Plenty as a response to austerity? Big Data expertise,cultures and communities

Abstract

Big Data promises informational abundance – something that might be useful to cultures and communities in times of austerity. However many local organizations lack the skills to develop expertise in new forms of computation or the desire to develop them; Big Data is often viewed as the terrain of Big Business and Big Government. Drawing on issues arising from action research into Big Data and community in Brighton, England, this article explores questions of technological expertise in relation to Big Data, everyday life and critical practice – the latter understood as something that may be undertaken not only as a theoretical but also as an operational endeavour. The outcome of the article is thus not a prescription for training but a series of questions concerning desirable forms of co-constitution: How should expertise be shared between humans and machines?