamp in Indiana with her bitter mother, Katharine. Unable to afford an education, Elnora develops a plan to sell artifacts and moths from the swamp. Suggested by Pat Tiberii, Interlibrary Loan and Document Delivery Services

 A Woman of No Importance: the untold story of the American spy who helped win World War II by Sonia Purnell Based on new and extensive research, Sonia Purnell has for the first time uncovered the full secret life of Virginia Hall--an astounding and inspiring story of heroism, spycraft, resistance, and personal triumph over shocking adversity. It is the breathtaking story of how one woman's fierce persistence helped win the war. Suggested by Dawn Tripp, Research & Information Services

 All the Horrors of War: a Jewish girl, a British doctor, and the liberation of Bergen-Belsen by Bernice Lerner Drawing on a wealth of sources, including Hughes's papers, war diaries, oral histories, and interviews, this gripping volume combines scholarly research with narrative storytelling in describing the suffering of Nazi victims, the overwhelming presence of death at Bergen-Belsen, and characters who exemplify the human capacity for fortitude. Lerner, Rachel's daughter, has special insight into the torment her mother suffered. The first book to pair the story of a Holocaust victim with that of a liberator, it compels readers to consider the full, complex humanity of both. Suggested by Katie Kirwan, Acquisitions & Collections

 Data Feminism by Catherine D'Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein This book offers strategies for data scientists seeking to learn how feminism can help them work toward justice, and for feminists who want to focus their efforts on the growing field of data science. But it is about much more than gender. It is about power, about who has it and who doesn't, and about how those differentials of power can be challenged and changed. Suggested by Sandy Avila, Research & Information Services

 Field o' My Dreams: the poetry of Gene Stratton-Porter compiled and edited by Mary DeJong Obuchowski In her introduction to Porter’s work, Obuchowski argues that the natural and spiritual themes of Porter’s poetry mirror the self-same concerns regarding nature and social issues found in her fiction and nonfiction. Reflecting and in some cases reacting against, current social attitudes at a time of political and demographic change, she was in demand as a columnist for popular magazines and a widely read fiction writer. Porter wielded considerable influence over her reading public, and in that role she acted as a reformer, particularly regarding the environment but also on behalf of women, children, and education. Suggested by Pat Tiberii, Interlibrary Loan and Document Delivery Services

 Finish the Fight!: the brave and revolutionary women who fought for the right to vote written by the Staff of The New York Times Who was at the forefront of women's right to vote? We know a few famous names, like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, but what about so many others from diverse backgrounds—black, Asian, Latinx, Native American, and more—who helped lead the fight for suffrage? On the hundredth anniversary of the historic win for women's rights, it's time to celebrate the names and stories of the women whose stories have yet to be told. Suggested by Sandy Avila, Research & Information Services

 Founding Sisters and the Nineteenth Amendment by Eleanor Clift In this riveting account, political analyst Eleanor Clift chronicles the many thrilling twists and turns of the suffrage struggle and shows how the issues and arguments that surrounded the movement still reverberate today. Beginning with the Seneca Falls Woman’s Rights Convention of 1848, Clift introduces the movement’s leaders, recounts the marches and demonstrations, and profiles the opposition–antisuffragists, both men and women, who would do anything to stop women from getting the vote. Suggested by Richard Harrison, Research & Information Services

 Free Food for Millionaires by Min Jin Lee Casey Han's four years at Princeton gave her many things, "But no job and a number of bad habits." Casey's parents, who live in Queens, are Korean immigrants working in a dry cleaner, desperately trying to hold on to their culture and their identity. Their daughter, on the other hand, has entered into rarified American society via scholarships. But after graduation, Casey sees the reality of having expensive habits without the means to sustain them. As she navigates Manhattan, we see her life and the lives around her, culminating in a portrait of New York City and its world of haves and have-nots. This fresh exploration of the complex layers we inhabit both in society and within ourselves. Suggested by Sara Duff, Acquisitions & Collections

