Sandra Rendgen describes the history of “data” the word and where it stands in present day.
All through the evolution of statistics through the 19th century, data was generated by humans, and the scientific methodology of measuring and recording data had been a constant topic of debate. This is not trivial, as the question of how data is generated also answers the question of whether and how it is capable of delivering a “true” (or at least “approximated”) representation of reality. The notion that data begins to exist when it is recorded by the machine completely obscures the role that human decisions play in its creation. Who decided which data to record, who programmed the cookie, who built the sensor? And more broadly – what is the specific relationship of any digital data set to reality?
Oh, so there’s more to it than just singular versus plural. Imagine that.
