Data and Culture

Paul Edward (2010) engaged with the study of weather and climate in order to explain the concept of data friction and infrastructural globalization and how these two complex concepts can be analyzed in the study of publishing.

Data friction is consolidating the data into actual information where it can be delivered to the public. Edward (2010) has gathered reading from weather measuring instruments and visualizes them to reveal the history of global weather and climate records. Data friction is gathering data that are not easy to combine each other, and recreating the information. Data friction can be captured in numerous publishing industry such as referring other’s work, putting information together, relating and analyzing them in order to recreate something new.

Additionally, Edward (2010) mentioned about the infrastructural globalization as “the building of technical system for gathering global data helped to create global institutions and ways of thinking globally”.

In 21st century, the technological development fostered the globalization, where the world is connected though the Internet, where people can be connected to each other without the barriers of time and space. Internet has allowed us to globally share and interact via numerous forms such as social media such as Facebook and Twitter and blogging. Via Internet, we can sense different cultures, experience them indirectly, which it underlies infrastructure allowing us to be a global citizen. One example can be the global News websites and communities. Articles are published regardless of time and space. Publishers and audiences are sharing lifestyles, up-to-date news and actively interact.

Are we taking infrastructure for granted? I guess we only realize how crucial they are in our life when we fail to receive them. For example, before 3G or 4G Internet services appeared, we used Wi-Fi Internet connection services. When we reach some place where the Wi-Fi connection is bad or don’t have at all, we then realize that we can’t do anything with out phone, laptop, and literally everything. I guess we do take it for granted since it became obvious that using the Internet everywhere and connecting to the world 24/7 is now part of our daily life.


[study kit] Edwards, Paul N. (2010) ‘Introduction’ in A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming Cambridge, MA: MIT Press: xiii-xvii

Springett, J. (2014). Colonising THE CLOUDS —Infrastructure Territory and The Geopolitics of The Stacks. [online] Available at:, Accessed 23th of October 2014


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