This is a short abstract of my PhD research. I will post more details in the coming days and weeks.

I first look at the epistemological processes behind datafied knowledge and contrast them with the processes of tacit knowledge production. I extract 5 principles of tacit knowledge and contrast them to 5 principles of datafied knowledge, and I contend that datafied knowledge is founded on a reductionist ideology, a reductionist logic of knowledge production, reductionist data and therefore, produces a reductionist type of knowledge. Instead of helping us to understand the world we inhabit in more systemic, holistic and qualitative ways, it relies essentially on quantitative, disembodied, computationally structured computer-ready data, and algorithmically optimised processes.

Through the filter of Walter Benjamin’s work “The Arcades Project”, I argue that datafication (defined as the quantification of the qualitative aspects human experience) is a Phantasmagoria, a dream image, a myth, a social experience anchored in a culture of commodification. The digital production of knowledge is supported by a need to reduce uncertainty and increase productivity and efficiency. It essentially serves a predictive purpose. It does not help us to understand the intricate, beautiful, fragile, qualitative, embodied experience of being alive in a deeply interconnected and interdependent world, an experience that to a great extent, defines humaneness and life in general. In this sense, datafied knowledge is hostile to life.

Finally, I call for a rebalance between tacit and datafied ways of knowing, and a shift to a more regenerative ecology of knowledge based on the principles of living systems.

Helene Liu – PhD Thesis Visual Map