warm data
We are, each and every one of us, a collection of our lived experiences. Our lived experiences shape us, how we interact with the world, and how we live in the world. And our experiences are valid.
Ijeoma Oluo • So You Want to Talk About Race
The data collected would enable the organizers to plot “weather-maps of public feeling.” As a matter of principle, Mass-Observers did not distinguish themselves from the people they studied. They intended merely to expose facts “in simple terms to all observers, so that their environment may be understood, and thus constantly transformed.”
Pocket Observatory • Mass Observation
Numbers tell you what. People tell you why.
Qualitative research – interviews, ethnography, case studies and so much more - puts lived experience at the centre of economics. It surfaces context, power, and meaning that models miss.
Interviews aren’t “just chats”; their purpose, style, and interpretation... See more
instagram.comA founding motivation for the pair was a belief that the discussion of climate change needed to be participatory, not a one-way lecture. "One of the things that frustrated me so much while working for major environmental groups is this concept that there are anointed people who 'know' and there are people who are 'not knowing'," says Quante. "But
... See moreRichard Fisher • Why We Need New Words for Life in the Anthropocene
"Palestinians are often pinioned between two opposing but equally harmful tendencies: to turn them into abstractions on a political stage, or to turn away from them because what they’re enduring is too horrendous to truly grapple with
Ann Friedman • The Stats vs. The Story
The power in softness
Exploring the importance of soft data alongside hard data, embracing complexity and using personal data to understand and reclaim oneself, with a focus on emotions and human experiences.
LinkNew research suggests that AI is reducing complexity, or at least our experience of it. A recent study, The Platonic Representation Hypothesis , shows that as AI models become more powerful, they form increasingly similar statistical representations of the world. The result is that we are effectively simplifying our understanding of the world and... See more
🏡 I Don’t Resonate With You
If in our daily lives we tend to overlook the diverse, situationally textured sense-making actions that information seekers, conversation listeners, and other recipients of communicative acts perform to make automated information systems function, we are even less likely to acknowledge and value the interpretive work of data collectors, even as
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