Open AccessTrust in Techno-images
Author(s) -
Frank Keßler,
Mirko Tobias Schäfer
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
tijdschrift voor mediageschiedenis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2213-7653
pISSN - 1387-649X
DOI - 10.18146/2213-7653.2018.366
Subject(s) - trustworthiness , big data , point (geometry) , production (economics) , scale (ratio) , data science , sociology , computer science , internet privacy , geography , cartography , geometry , mathematics , economics , macroeconomics , operating system
This article proposes a consideration of today’s discourses on ‘big data’ from a media archaeological point of view, confronting such discourses with those surrounding projects for large- scale image archives in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Collections of photographs, stereographs and films were thought of as trustworthy and unbiased documents, that allowed for the production of new forms of knowledge. The expectations as to the impact of such new media that circulated at the time are not unlike those formulated today with respect to ‘big data’. It is only by scrutinizing those discourses, and specifically the role attributed to media technologies, that we can understand the processes that govern the production of each medium’s bias.