 From Equal Suffrage to Equal Rights: Alice Paul and the National Woman's Party, 1910-1928 by Christine A. Lunardini The woman's movements and work in American history during the second two decades, was dramatic. It dealt with the past, with pageants and politics; with different organizations and with conflict from within. It took on the Democrats, founded a National Woman's Party; it waged a home front war. It dealt with prison, and resolution. It went from equal suffrage to equal rights. Suggested by Richard Harrison, Research & Information Services

 Indelicacy by Amina Cain A cleaning woman at a museum of art nurtures aspirations to do more than simply dust the paintings around her. She dreams of having the liberty to explore them in writing, and so must find a way to win herself the time and security to use her mind. She escapes her lot by marrying a rich man, but having gained a husband, a house, high society, and a maid, she finds that her new life of privilege is no less constrained. Not only has she taken up different forms of time-consuming labor - social and erotic - but she is now, however passively, forcing other women to clean up after her. Perhaps another and more drastic solution is necessary? Suggested by Sara Duff, Acquisitions & Collections

 See Jane Win: the inspiring story of the women changing American politics by Caitlin Moscatello After November 8, 2016, first came the sadness; then came the rage, the activism, and the protests; and, finally, for thousands of women, the next step was to run for office—many of them for the first time. More women campaigned for local or national office in the 2018 election cycle than at any other time in US history, challenging accepted notions about who seeks power and who gets it. Journalist Caitlin Moscatello reported on this wave of female candidates for New York magazine's The Cut, Glamour, and Elle. In this book, she further documents this pivotal time in women's history. Closely following four candidates throughout the entire process, from the decision to run through Election Day, readers are taken inside their exciting, winning campaigns and the sometimes thrilling, sometimes brutal realities of running for office while female. Suggested by Megan Haught, Student Learning & Engagement/Research & Information Services

 Taking on the Trust: the epic battle of Ida Tarbell and John D. Rockefeller by Steve Weinberg Long before the rise of mega-corporations like Wal-Mart and Microsoft, Standard Oil controlled the oil industry with a monopolistic force unprecedented in American business history. Undaunted by the ruthless power of its owner, John D. Rockefeller, a fearless and ambitious reporter named Ida Minerva Tarbell confronted the company known simply as “The Trust.” Through her peerless fact gathering and devastating prose, Tarbell, a muckraking reporter at McClure’s magazine, pioneered the new practice of investigative journalism. Her shocking discoveries about Standard Oil and Rockefeller led, inexorably, to a dramatic confrontation during the opening decade of the twentieth century that culminated in the landmark 1911 Supreme Court antitrust decision breaking up the monopolies and forever altering the landscape of modern American industry. Suggested by Dawn Tripp, Research & Information Services

 The Book of Gutsy Women: favorite stories of courage and resilience by Hillary Rodham Clinton and Chelsea Clinton Hillary Rodham Clinton and her daughter, Chelsea, share the stories of the gutsy women who have inspired them—women with the courage to stand up to the status quo, ask hard questions, and get the job done. Ensuring the rights and opportunities of women and girls remains a big piece of the unfinished business of the twenty-first century. While there's a lot of work to do, we know that throughout history and around the globe women have overcome the toughest resistance imaginable to win victories that have made progress possible for all of us. That is the achievement of each of the women in this book. To us, they are all gutsy women -- leaders with the courage to stand up to the status quo, ask hard questions, and get the job done. So in the moments when the long haul seems awfully long, we hope you will draw strength from these stories. Because if history shows one thing, it's that the world needs  gutsy women. Suggested by Richard Harrison, Research & Information Services

 The Good Fight by Shirley Chisholm Chisholm describes being the first woman, and first black woman, to run for President, and how politicians operate. She writes about her relationships with black political leaders Walter Fauntroy, Louis Stokes, Ron Dellums, and Julian Bond. She gives her views on what direction black politics should take in the years to come. Suggested by Megan Haught, Student Learning & Engagement/Research & Information Services

