N of Many Ones: Imagining Alternative Data Flows’

Wednesday, February 20, 2019

12:00 PM-1:30 PM

Please join the Center for Science, Technology, & Society for the next installment of the Science, Technology & Society Colloquium series for the Winter 18-19 quarter!

Our visiting guest Dawn Nafus, PhD will be joining us from The User Experience Innovation Lab to present "N of Many Ones: Imagining Alternative Data Flows"

Ordinarily we think of data aggregation as large stockpiles of data accumulated across vast populations by corporate or state actors. However, data can conceivably aggregate in many ways, along many dimensions that are in fact qualitatively different. This talk draws on ethnographic research on self-tracking practices, where people collect data about themselves and their environment, and practical experience in building an infrastructure for handling self-tracking data. It proposes that when we slow down our imaginations about how data aggregates, we can see glimpses of possibility for multiple forms of knowledge production, politics, and notions of the individual and scale. We can also see how even computationally dense datasets might be reconfigured beyond “large N” populations if appropriate conditions are made available. The talk examines one such possibility, “N of many ones” research, where the relationship between the one and the many--the individual and the population--is explored by expanding the middle ground between intra- and inter-individual data aggregation.

This event is free and open to the public, lunch will be provided!

About Dawn Nafus, PhD:

Dawn Nafus is an anthropologist and Senior Research Scientist at Intel Labs, where she informs new product development and strategy. Her research interest include cultures of quantification, health and environmental sensing, and digital methods. She is the editor of Quantified: Biosensing Technologies in Everyday Life (MIT Press, 2016), co-author of Self Tracking (MIT Press 2016) and co-editor of Ethnography for a Data-Saturated World (Manchester University Press, 2018). She served as Program Co-Chair for Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference (EPIC) 2018. 

Contact Information

Dorian Adams
215-895-1314
dadams@drexel.edu