A philosophical perspective
Stuart Mills is a PhD researcher at the Manchester Metropolitan University Future Economies Research Centre. His research includes behavioural economics, behavioural public policy, hypernudging and data politics.
I met Stuart at #OpenDataManchester’s taiwan rcs data workshop on creating a Declaration for Responsible and Intelligent Data Practice back in September. The workshop had as its focus an aim for organisations and communities who use or are affected by data to come together to “create a shared vision of what best practice in data should look like, to underpin the development of new insight, and future products and services.”
Declaration for Responsible and Intelligent Data Practice
Stuart’s input to the workshop on data policy theory was thought provoking, we’re delighted he’s agreed to write a series of posts for us, here’s the first – introducing his research:
A Brief Introduction to Digital Political Economy: An Introduction
In 2016, the academic Nick Srnicek published Platform Capitalism. In this book, they argue that a unique type of firm exists in the digital economy – the platform – which sits as an intermediary between agents, controlling the flow of data. The platform is something we’re all familiar with: social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter are platforms, as are search and shopping sites such as Google and Amazon, respectively. But a platform is not necessarily just a website; computerised personal assistants such as Siri or Alexa are also platforms, as are fitness trackers such as FitBit.