 Unapologetic: a Black, queer, and feminist mandate for radical movements by Charlene A. Carruthers Drawing on Black intellectual and grassroots organizing traditions, including the Haitian Revolution, the US civil rights movement, and LGBTQ rights and feminist movements, Carruthers challenges all of us engaged in the social justice struggle to make the movement for Black liberation more radical, more queer, and more feminist. She offers a flexible model of what deeply effective organizing can be, anchored in the Chicago model of activism, which features long-term commitment, cultural sensitivity, creative strategizing, and multiple cross-group alliances. Suggested by Megan Haught, Student Learning & Engagement/Research & Information Services

 Unmarriageable by Soniah Kamal In this retelling of Pride and Prejudice set in modern-day Pakistan, Alys Binat has sworn never to marry--until an encounter with one Mr. Darsee at a wedding makes her reconsider. A scandal and vicious rumor in the Binat family have destroyed their fortune and prospects for desirable marriages, but Alys, the second and most practical of the five Binat daughters, has found happiness teaching English literature to schoolgirls. Knowing that many of her students won't make it to graduation before dropping out to marry and start having children, Alys teaches them about Jane Austen and her other literary heroes and hopes to inspire them to dream of more. Suggested by Sara Duff, Acquisitions & Collections

[rebweicht]

Books: April - July 2021

Recommendations in bold

What I’ve read:

Thomas Hardy: Tess of the d'Urbervilles

Adam Higginbottom: Midnight in Chernobyl

Ferdinand von Schirach: Strafe

Tayari Jones: An American Marriage 

Marc-Uwe Kling: Känguru-Chroniken; Ansichten eines vorlauten Beuteltiers

Marc-Uwe Kling: Das Känguru-Manifest

Marc-Uwe Kling: Die Känguru-Offenbarung 

Marc-Uwe Kling: Die Känguru-Apokryphen

Timothy Snyder: The Road to Unfreedom

Michio Kaku: The Future of Humanity; Terraforming Mars, Interstellar Travel, Immortality, and Our Destiny Beyond

Catherine D'Ignazio , Lauren F. Klein: Data Feminism

[techsciencebookclub]

Book Club: Data Feminism

A new way of thinking about data science and data ethics that is informed by the ideas of intersectional feminism.

Today, data science is a form of power. It has been used to expose injustice, improve health outcomes, and topple governments. But it has also been used to discriminate, police, and surveil. This potential for good, on the one hand, and harm, on the other, makes it essential to ask: Data science by whom? Data science for whom? Data science with whose interests in mind? The narratives around big data and data science are overwhelmingly white, male, and techno-heroic. In Data Feminism, Catherine D'Ignazio and Lauren Klein present a new way of thinking about data science and data ethics—one that is informed by intersectional feminist thought.

Illustrating data feminism in action, D'Ignazio and Klein show how challenges to the male/female binary can help challenge other hierarchical (and empirically wrong) classification systems. They explain how, for example, an understanding of emotion can expand our ideas about effective data visualization, and how the concept of invisible labor can expose the significant human efforts required by our automated systems. And they show why the data never, ever “speak for themselves.”

Data Feminism offers strategies for data scientists seeking to learn how feminism can help them work toward justice, and for feminists who want to focus their efforts on the growing field of data science. But Data Feminism is about much more than gender. It is about power, about who has it and who doesn't, and about how those differentials of power can be challenged and changed.

[thingful]

On The Diversity of Search Engines for the Internet of Things

While we’ve been hard at work over the last 6 years building out our own IoT Search Engine, we recently noticed that many others are working on the “Search Engines for the Internet of Things” sphere, and that the industry is gathering steam; read on to hear about some of them.

Well, we never expected Thingful to be the only Internet of Things Search Engine – we’ve always assumed that if we’re working in a valuable space, others would soon join us. Now, 5G is here. The IoT grows and data is increasingly seen as powering the ‘pulse of the planet’. For decades, organisations have been able to use data from their internal systems and processes to improve their operations, but the real opportunity in IoT arises when people and organisations can benefit from each other's data, not just their own closed-system data – while respecting stringent privacy and security frameworks. But this is only possible when such data is ‘discoverable’ by others (again, respecting privacy & security parameters that the owner has adopted).

IoT Search Engines are becoming a fundamental part for the next phase of the Internet of Things. Shodan, IoTCrawler, Reposify, Censys, and many more Search Engines for the IoT have come into existence since the inception of Thingful.

