DADOS, MODELOS E INTERPRETAÇÕES: RUMO A UMA FILOSOFIA DAS HUMANIDADES DIGITAIS

This article intends to critique the notion of data as it is conceived in most of the literature on big data, as well as in some distant reading practices. This notion is based on The idea is based on the view that data, especially if represented digitally, maintains its purity and is uncontaminated by any kind of subjective interpretation. I will address the question with respect to the original genealogy of the digital data preserved in the computer memory. According to Joseph Licklider - creator of the concept of the 'fund of knowledge' as an achievable digital project - the flow of data contained in the memory of the computer is a digital projec . I will argue instead, that the data exists only according to a chosen interpretation and is accessible only through an implicit acceptance of their preconstituted meaning, that is, a meaning that depends on the fetishisation of quantification or of some other general model with which we want to capture it. The final part of the article suggests new questions that need to be addressed within a new agenda of critical digital humanities.