New games, new rules: big data and the changing context of strategy

Big data and the mechanisms by which it is produced and disseminated introduce important changes in the ways information is generated and made relevant for organizations. Big data often represents miscellaneous records of the whereabouts of large and shifting online crowds. It is frequently agnostic, in the sense of being produced for generic purposes or purposes different from those sought by big data crunching. It is based on varying formats and modes of communication (e.g., texts, image and sound), raising severe problems of semiotic translation and meaning compatibility. Crucially, the usefulness of big data rests on their steady updatability, a condition that reduces the time span within which this data is useful or relevant. Jointly, these attributes challenge established rules of strategy making as these are manifested in the canons of procuring structured information of lasting value that addresses specific and long-term organizational objectives. The developments underlying big data thus seem to carry important implications for strategy making, and the data and information practices with which strategy has been associated. We conclude by placing the understanding of these changes within the wider social and institutional context of longstanding data practices and the significance they carry for management and organizations

Elements of surveillance: A new framework and future directions

This paper argues for a wider conceptualisation of the meaning and significance of surveillance in contemporary social studies. It has been written in the context of recently published work by Lyon (2001; 2002) who establishes a powerful argument illuminating the social and technical interconnectedness of surveillance systems, and the invisibility of their social ordering effects, in everyday life. The paper is divided into two parts. The first examines recent empirical work concerning two domains of surveillance practice, which are significant, and typical of the research findings in these areas of study. The first surveillance practice is that of CCTV in public space, and the second is that which occurs in the workplace. The second part, mindful of Lyon’s arguments, analyses the recently published work to examine broader ways in which we might want to conceptualise surveillance. It argues that it comprises four elements: representation, meaning, manipulation and intermediation which interact to form ‘surveillance domains’, and, at a local level, are contested, politicised places. Highlighting the role of intermediation, it uses this framework as the basis of an applied research strategy into everyday surveillance practices

Early Italian Computing Machines and Their Inventors

International audienceNineteen centuries of Italian inventors and inventions in the field of aids to arithmetic and algebraic computing, before the electronic computer era, are reviewed; most of them forgotten or still unknown. Not meant to be a complete or ultimate treatise on the topic, this paper hopefully wants to be a starting point for more multidisciplinary research of Italian history of technology