Paper short abstract:

This paper argues that STS has a key role to play in shaping the future of data science and that STS should proactively steer data science toward more progressive and interesting ends.

Paper long abstract:

This paper discusses data science as part of larger shifts in knowledge production and knowledge politics. A science-in-the-making, data science is beginning to formalize as a consultative profession that sits at the fulcrum point between data and prediction, and at the center of larger efforts to figure out (through a tremendous amount of backend labor) new ways of generating wealth and value through the gathering and use of data-- scientific and otherwise. The paper argues that the data science profession is strangely adrift: rooting everywhere (e.g., industry, government, NGOs) and yet following no particular compass when it comes to creating a coherent set of professional ethics, standards, and values. The paper also argues that STS has a key role to play in shaping the future of data science. Although data science and STS have not yet interacted to a large degree, STS will be essential to helping data scientists make sense of themselves, overcome internal obstacles, document their story, and become an ethical, communicative, and transparent profession that minimizes the authoritarian tendencies that data scientists themselves have flagged as lurking within their profession (Rudder 2014) given the ease with which data gathering and publishing can be used to accomplish unwanted levels of population surveillance and reporting. Engaging directly with other panelists via a roundtable format, this paper provocatively advocates for the following position: STS should proactively steer data science toward more progressive and interesting ends.