Big data, consequentialism and privacy

Kevin Macnish & Jai Galliott (eds.), Big Data and Democracy, 13-26

2020

Themes: Digital modernity

Category: Book chapter, Peer reviewed

This chapter applies a Weberian analysis to developments in big data. O’Hara argues that just as Weber noted a move from the pre-modern to the modern with the advent of bureaucracy, so we are now entering a time of digital modernity. The focus in digital modernity is less the present (what is happening now) as the subjunctive (what could happen), governed by data. This, he argues, gives data a central role in governing for both good and ill.

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