Extractions: Data Infrastructures and the Public Good

Abstract

This special issue invites reflection on digital forms of resource extractivism, through thinking-with microbes, fish, smart energy, and human bodies. We examine the confluence of infrastructure building, public good enactment, and nature datafication to account for novel forms of resource economies. The articles in this collection empirically investigate the various ways in which nature is turned into resource in laboratory and experimental sites including database retrievals and data mining. Our empirical cases, ranging from biodiversity prospecting, clinical biobanking to the digitalized electric grid and from digital fish to biodigital transformations in yeast technology, offer insights into the nexus of data, economy, nature, and information. Contributing to the literature on datafication of natural resources, these studies re-situate information infrastructures and biodigital extractions as part of emerging info-economies.