The Data Revolution: Big Data, Open Data, Data Infrastructures & Their Consequences

“As are the complex set of decision-making processes and practices, and the wider assemblage of systems of thought, fi nance, politics, legal codes and regulations, materialities and infrastructures, institutions, inter-personal relations, which shape their production (Kitchin, 2014).”

“This, in turn, means that data is a foundational form of capital for everything from the ‘smart home’ to the ‘smart city,’ finance to governance, production to distribution, consumer devices to enterprise systems, and much more (Kitchin, 2014).”

“Here, we see the role of algorithms, as decision-making parts of code (see Beer, 2013, p. 65), as being analytic and decisive (for a discussion of the role of algorithms in data analytics, see Kitchin, 2014, pp. 100–112).”

“…on mechanical objectivity; see also Espeland and Vannebo 2007; Hacking 1990), new analytic platforms and techniques are deployed in preexisting organizational contexts (Barley 1986, 1996; Kling 1991) and embody the purposes of their crea-tors (boyd and Crawford 2012; Gitelman 2013; Kitchin 2014).”

“Smart city technologies generate vast quantities of big data – that is, data that are produced in real-time and are exhaustive and finegrained in nature (Kitchin 2014).”

“Kitchin (2014) provides a large variety of skills required from BD professional.”

“While geographies of the digital have understood data to be key to all digital communication, big data refers to a quantitative and qualitative shift in the amount, velocity, variety, resolution and flexibility of data that is now collected and analysed by a range of devices (Kitchin, 2014b).”

“Based on a review of definitions of Big Data, Kitchin (2013, 2014) contends that Big Data are qualitatively different to traditional, small data along seven axes (see Table 1).”

“…agglomerations Marketplace For data, its derivatives (e.g., text, tables, graphs, maps), analysts, analytic software, interpretations, etc. Source: Kitchin (2014), p. 25. objective, but are rather contingent, relational and contextual; their data never raw but always cooked to some recipe by…”

“With the ongoing data revolution and the transition towards the so-called Internet of Things, this trend can only be set to grow (Kitchin 2014a; Kellermeit & Obodovski 2013; Rifkin 2014).”

“Their generation and interpretation always involve particular viewpoints, ideological frameworks, forms of disciplinary expertise, as well as the values, assumptions and biases of those who collect and analyse them (Andrejevic, 2014; Kitchin, 2014; Lupton, 2015b; van Dijck, 2014).”

“In academic discussions, while concerns over the utility of big data remain, critiques have emphasized a variety of questions including its role in surveillance (Crampton et al., 2014), its epistemologies (boyd and Crawford, 2012), and its paradigms (Kitchin, 2014).”

“The rise of interest in Big Data techniques (e.g. Boellstorff and Maurer, 2015; Kitchin, 2014) is of course a significant source of interest in algorithms in the first place, but the topic of data structures – the specific representations that organize data in order to make it processable by algorithms…”

“Critical social scientists have suggested that Big Data cannot be treated as a technical accomplishment separable from the social, and in particular from questions of justice and ethics (Busch, 2014; Couldry and Turow, 2014; Crawford et al., 2014; Elmer et al., 2015; Kitchin, 2014).”

“In this context, the software, hardware devices, the digital data that they generate and the algorithms that make sense of these data have become key actors in constituting and exploiting knowledges (Amoore & Piotukh, 2015; Kitchin, 2014; Lash, 2007; Thrift, 2005).”

“The smart city is more than “mere” discourse.1 Indeed, much of its critique centers upon the problematique of the “place-less” corporate-governmental discourse (e.g., Hollands, 2008; Shelton et al., 2015; Söderström et al., 2014; Kitchin, 2015).”

“In the social sciences, academics worry about the consequences of technological developments such as the ‘smart city’ and ‘surveillance capitalism’ (Kitchin, 2020; Townsend, 2013; Zuboff, 2019) that increase both the power of ‘big tech’ and global inequality.”

“The emergence of a growing field of critical studies on data epistemologies (boyd and Crawford 2012; Couldry and Mejias 2019; Kitchin 2014) and resistance (Milan and Gutiérrez 2015; Milan and Treré 2017; Milan and van der Velden 2016; Treré 2018) demonstrates the urgency of addressing the…”

“…as a discipline and profession, and the development of advanced technologies and practices such as machine learning, neural networks, deep learning and artificial intelligence (AI), have established new modes of quantitative knowledge production and decision-making (Kitchin 2014; Ruppert 2018).”

