Traces and Shadows

Abstract

This chapter charts the transition from an analogue to a digital world, its effect on data footprints and shadows, and the growth of data brokers and government use of data. The World Wide Web (WWW) started to change things by making information accessible across the Internet through an easy-to-use, intuitive graphical interface. Using the Internet, people started leaving digital traces. In their everyday lives, their digital shadows were also growing through the use of debit, credit, and store loyalty cards, and captured in government databases which were increasingly digital. Running tandem to the creation of digital lifestyles was the datafication of everyday life. This was evident in a paper which examined the various ways in which digital data was being generated and tracked using indexical codes about people, but also objects, transactions, interactions, and territories, and how these data were being used to govern people and manage organizations. Today, people live in a world of continuous data production, since smart systems generate data in real time.