Critical Data & Visualization

Data collection and algorithmic processing are not only central to recent technical breakthroughs such as in Artificial Intelligence and automation but have created new economic paradigms where data equals value and shape political approaches to power and control.

Decisions based on algorithms affect society at large whether it’s changing the way we transport and distribute goods, influencing the things we buy or the news we read. The world that algorithms see is data. For the average person, however, data is seldom more than an abstract idea.

So, what exactly is data? How is value extracted from it? And why should we care? How can we ethically balance the positive uses of data-driven systems with the threats they pose to discriminate and infringe basic human rights? This course seeks to untangle some of these issues practically and theoretically.