Università Roma Tre

The network as a tool for knowledge creation: Data, control and freedom.
The network as a tool for knowledge creation: data, control and freedom.
The course aims at analyzing the most common devices for sharing information in order to focus on risks and opportunities.
The communication technologies revolution faces a big transformation: the original open spaces are about to be substituted by private walled gardens, in which the user is welcomed as well as restrained.
The data mining activity – well-knows as big data technology – extraction of valuable pieces of information among those directly or indirectly offered by the users, represents one of the central elements of the network organization both in economical and social terms. These strategies pose not only privacy problems (as it is easily shown) but also problems relative to the knowledge model that seems to impose on humanities as well as social sciences. Such a model can be adopted, by using an epistemological approach that could foresee as well as a monitor human habits and behaviors.
The course is based on a critical approach on the relationships between freedom and control within the digital communication devices. It tackles the question from the point of view of the interaction between freedom opportunities and control mechanisms, which stands at the core of practices and techniques of digital apparatuses, with special regards to their social, political, epistemological dimensions.

Mayer-Schönberger V., Cukier N., Big Data, Garzanti, Milano, 2013.
Bauman Z., Lyon D., Sesto potere, Laterza, Roma-Bari, 2014.
Numerico T. (et al.), L’umanista digitale, Il Mulino, Bologna, 2011, cap. I and IV.