Back in 2013/2014, Thingful was the only IoT Search Engine, unique in its focus on making the Open Internet of Things useful and practical. We have thought long and hard about the need for understanding data and how it's produced by people and their connected ‘things’, particularly concerning the physical and natural environment. Much of our work over the last few years has been to enable the same kind of discoverability for private data that is much easier on public data – building the ‘entitlement’ tools through which data owners can circumscribe how their data is found and used by others (if at all), while still making it interoperable and accessible. Read more about this in our articles 'Enabling secure discoverability & interoperability between millions of public & private IoT objects around the world', and 'Managing Privacy in the Internet of Things' (Harvard Business Review).

Discovering all these new IoT Search Engines emerge is tremendously exciting -  we are at the beginning of a paradigm shift when it comes to data rights and ownership, and the Search Engines that respect these are those we believe will succeed in the long run. In a world dominated by Giant Tech companies profiting from the online presence of people, and nudging behaviours without our knowledge, our role as technologists, data scientists, and designers becomes more important than ever. However, not all is bad. As Yuval Noah Harari mentioned in this FT article, when technology gives the power to a group of people to monitor another, the same technology can be used in reverse by the surveilled party. With the right tools, people have the opportunity to choose, rather than passively follow the systems created without their consent. For these reasons, if IoT data is to be interoperable, and, to a certain extent, ‘shared’ between organisations, we must focus on rendering data accessible, transparent, and easily understandable to everyone today more than ever.

We would like to conclude this blogpost with a provocation, and a question we hope can inspire technologists, data scientists, and designers in their practice.  

Data has been characterised in many different ways; a tsunami, oil, etc. Consider, for a moment, another analogy, that data is like the letters of the alphabet – invented and crafted, but with a certain commensurability given the right context. When reading ‘letters’ generated in patterns by others, people can try to make sense of and understand what they think a writer is trying to communicate. But that message can be understood in many different ways, and the ‘letters’ of that communication do not define its “veracity”. In times of uncertainty, fake news, and information overload, we are seeing the rise of authoritarianism spreading in both the digital and physical realm – through large technology companies on one hand and political structures on the other. People have to make choices and decisions about how they ‘read’, ‘interpret’ and act upon data, and this will, in part, be based on a set of perceptions and presumptions that are already in place, helping either to reinforce or challenge those interpretations, decisions, and actions. As exemplified in Data Feminism, a new book on MIT Press by Catherine D'Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein, “data is never [...] raw, truthful input, and it is never neutral”. On a side note, this book not only offers new ways of thinking about data science and data ethics but is itself the product of an innovative approach to data-driven collaboration, participation & deliberation. You may be interested to follow the reading group hosted by the authors where they discuss a chapter of the book every week.

www.elviavasconcelos.com is documenting the reading group @sketchnotes_are_awesome

Our big question is: how do we best provide the tools for people to become data literate, particularly in an age of IoT data sharing and interoperability, empowering us all to make sense of and use data in a way that is beneficial to the collective, but doesn’t just preserve inappropriate structures and ideologies? 

Future blog posts will try to answer that, so keep an eye on our Twitter and LinkedIn!

[sanguinarysanguinity]

The key to co-liberation is that it requires a commitment to and a belief in mutual benefit, from members of both dominant groups and minoritized groups; that’s the 'co' in the term. Too often, acts of data service performed by tech companies are framed as charity work (we discuss the limits of “data for good” in chapter 5). The frame of co-liberation equalizes this exchange as a form of relationship building and demographic healing. There is a famous saying credited to aboriginal activists in Queensland, Australia, from the 1970s: “If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” What does this mean? As poet and community organizer Tawana Petty explains in relation to efforts around antiracism in the United States: “We need whites to firmly believe that their liberation, their humanity, is also dependent upon the destruction of racism and the dismantling of white supremacy.” The same goes for gender: men are often not prompted to think about how unequal gender relations seep into the institutions they dominate, resulting in harm for everyone.

