Calzati, S., & Ploeger, H. (2024). Problem-solving? No, problem-opening! A method to reframe and teach data ethics as a transdisciplinary endeavour. Big Data & Society, 11(3). https://doi.org/10.1177/20539517241270687
Technology can go a long way in “chopping up” reality and reifying resources – and data are no exception to that. The thingness of data – just think of the refrain “data as the new oil” – is often considered as a given, i.e., a datum. Yet a growing body of research has shown that data are inherently sociotechnical, leading to regard them as bundlings originating from processes at the coalescing point of technical and non-technical actors, factors, and values. So, the questions become: How to operationalize this? How, for instance, to teach new generations of undergraduates being trained in computer science, data analytics, software engineering, and similar technical subjects, that data are sociotechnical bundlings? How to incorporate such understanding into their practices?
In the article “Problem-solving? No, problem-opening! A Method to Reframe and Teach Data Ethics as a Transdisciplinary Endeavour” we set out to answer these questions. First, we reconceptualize data ethics as not much a normative (dos vs don’ts) and axiomatic (good vs bad) toolbox, but a critical compass to think about data as sociotechnical bundlings and orient their fair processing. This, in turn, entails that data technologies are always good and bad at once, insofar as they produce, at all times, value-laden entanglements and un/intended consequences that demand to be unpacked and assessed in context, i.e., from different perspectives, simultaneously, and over time. This is an inherent transdisciplinary endeavor which cuts across epistemological boundaries, resists any privilege point of reference, and configures an ongoing multidimensional analysis.
What we describe in detail in the article is the application of this view to an elective course titled “Ethics for the data-driven city” which we purposedly designed and taught as part of the Geomatics master program at Delft University of Technology. Notably, we developed a transdisciplinary method that is not problem-solving, but problem-opening, that is, a method that help students recognize and problematize the irreducibility of all ethical stances and the contingency of all technological “solutions”, especially when these are situated in the city as a complex system that resists computation. Overall, the course compels students, on the one hand, to think critically about (the definition of) problems, by shifting the ground on which engineering problem-solving rests, and, on the other hand, to materialize such critical shift into their final assignments, conceived in the form of digital or physical artefacts.
