Vocations, visions and vitalities of data analysis. An introduction

Abstract

Vocations and visions are vital to data analyses: without them, there is neither data, nor analysis. Visions are the solutions that technology designers and data analysts strive towards, and vocations are those callings that data follows spontaneously in the course of the analytic process. In data analyses, vocations and visions can take mathematical, semiotic or other social forms. Due to the integration of data analyses with digital technologies, however, vocations and visions are increasingly hard to grasp. Contributions to this issue identify the vocations and visions of data analyses as we find them in thermal cameras, in wearables for aid and medical treatment, in financial platforms, search engines, software and algorithms. They also trace how vocations and visions become productive of social and biological life and are therefore not only vitally important to data analysis, but also vital because they co-produce and re-ontologize life. They shape commercial, intellectual and social spheres, as well as the body, biology and bare life. Data analyses interact with human lives as data and analytic tools become lively, too. When applied to human beings and other organic life forms, to analytic tools, to digital data and to their relationship of becoming with each other, a methodology of life cycles captures these dynamics. If we acknowledge the vocations, visions and vitalities involved, analyses of data analysis must be conducted to help us understand, relate to and navigate these strange and familiar agencies.