Article
ID: CBB276336726

Big Data Is the Answer … But What Is the Question? (2017)

unapi
Geography Data collection; methods Quantification Big data

Rethinking histories of data requires not only better answers to existing questions, but also better questions. We suggest eight such questions here. What counts as data? How are objects related to data? What are digital data? What makes data measurable, and what does quantification do to data? What counts as an “information age”? Why do we keep data, and how do we decide which data to lose or forget? Who owns data, and who uses them? Finally, how does “Big Data” transform the geography of science? Each question is a provocation to reconsider the meanings and uses of “data” not only in the past but in the present as well.

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Includes Series Articles

Article Elena Aronova (2017) Geophysical Datascapes of the Cold War: Politics and Practices of the World Data Centers in the 1950s and 1960s. Osiris: A Research Journal Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 307-327). unapi

Article Etienne S. Benson (2017) A Centrifuge of Calculation: Managing Data and Enthusiasm in Early Twentieth-Century Bird Banding. Osiris: A Research Journal Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 286-306). unapi

Article Mirjam Brusius (2017) The Field in the Museum: Puzzling Out Babylon in Berlin. Osiris: A Research Journal Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 264-285). unapi

Article Markus Krajewski (2017) Tell Data from Meta: Tracing the Origins of Big Data, Bibliometrics, and the OPAC. Osiris: A Research Journal Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 224-240). unapi

Article Judith Kaplan (2017) From Lexicostatistics to Lexomics: Basic Vocabulary and the Study of Language Prehistory. Osiris: A Research Journal Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 202-223). unapi

Article David Sepkoski (2017) The Database before the Computer?. Osiris: A Research Journal Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 175-201). unapi

Article Hallam Stevens (2017) A Feeling for the Algorithm: Working Knowledge and Big Data in Biology. Osiris: A Research Journal Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 151-174). unapi

Article Christine von Oertzen (2017) Machineries of Data Power: Manual versus Mechanical Census Compilation in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Osiris: A Research Journal Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 129-150). unapi

Article Staffan Müller-Wille (2017) Names and Numbers: “Data” in Classical Natural History, 1758–1859. Osiris: A Research Journal Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 109-128). unapi

Article Dan Bouk (2017) The History and Political Economy of Personal Data over the Last Two Centuries in Three Acts. Osiris: A Research Journal Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 85-106). unapi

Article Markus Friedrich (2017) Genealogy as Archive-Driven Research Enterprise in Early Modern Europe. Osiris: A Research Journal Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 65-84). unapi

Article Joanna Radin (2017) “Digital Natives”: How Medical and Indigenous Histories Matter for Big Data. Osiris: A Research Journal Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 43-64). unapi

Article Rebecca Lemov (2017) Anthropology’s Most Documented Man, Ca. 1947: A Prefiguration of Big Data from the Big Social Science Era. Osiris: A Research Journal Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 21-42). unapi

Included in

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). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB276336726/

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Authors & Contributors
Drage, Matthew
Siibak, Andra
Włodzimierz Gogołek
Shi, Yong
Thatcher, Jim
Watts, Duncan J.
Journals
Science, Technology and Human Values
Osiris: A Research Journal Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences
The Bridge: Journal of the National Academy of Engineering
Social Studies of Science
Science in Context
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine
Publishers
University of Chicago Press
University of Nebraska Press
MIT Press
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Concepts
Big data
Data collection; methods
Technology and society
Information technology
Technoscience; science and technology studies
Databases
People
Talayesva, Don C.
Time Periods
21st century
20th century, late
20th century, early
20th century
Places
Micronesia
United States
Great Britain
Institutions
Human Relations Area Files
United States. Biological Survey
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