Capture
Data needs to first be imagined as data to exist and function as data. As such, it requires our participation to exist. We use our perception, imagination and tools available to us to define what can be "data".
That is why "capturing" data (instead of " collecting data") is a better expression to describe what is happening when something becomes data. To ' collect' something is to get an entire object and add it to a collection (like museums). Data entails interpretation: we create a data object by using our imagination and perception about the world in combination with instruments (e.g.; diagrams, documentation, code).
The concept of "capture" in communication and information they was first introduced by Philipe Agre in 1994 in the article "Surveillance and Capture: Two Models of Privacy". "Capture" is common in the vocabulary of software engineers and computing professionals, more so than "Collect". In this work, Agre contrasted the concept of capture with the concept of surveillance: when we talk about surveillance we typically think of something that is watching us (cameras and policing), but we can think about these technologies as doing a form of capture. Capturing involves generating data about the activity and reorganizing them to it fits a standard language that the computer can understand. Through this reoganization-- Agre proposes -- we are being captured by the systems (as data, and as agents relying on the system to operate and generate data).
Readings:
- Kate Crawford. 2021. “Data,” in The Atlas of AI: Power, Politics and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence, 91-121.
- Daniel Rosenberg. 2013. “Data before the Fact,” in “Raw Data” Is an Oxymoron, pp. 15-37.
- Agre Surveillance and Capture
- Johanna Drucker - Data as Capta
Activities:
This page has paths:
- Critical and Creative Data Studies Carina Albrecht