“This network produces ever-larger datasets of potentially useful information, updated in real time (Kitchin, 2014; Mayer-Schonberger and Cukier, 2013).”

“As in the title to Gitelman’s (2013) book ‘Raw data’ is an oxymoron (see also Kitchin 2014).”

“In DSPs, one of the classic rhetoric of Big Data is embraced: data creates more value if aggregated.”

“methods [70].”

“Big Data applications are already being deployed to improve productivity and profitability in many sectors (van Rijmenam, 2017; Davenport and Dyché, 2013; Kitchin and Data, 2014).”

“Kitchin (2014b).”

“Studies agree (e.g., Hilbert & López, 2011; IDC, 2011, 2014) that the volume of data being generated and stored today is growing exponentially (Kitchin, 2014) – but, big data is not just about volume (Constantiou & Kallinikos, 2015; Yoo, 2015).”

“As part of a broader drive to accumulate and leverage data resources (Kitchin, 2014), AI production needs human help not only to design cutting-edge algorithms (highly qualified engineers and computer scientists) but also at a much more basic level, to produce, enrich and curate data.”

“Therefore, accompanying the ‘ re-emergence of empiricism ’ ushered in by the ‘ data revolution ’ (Kitchin 2014), has been radical behaviourism, with which the work of B.F. Skinner ‘ has been making a comeback ’ (Friesen 2018, 3).”

“As Rob Kitchin (2014) argues, the discursive regime of Big Data is ‘‘to offer a radically new way of understanding and managing all aspects of human life’’ (p. 114).”

“Advances in computing processing capacity enable data-sets to be engaged with in real-time, or near real-time, rather than ‘freeze framed’ (Kitchin, 2014) or processed offline.”

“…Kitchin, 2015); draw attention to the effects of urban surveillance and digital governance facilitated by “big data” (e.g., Graham, 2012; Gabrys, 2014; Kitchin, 2014; Rabari and Storper, 2015); query the claim that smart cities necessarily contribute to sustainable development (e.g., Gargiulo…”

“As has been well documented in the surveillance studies literature, over the past two decades there has been a significant step change in individual level, fine-grained data harvesting and profiling, and enormous expansion in the number of data brokers and their profits (Kitchin, 2014).”

“…2008; Marvin, LuqueAyala, and McFarlane 2016)1—showing how digital data are gathered, integrated, and used in smart city management (Batty 2013; Kitchin 2014; Klauser, Paasche, and S€oderstr€om 2014; Shelton, Zook, and Wiig 2014; Rabari and Storper 2015), often via urban dashboards (Kitchin,…”

“…in which “systems of thought, forms of knowledge, finance, political economy, governmental-ities and legalities, materialities and infrastructures, practices, organisations and institutions, subjectivities and communities, places, and marketplaces” mutually constitute each other (Kitchin, 2014: 20).”

“…to build detailed profiles of users, which they can sell to advertisers (the ads that seem to remember what products we have searched for reflect precisely this activity taking place; based on what we do online, numerous other less visible processes are also taking place) (e.g. see Kitchin 2014b).”

“…this work is on software in particular as a form of ‘automated management’ (Kitchin and Dodge, 2011: x) which operates without human intervention to generate data and trigger automated responses, from traffic light signals to advertising mailshots (see also Dodge and Kitchin, 2009; Kitchin, 2014).”

“Of course, we might say that all data declared to be unstructured is always already structured, and certainly remains structured in important ways within data architectures and digital devices (Berry, 2014; Kitchin, 2014).”

“For Kitchin (2014), this critical analysis extends to the algorithms underlying media platforms as well.”

“Amid the clamor for smart-city rhetoric in Europe [20–22], a deep debate about digital ethics and rights emerged in cities such as Barcelona [23,24].”

“The first is that researchers need not start with a theory and then test it against data, but can rather gain insights directly from the data itself (Kitchin, 2014b).”

“…scholars have cautioned against such lopsided tales and have foregrounded the amount of work that is required for large-scale data analytics (Boyd and Crawford 2012; Kitchin 2014a), particularly in the field of policing and criminal justice (Bennett Moses and Chan 2016; Maguire and McVie 2017).”

