JUST Data Provocation

I just had the pleasure to give a little provocation to the Just Data conference in Linköping, Sweden and the MTF Lab community at the invitation of the amazing Michela Magas.

The theme of my provocation was simply that there isn’t anything like “just data” but that it always comes with the restrictions of how it was collected and for what purposes. In particular, I tried to make the point that data must always be future-oriented, meaning that it is collected for purposes of curiosity, prediction and sometimes control.

Also, paraphrasing Einstein and Popper, it is the theory that determines what can be observed, not the other way around. This calls for approaching data with awareness and imagination. We know that data is ambiguous now that we understand the brain and inference algorithms better, but many people still think that data is neutral and can tell us anything, which is false.

I really enjoyed this years theme for the conference on sound for urban environments ! Thank you.