Do data publics work?

Posted on by Alex Taylor


I pre­sent­ed at the Data Publics con­fer­ence last week­end, at Lan­cast­er Uni­ver­si­ty. Got lots of help­ful feed­back to some ear­ly thoughts on publics (think­ing with some of my old favourites, Despret, Har­away, Mar­res, Stengers, etc.).
Pro­voked by Vin­ciane Despret’s “W for Work”, in “What would ani­mals say if we asked the right ques­tions?”, my start­ing point was the question:

Are we think­ing well
with data publics?

As Despret asks of ani­mals and their work, my provo­ca­tion was to ask not just whether “data publics” offer us some­thing (whether they are use­ful), but whether we work well with them, whether they ‘make more inter­est­ing’ and give us the ‘chance’ to think differently.


My three propo­si­tions were:

Propo­si­tion #1: “We need room”
Propo­si­tion #2: “Ver­sions not visions”
Propo­si­tion #3: “Keep Compost”

A big thank you to Clara Criv­el­laro, Joe Dev­ille, Dan Richards and Seb Weise for a fab­u­lous event. See the Data Publics site for more or search the twit­ter hash­tag #dat­a­publics.

Notes:
1. Vin­ciane Despret (2016). W is for Work. In “What Would Ani­mals Say If We Asked the Right Ques­tions”. Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta Press: 177–184.
2. Despret writes about this in a book chap­ter, Sheep do have opin­ions. Vin­ciane Despret (2006) “Sheep do have opin­ions.” Mak­ing Things Pub­lic Atmos­pheres of Democ­ra­cy: 360–370.
Vin­ciane Despret (2016). W is for Work. In “What Would Ani­mals Say If We Asked the Right Ques­tions”. Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta Press: 177–184.
Despret writes about this in a book chap­ter, Sheep do have opin­ions. Vin­ciane Despret (2006) “Sheep do have opin­ions.” Mak­ing Things Pub­lic Atmos­pheres of Democ­ra­cy: 360–370.

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