Abstract

MALLAMACI, Marco Germán et al. What Can a Bit Do? Data and Algorithms as a Fundamental Social Relationship in the digital economy. Sociológica (Méx.) [online]. 2020, vol.35, n.101, pp.215-247.  Epub Sep 13, 2021. ISSN 2007-8358.

Starting from an analysis of “digital economy” discourse, this article proposes conceptualizing the “data-algorithms” category as a social relationship. First, the authors reconstruct a genealogy of digitality as a socio-economic structure. Then, based on the examination of three dimensions (Big Data; consumption, exchange, and money; and work), they identify patterns of (dis)continuities in different theoretical perspectives, categorizing them under the ambivalent tension between apology and critique. Finally, they argue that the functionality of data and algorithms is a social relationship in and of itself, made up of a “human-algorithmic machine-human” triad founded in the process of the datafication of life.

Keywords : digital economy; data; algorithms; social relation.

        · abstract in Spanish     · text in Spanish     · Spanish ( pdf )