General introduction and overview

Abstract

In the eyes of many, one of the most challenging problems of the information society is that we are faced with an ever expanding mass of information. Selection of the relevant bits of information seems to become more important than the retrieval of data as such: the information is all out there but what it means and how we should act on it may be one of the big questions of the 21st century. If an information society is a society with an exponential proliferation of data, a knowledge society must be one that has learned how to cope with this. In this introduction we will discuss the content of the three different parts of the volume, introducing the issues that emerge from the different contributions. At the end of the volume we will present a set of conclusions as to the kind of research that needs further attention. The foremost conclusion is that a paradigm shift is needed from privacy and protection of personal data to discrimination and manipulation and transparency of profiles. For this reason it is claimed that lawyers should start thinking about the legal status of profiles, these profiles being a type of knowledge rather than data, while technologists should start thinking about ways to make the knowledge presented by profiles contestable, whether in a court or law or elsewhere: the technological devices to access and assess profiles still need to be invented. © 2008 Springer Netherlands.