During this weeks’ reading about Big Data and ‘datafication’ (Williamson 2017) of education, this episode of Doctor Who where a businessman named John Lumic uses data he has collected in technology to take control of all of  London sprang to mind.

https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ondemand/index.php/clip/196176

“The human race, for such an intelligent lot, you aren’t half susceptible! Give anyone half a chance to take control and you submit. Sometimes I think you like it; easy life” is how the Doctor puts it, as he goes about saving the human race once again, but this time from their own mistake of “always clicking accept”, as bad guy Lumic puts it.

It is one of the things Doctor Who can do well at times; portray the bigger picture and use what happens in the world hyperbolically in its fiction, I assume with the idea to make people think about these issues. This episode is a crossover between transhumanism and ‘datafication’ where the data collected by Lumic is used to take control of people with the ultimate goal of turning people into Cybermen.

Williamson, B. 2017. Introduction: Learning machines, digital data and the future of education (chapter 1). In Big Data and Education: the digital future of learning, policy, and practice.

Data use / Femke Morrison / An introduction to digital environments for learning (2020/2021)[SEM2] by blogadmin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0