Chapter 2 provides a historical and conceptual map for an
understanding of big data. It demonstrates how a concern with data
has become central to the activities of businesses, cities,
governments, think tanks, and social scientific practice itself. The
central contention of the chapter is that big data needs to be
understood critically. It is not just an accurate statistical reflection of
the social world as some data scientists contend, but a key source of
social power that, through the technical experts that collect, clean
and calculate it, is actively intervening in how social worlds are
known, seen and then acted upon. But big data cannot exist on its
own; it requires a massive complex of software, code, algorithms
and infrastructures for its collection and analysis.