Data Rules: Reinventing the Market Economy

Speakers

• Cristina Alaimo, Luiss Guido Carli University

• Jannis Kallinikos, Luiss Guido Carli University

Book presentation

Data Rules: Reinventing the Market Economy

Presenter

• Attila Bruni, University of Trento

Discussant

• Elena Pavan, University of Trento

Chair

• Katia Pilati, University of Trento

Data Rules: Reinventing the Market Economy

Cristina Alaimo and Jannis Kallinikos

The book traces the social history, economic motives, and technological breakthroughs that sustain the ongoing data revolution. An important point of departure is the conception of data as cultural records, artifacts of cognition and knowledge that have social and economic effects much wider than those commonly recognized in the prevailing discourses. Ushered into the digital age, the attributes of data as artifacts of cognition and knowledge acquire a momentum that unleashes the functions which data perform from the confines of petty, backstage administrative work and positions them at the forefront of social interaction and value creation. These developments are associated with the diffusion of new social practices and enterprise configurations such as platforms and ecosystems that break away from the principles by which organizations have been constituted as social entities and challenge the widely diffused separation of work from social life (family and community), and social interaction from the pursuit of economic profit. The book goes into some detail in showing that rather than responding to hierarchies or market logics alone, platforms and ecosystems are structured and function under data rules. That is, an operative regime that reflects the unprecedented social and economic relevance of data and the processes by means of which data are generated, related, transported and aggregated, combined, computed, and made available for a growing variety of stakeholders, including lay people and their ordinary whereabouts.

Reference: Alaimo, C., & Kallinikos, J., (2024), Data Rules: Reinventing the Market Economy, The MIT Press.

https://mitpressbookstore.mit.edu/book/9780262547932