The first two weeks of class and readings have illuminated upon several of the course’s objective learning statements and thematic questions. In particular, many of the articles focused on how information flows in and out of socio-technical systems and the ways that researchers access, arrange, organize, and describe information. Safiya Umoja Noble’s Algorithms of Oppression argued that information found online through web searches perpetuates misinformation and oppression. The author contended “Lack of attention to the current exploitative nature of online keyword searches only further entrenches the problematic identities in the media for women of color” (14). Noble identified that online searches and algorithms influence the data people receive when web-searching. This directly relates with the course’s theme of understanding and critiquing the ways in which researches receive information. In this instance, search engines like Google can promote and perpetuate problematic and disingenuous information on identities and ethnicity.

Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren Klein’s chapter “What Gets Counted Counts” also explored the socio-technical systems and the ways in which data can become problematic. They wrote that “Web-based full-text search decouples data from place. In doing so, it dissolves the structural constraints that kept history bound to political-territorial units long after the intellectual liabilities of that bond were well known” (377). Put simply, the two authors argued that data can become disingenuous by how information is stratified and labeled.  Data collected on a gender binarism leaves out an entire population of individuals and fails to acknowledge the existence of people who do not label themselves male nor female. In result, the ways in which data is being collected misrepresents (or fails to represent at all) different groups of people and also creates inaccurate data on the male and female research. Noble and D’Ignazio and Klein’s scholarship reflect problematic latent dysfunctions from the ways in which data is currently being produced. Who gets to control what is shared, how and when it is shared, and the framework to collect data from? The article and chapter highlighted these increasingly important questions from the rise of big data.

As a historian, Putnam’s article strongly resonated with my work and provoked questions that directly pertain to what I do. Most of my research includes traveling to archives, learning the culture and decorum in each city and archive, and subsequently conducting research for weeks in the location. Recently, one of my primary archives went digital; I will not be required to conduct research on site there. Whereas Putnam argued my appreciation for the data and archive will diminish and will not be reflected in my work, I have a much different take. The digitization of data may make the historian’s “journey” less adventurous, I believe the online accessibility to data and archives alleviates economic barriers to research. Not every individual has the ability to travel for a month or longer and live abroad to conduct research. The traditional methodology of conducting global research is largely gatekept for the academic elite. With the digitization of data in archives, conducting historical research is widely more accessible. Furthermore, scholars can fact-check and cross-reference sources from monographs or scholarly works. Engaging in a rigorous historical dialectic should become more common with the digitization of data.

Similar to the previous two articles however, problems can still remain when digitizing data. Referring to the course question of how information flows in and out of socio-technical systems, one negative of the digitization of data from an archive is that not every document is uploaded. Who are the individuals choosing what to include and exclude? Is there a deliberate narrative being constructed by an archive with what is uploaded versus discarded? Archives are not always neutral spaces; the digitization of their data/ sources will raise new questions over the process and potential manipulation of uploaded sources.