The social life of data points: Antecedents of digital technologies Journal Articles

abstract

• Recent technological advances such as microprocessors and random-access memory have had a significant role in gathering, storing and processing digital data, but the basic principles underpinning such data management were established in the century preceding the digital revolution. This paper maps the emergence of those older technologies to show that the logic and imperative for the surveillance potential of more recent digital technologies was laid down in a pre-digital age. The paper focuses on the development of the data point from its use in punch cards in the late 19th century through its manipulation in ideas about correlation to its collection via self-completion questionnaires. Some ways in which medicine and psychology have taken up and deployed the technology of data points are used as illustrative exemplars. The paper concludes with a discussion of the role of data points in defining human identity.

authors

• Armstrong, David

status

• published 

publication date

• February 2019

has subject area

• 1608 Sociology (FoR)
• 2202 History and Philosophy of Specific Fields (FoR)
• Data Aggregation (MeSH)
• Data Analysis (MeSH)
• History, 19th Century (MeSH)
• History, 20th Century (MeSH)
• History, 21st Century (MeSH)
• Science Studies (Science Metrix)
• Surveys and Questionnaires (MeSH)
• Technology (MeSH)

published in

• Social Studies of Science  Journal

keywords

• Data Aggregation
• Data Analysis
• History, 19th Century
• History, 20th Century
• History, 21st Century
• Surveys and Questionnaires
• Technology
• data points
• digital identity
• digital technologies
• social life of methods

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

• 10.1177/0306312718821726

start page

• 102

end page

• 117

volume

• 49

issue

• 1