Geophysical Datascapes of the Cold War: Politics and Practices of the World Data Centers in the 1950s and 1960s (2017)
Aronova, Elena (Author)
Osiris: A Research Journal Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences
Volume: 32
Issue: 1
Pages: 307-327
The International Geophysical Year or IGY (1957–8), conceived against a background of nuclear secrecy intensified by Cold War political tensions, enabled the distinct data regime that took hold in Soviet and American World Data Centers in the 1950s and 1960s—a regime that turned data into a form of currency, traded by the political players of the Cold War. This essay examines this data regime in detail, considering, in turn, the issues of secrecy and access, sharing and exchange, accumulation and archiving, and, finally, handling and use of the IGY data. Features of the IGY’s data centers, such as the notion of centralized storage of open data, freely accessible to users from around the world, played an important role in establishing the practices of data governance that continue today. These practices, however, were outcomes of the politics, visions, and accompanying technologies that were embedded in a supportive political culture of the Cold War. By revisiting the drawbacks and challenges that accompanied the Big Data moment in the early Cold War, this essay explores multiple meanings of data, and the ways in which data participated in a subtle Cold War political economy, beyond their use (or the lack thereof) in the production of knowledge.
...MoreArticle Bruno J. Strasser; Paul N. Edwards (2017) Big Data Is the Answer … But What Is the Question?. Osiris: A Research Journal Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 328-345).
Article Elena Aronova; Christine von Oertzen; David Sepkoski (2017) Introduction: Historicizing Big Data. Osiris: A Research Journal Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 1-17).
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