LAUSR

The ascendency of so-called big data as a driving technological, economic, and political force has hinged, in part, on an understanding of people’s social and behavioral data as valuable. Sometimes, this value is simply taken as self-evident—that is, more data just does lead to better knowledge, keener insights, and (for those who can harness it) social and economic gain. Other times, personal data is metaphorically positioned as a kind of natural resource—the data is simultaneously Bthe new oil^ and something to be Bmined^—that fuels scholarly and economic progress alike (Puschmann and Burgess 2014). Still further, data’s value is necessarily implicit in debates around the kinds of expertise (human and machinic, centralized or distributed) big data demands (Bassett 2015). Of course, uncritical claims to the value of personal data ultimately occlude the legal and economic structures, material conditions, and conceptual assumptions that make the capture and exploitation of digital data possible in the first place. Conceptually, for example, big data (including, but not limited to, large-scale social and behavioral data generated by and through our interactions with networked devices and online platforms) presents itself as scientifically and politically neutral, imbued with an Baura of truth, objectivity, and accuracy^ (Boyd and Crawford 2012, p. 663). However, accepting this claim—that is, accepting the idea that, with big enough data, the social world can be explained from a value-neutral, objective point of view (Jurgenson 2014, n.p.)—requires willful ignorance of the theoretical moves required to conceive of something as Bdata^ in the first place (Bowker 2014). Further, it also requires the erroneous equating of knowledge with the results of automated statistical analyses of massive datasets—as if human labor and expertise were not integral to the entire enterprise of knowledge production. Certainly, advanced techniques and technologies may be part of the knowledge production process, but they are—as Floridi (2012, p. 437) notes—insufficient by themselves. Philos. Technol. (2018) 31:209–212 https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-017-0295-x