Catherine D'Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein, Data Feminism

Footnote: Although the aboriginal activist quote ended up circulating on the internet as the work of one person—Lilla Watson—Watson herself describes it as the outcome of a collective process, and she desired that it be credited as “Aboriginal activists group, Queensland, 1970s.” See Watson, “Attributing Words,” Unnecessary Evils, November 3, 2008.

[visualcontext-stimuli]

stimuli_Eyeo 2019 - Catherine D'Ignazio by Eyeo Festival // FEMINIST DATA, FEMINIST FUTURES | Catherine D’Ignazio at Eyeo 2019 | People at eyeo are innovators - they make futures. In this talk Catherine invites you to try on some feminisms for your futures. She talks about two projects: a book that charts a course for feminist data science and a hackathon to make the breast pump not suck. There is power in challenging power. There is power in design to empower. There is power in feminist imaginations and feminist futures. 
 Catherine D’Ignazio is a scholar, artist/designer and software developer who focuses on data literacy, feminist technology and civic engagement. She has designed global news recommendation systems, run women’s health hackathons, created talking and tweeting water quality sculptures, and led walking data visualizations to envision the future of sea level rise. Her art and design projects have won awards from the Tanne Foundation, Turbulence.org and the Knight Foundation and exhibited at the Venice Biennial and the ICA Boston. Her research at the intersection of technology, design & the social change has been published in the Journal of Peer Production, the Journal of Community Informatics, and the proceedings of Human Factors in Computing Systems (ACM SIGCHI).  D’Ignazio is an Assistant Professor of Civic Media and Data Visualization at Emerson College, a Senior Fellow at the Engagement Lab and a research affiliate at the MIT Center for Civic Media & MIT Media Lab. Her forthcoming book from MIT Press, Data Feminism, co-authored with Lauren Klein, charts a course for more ethical and empowering data science and visualization practices. http://kanarinka.com http://twitter.com/kanarinka http://eyeofestival.com/ http://twitter.com/eyeofestival

[mikaelseppala]

Tweeted

Brilliant! Marguerite Barry et al propose an ethics of CARE vs RIGHTS for big data and AI. Ethics of care focuses on relationships and responsibilities over rights and rules. #datajustice18 pic.twitter.com/9XLFYdcqYU

— Catherine D'Ignazio (@kanarinka) May 21, 2018

[fundgruber]

In contrast to archives, databases are much more readily and deeply entwined with processes of governance and policy, (scientific) knowledge-making, and everyday practices. And they are much harder to grasp, as their records might not be intelligible or even readable in and of themselves. Also, often there is no obvious location to visit aside from a digital interface. In a 2010 presentation of the first complete annotation of the full set of human protein sequences (the proteome), a scientist from the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics provided a list characterizing the proteins’ different statuses as follows: maybe, potentially, putative, expected, probably, hopefully (Bairoch 2010). Based on such a typology of (un)certainty, data infrastructures contain and create a spectrum of novel absences and presences that we are only beginning to understand. As both method and analytical category, database imaginaries and data fictions help figure the absences and invisibilities of and, importantly, in data infrastructures.

Tahani Nadim: Database, in: Uncertain Archives. Critical Keywords for Big Data. Edited by Nanna Bonde Thylstrup, Daniela Agostinho, Annie Ring, Catherine D'Ignazio and Kristin Veel, The MIT Press, London. 2021

[liicornell]

New from richards1000... Catherine D'Ignazio on Twitter

Catherine D'Ignazio on Twitter from richards1000 http://liicr.nl/2jedZVW via IFTTT

[linguistlist-blog]

TOC: Information Design Journal Vol. 23, No. 1 (2017)

2017. ii, 123 pp. Table of Contents Introduction: Information visualization, a design challenge Carla G. Spinillo 1 – 2 Editorial: Information+ Special issue of IDJ Isabel Meirelles and Katherine Gillieson 3 – 5 Creative data literacy: Bridging the gap between the data-haves and data-have nots Catherine D'Ignazio 6 – 18 Visualization as assemblage: Exploring critical visualization practice Patricio Dávila 19 – 31 Anticipative interfaces for emergency situations Klau http://dlvr.it/PZBh4B