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.

It teaches them that data is created, not found; and that creating it well demands humanity, rather than objectivity

Mass Observation is a social research project. Everyday Britains send in observations about their everyday lives. It's a great resource for getting behind the headlines and into how people really feel about culturally significant moments.

despite the undeniably consistent picture that we see across studies of scientific data collection, the desire to remove the human from the data in order to enhance objectivity remains very strong. Invariably, it seems like the ethical move.

Can even the most unfathomable statistic feel real if it's not accompanied by a singular human's story? We need both stories and stats. The hyper-personal and the sense of scale.

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.”

"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