De-datafication

I absolutely LOVE the premise of this upcoming con­fer­ence at George­town Law: Life After Data, the con­fer­ence on “de-datafi­ca­tion”.

I pre­dict you’re going to be hearing a lot more about this theme in the years ahead; the exhaus­tion is real. Here are a few tasty selec­tions from the list of provo­ca­tions on the con­fer­ence page:

• What would it take to build a move­ment to abandon the cur­rent internet and start anew?

• What’s some­thing good that cur­rently requires the pro­duc­tion and storage of dig­ital data, that could be rebuilt without it? How?

• What aspects of our cur­rent polit­ical sit­u­a­tion are obscured or con­cealed by con­flating all com­mu­ni­ca­tion with infor­ma­tion exchange, and how does datafi­ca­tion con­tribute to that obfuscation?

• Out­line one or more aspects of the risk envi­ron­ment that is cre­ated when a small number of large cor­po­ra­tions con­trol the infra­struc­tures upon which people depend in their daily lives.

Who­ever rat­tled these off is thinking in exactly the right direction — they are bold and wonky and rad­ical and inspiring.

(Of course, I’ll note that these themes “rhyme” with the argu­ments in my recent zine pro­duc­tions.)