Data in the digital world: New opportunities or additional risks?

Abstract

The article is a review of the book by Deborah Lupton Data Selves: More-Than-Human Perspectives (New York: Polity Press, 2019), which continues the authors analysis of the same issues of changes in daily life under the impact of information digital technologies due to producing an increasing amount of various data including personal. This is an urgent issue due to the growing importance of digital technologies in the life of contemporary society, which became even more obvious under the current pandemic. Fast digitalization changes our everyday world, new technologies expand our capabilities; however, in addition to obvious benefits and advantages, new technologies also bring new risks. Lupton develops an original interpretation of the symbiosis of man and his digital data - she considers this symbiosis in the framework of the theory of neomaterialism and concludes that our personal living data is more-than-personal and more-than-human. Therefore, life in the digital world constructed by data becomes our new social reality.

Keywords

• deborah lupton
• digitalization
• personal data
• information technology
• health