Ethics and Politics of Data

Persona data is ubiquitous: with the proliferation of digital technology, our lives and bodies have become increasingly observable, quantifiable, and interconnected. This generates new opportunity for the state, private companies, and other individuals to act on us. Data makes us more powerful but also more vulnerable. This course focuses on the new ethical and political challenges of lives permeated by the creation, collection, and processing of personal information. Do we own data? Is there a right to be forgotten? Should we use data to predict and manipulate individual behaviour? What responsibilities do we have to others whose data is intertwined with ours? These and other related topics will be the focus of this course.