This paper draws together empirical findings from our study of hackathons in the UK with literature on big data through three interconnected frameworks: data as discourse, data as datalogical and data as materiality. We suggest not only that hackathons resonate the wider socio-technical and political constructions of data that are currently enacted in policy, education and the corporate sector, but also that an investigation of hackathons reveals the extent to which ‘data’ operates as a powerful discursive tool; how the discourses (...) of data mask and reveal a series of tropes pertaining to data; that the politics of data are routinely and simultaneously obscured and claimed with serious implications for expertise and knowledge; and that ultimately, and for the vast majority of hackathons we have attended, the discursive and material constructions of data serve to underpin rather than challenge existing power relations and politics. (shrink)

The rise of a “maker movement,” located in hacker and makerspaces and involving the democratization of technologies of production and support of grassroots innovation, is receiving increasing attention from science and technology studies scholarship. This article explores how hacking is characterized by users of hacker and makerspaces and relates this to broader discussion of the maker movement as, for instance, promoting innovation, engaged in countercultural critique, or as accessible to anyone. Based on an interview study of users of twelve hacker (...) and makerspaces across the United States, it argues that for these users, hacking is not about politics, commercial innovation, or critique. Rather, it is understood as a lifestyle one subscribes to, a meaningful leisure activity, or as providing access to a welcoming and close-knit community. Contrary to expectations of the maker movement as heralding social change, the benefits of hacking were viewed as personal rather than political, economic, or social; similarly, democratization of technology was experienced as rather incidental to most hackers’ and makers’ experiences. (shrink)

Smart cities are now an established context in which data and digital technologies shape urban politics. Despite increased scholarly focus on algorithmic governance, smart cities and their data production still heavily rely on human labor, raising questions about how that labor is recruited and the implications of different recruitment strategies. In this paper, we illuminate the relations and practices mobilized to recruit the labor required to produce, analyze, and enact data that produce smart cities. We argue that smart cities recruit (...) such digital labor by producing and circulating moral values and sentiments to claim that such participation is a social good. In this article we draw on a 6-year ongoing project in Calgary, Canada to explore how these “moral economies” underwrite smart city ecosystems. We explore three projects related to data and digital labor in the Calgary smart city: a wearable technology collaborative project, a civic hacking group, and the community social media platform Nextdoor. We suggest that moral economies of smart cities signal a new juncture between urban planning and profiting from data, with the potential for creating new socio-political risks. These moral economies signal a shift toward a “new spirit of capitalism” in which labor is managed through indirect persuasion rather than direct compulsion and mandate. (shrink)

In recent years, many qualitative sociologists, anthropologists, and social theorists have critiqued the use of algorithms and other automated processes involved in data science on both epistemological and political grounds. Yet, it has proven difficult to bring these important insights into the practice of data science itself. We suggest that part of this problem has to do with under-examined or unacknowledged assumptions about the relationship between the two fields—ideas about how data science and its critics can and should relate. Inspired (...) by recent work in Science and Technology Studies on interventions, we attempted to stage an encounter in which practicing data scientists were asked to analyze a corpus of critical social science literature about their work, using tools of textual analysis such as co-word and topic modelling. The idea was to provoke discussion both about the content of these texts and the possible limits of such analyses. In this commentary, we reflect on the planning stages of the experiment and how responses to the exercise, from both data scientists and qualitative social scientists, revealed some of the tensions and interactions between the normative positions of the different fields. We argue for further studies which can help us understand what these interdisciplinary tensions turn on—which do not paper over them but also do not take them as given. (shrink)

This article describes how the City of Los Angeles is showcasing data-driven services to the public through dynamic visualisations of open data. I frame an analysis of this aspect of datafication in local government through linguistics and cultural theory; drawing on this set of literature I theorise the use of public data as both a performative tool and a performance of data-driven city services. I then discuss examples of interactive maps on the City of Los Angeles’ open data websites, produced (...) by the Bureau of Sanitation, the Controller’s Office, and the Department of Transportation. The article concludes with some general thoughts on how open data maps are a new form of impression management; they set up a relationship in which government and citizens are in alignment, sharing an orientation towards administrative problems that begins at the same point, framed by an administration’s datasets. (shrink)

The future of work has become a pressing matter of concern: Researchers, business consultancies, and industrial companies are intensively studying how new work models could be best implemented to increase workplace flexibility and creativity. In particular, the agile model has become one of the “must-have” elements for re-organizing work practices, especially for technology development work. However, the implementation of agile work often comes together with strong presumptions: it is regarded as an inevitable tool that can be universally integrated into different (...) workplaces while having the same outcome of flexibility, transparency, and flattened hierarchies everywhere. This paper challenges such essentializing assumptions by turning agile work into a “matter of care.” We argue that care work occurs in contexts other than feminized reproductive work, namely, technology development. Drawing on concepts from feminist Science and Technology Studies and ethnographic research at agile technology development workplaces in Germany and Kenya, we examine what work it takes to actually keep up with the imperative of agile work. The analysis brings the often invisibilized care practices of human and nonhuman actors to the fore that are necessary to enact and stabilize the agile promises of flexibilization, co-working, and rapid prototyping. Revealing the caring sociotechnical relationships that are vital for working agile, we discuss the emergence of power asymmetries characterized by hierarchies of skills that are differently acknowledged in the daily work of technology development. The paper ends by speculating on the emancipatory potential of a care perspective, by which we seek to inspire careful Emancipatory Technology Studies. (shrink)