“Instead, the special issue draws from fields such as science and technology studies (STS), software studies and digitally oriented studies in sociology, geography and philosophy to approach technologies as ‘sociotechnical’ systems (e.g. Beer, 2013; Fuller, 2008; Kitchin, 2014a; Lupton, 2015).”

“It covers a wide array of channels and formats, ranging from Facebook and Twitter messages, to (online) government records, to content created by formal media outlets, to responses and comments recorded in needs assessment surveys NGOs (summarize and) post online (Kitchin, 2014).”

“A more reflective critical literature is emerging on a number of issues relating to the use of data in urban environments (see for example: Kitchin, 2014a, 2014b, 2015; Mora and Deakin, 2019; Paulin, 2018; Visvizi and Lytras, 2019).”

“For now, we define data infrastructure as information systems that are designed to make data usable for organisational purposes, from local area networks to distributed cloud-based computing (Edwards et al. 2009; Kitchin 2014).”

“…encourage citizens to go online, generate demand for broadband, build “ knowledge clusters ” and create favourable investment climates for technology firms, today ’ s digital strategies also set out the opportunities associated with mobilizing data-driven practices and governance (Kitchin, 2014).”

“…of the ‘data assemblage’ of discourse, institutions, social relations, material resources, etc. within which a data system is embedded –must be incorporated into any analysis because of its role in shaping data-related outcomes (Dalton & Thatcher, 2014; Kitchin, 2014b; Kitchin & Lauriault, 2018).”

“…are influenced by local research cultures and administration, national science policies, training programmes and available infrastructures (see also [5–7, National governments and international agencies such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the European…”

“Critics such as Kitchin (2014), Naughton (2012) and Pariser (2011) have been calling attention to the wide-reaching and accelerating consequences of these forces, claiming that professionals, professional educators, researchers, policy-makers and the public are just beginning to realise the…”

“Meanwhile, researchers have questioned the ability to let big data “ speak for itself ” (Kitchin, 2014), as representativeness (Mislove, Lehmann, Ahn, Onnela, & Rosenquist, 2011), spatiotemporal extent (Rzeszewski, 2018), and uneven geographic information (Graham, De Sabbata, & Zook, 2015) can make…”

“‘Data is the new oil’ is not the only metaphor that surrounds data; there are also proclamations of a data deluge (Anderson, 2008), data revolution (Kitchin, 2014), and data tsunamis (Zander and Mähönen, 2013); however, claims that data has superseded fossil fuels as the paradigmatic commodity in…”

“…increasingly stored and processed, big data-based predictive analytics appears to harbour new capacities of peering into the future and revealing the unknowns to be tamed and governed (boyd and Crawford, 2012; Cukier and Mayer-Schoenberger, 2013; Kitchin, 2014; Lyon, 2014; Aradau and Blanke, 2015).”

“Kitchin (2014) describes data as raw ele- ments that are abstracted from phenomena and measured and recorded in different ways.”

“While algorithms do a very good job of appearing to be neutral and wholly driven by user data, they in fact ‘represent certain design decisions about how the world is to be ordered’ (Bucher, 2018: 67) and as such are selective, partial and constructed (Gitelman and Jackson, 2013; Kitchin, 2014: 14).”

“Technological development is sociotechnical in nature and data, as an abstraction [28, 55], is not given but created through human discretion [68] and shaped by power dynamics [62].”

“…original and replication studies are posted on the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/q25xa/), creating a publicly available resource researchers can use to better understand reproducibility and nonreproducibility in science (Kitchin, 2014; Nosek & Bar-Anan, 2012; Nosek, Spies, & Motyl, 2012).”

“But vast datasets are now produced by digital tools, while analog data is increasingly digitized (Kitchin, 2014).”

“Data is defined as the ‘material produced by abstracting the world into categories, measures and other forms of representation [. . . ] that constitute the building blocks from which information and knowledge are created’ (Kitchin, 2014: 1).”

“…with little evidence to demonstrate that simply making existing datasets available will have these impacts, and indeed increasing evidence suggests that open data may simply empower private companies and the already socioeconomically advantaged in society (Gurstein, 2011; Kitchin, 2014).”

“More recently, scholars have started to acknowledge and conceptualise these “data assemblages” (Kitchin 2014b) that under-pin borders and migration management.”

“Digital data collection, collation and analysis tools have enabled new research modes that rely on “big data,” i.e. large quantities of varied, dynamic, and mobilizable data (Kitchin 2014).”