Data and Society

Catalog description

The purpose of this class is to learn to “see” the work that data does in our modern world. Data and society are fundamentally entangled. In this class, we will pull on the different strands of this entanglement to better understand the role that data plays across a range of distinct contexts. This is a survey course, intended to expose you to a broad array of issues. We will explore the role that data plays in domains as varied as representative democracy, search engines, employment, and genetic sense-making. We will examine how economic and political interests shape what data exists and how those data are used. You will also get to explore the communicative role that data plays in decision-making.