The Data Mining System (DMS) at New York City Department of Transportation (NYCDOT) mainly consists of four database systems for traffic and pedestrian/bicycle volumes, crash data, and signal timing plans as well as the Midtown in Motion (MIM) systems which are used as part of the NYCDOT Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) infrastructure. These database and control systems are operated by different units at NYCDOT as an independent database or operation system. New York City experiences heavy traffic volumes, pedestrians and cyclists in each Central Business District (CBD) area and along key arterial systems. There are consistent and urgent needs in New York City for real-time control to improve mobility and safety for all users of the street networks, and to provide a timely response and management of random incidents. Therefore, it is necessary to develop an integrated DMS for effective real-time control and active transportation management (ATM) in New York City. This paper will present new strategies for New York City suggesting the development of efficient and cost-effective DMS, involving: 1) use of new technology applications such as tablets and smartphone with Global Positioning System (GPS) and wireless communication features for data collection and reduction; 2) interface development among existing database and control systems; and 3) integrated DMS deployment with macroscopic and mesoscopic simulation models in Manhattan. This study paper also suggests a complete data mining process for real-time control with traditional static data, current real timing data from loop detectors, microwave sensors, and video cameras, and new real-time data using the GPS data. GPS data, including using taxi and bus GPS information, and smartphone applications can be obtained in all weather conditions and during anytime of the day. GPS data and smartphone application in NYCDOT DMS is discussed herein as a new concept. © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of Elhadi M. Shakshu Keywords: Data Mining System (DMS), New York City, real-time control, active transportation management (ATM), GPS data

The collection and circulation of data is now a central element of increasingly more sectors of contemporary capitalism. This article analyses data as a form of capital that is distinct from, but has its roots in, economic capital. Data collection is driven by the perpetual cycle of capital accumulation, which in turn drives capital to construct and rely upon a universe in which everything is made of data. The imperative to capture all data, from all sources, by any means possible influences many key decisions about business models, political governance, and technological development. This article argues that many common practices of data accumulation should actually be understood in terms of data extraction, wherein data is taken with little regard for consent and compensation. By understanding data as a form capital, we can better analyse the meaning, practices, and implications of datafication as a political economic regime.
Keywords: Big Data | digital capitalism | value | political economy | Marx | Bourdieu

This paper aims to contribute to the development of tools to support an analysis of Big Data as manifestations of social processes and human behaviour. Such a task demands both an understanding of the epistemological challenge posed by the Big Data phenomenon and a critical assessment of the offers and promises coming from the area of Big Data analytics. This paper draws upon the critical social and data scientists’ view on Big Data as an epistemological challenge that stems not only from the sheer volume of digital data but, predominantly, from the proliferation of the narrow-technological and the positivist views on data. Adoption of the social-scientific epistemological stance presupposes that digital data was conceptualised as manifestations of the social. In order to answer the epistemological challenge, social scientists need to extend the repertoire of social scientific theories and conceptual frameworks that may inform the analysis of the social in the age of Big Data. However, an ‘epistemological revolution’ discourse on Big Data may hinder the integration of the social scientific knowledge into the Big Data analytics.
Keywords: Social and cultural Big Data analytics | social science | computational science | epistemological challenge | social media

Making publics visible through digital traces has recently generated interest by practitioners of public engagement and scholars within the field of digital methods. This paper presents an experiment in moving such methods into critical proximity with political practice and discusses how digital visualizations of topical debates become appropriated by actors and hardwired into existing ecologies of publics and politics. Through an experiment in rendering a specific data-public visible, it shows how the interplay between diverse conceptions of the public as well as the specific platforms and data invoked, resulted in a situated affordance-space that allowed specific renderings take shape, while disadvantaging others. Furthermore, it argues that several accepted tropes in the literatures of digital methods ended up being problematic guidelines in this space. Among these is the prescription to shown heterogeneity by pushing back at established media logics.
Keywords: Digital methods | public engagement | pragmatism | controversy-mapping | critical proximity | multiplicity

Ever since Big Data became a mot du jour across social fields, optical metaphors such as the microscope began to surface in popular discourse to describe and qualify its epistemological impact. While the persistence of optics seems to be at odds with the datafication of vision, this article suggests that the optical metaphor offers an opportunity to reflect about the material consequences of the modes of seeing and knowing that currently shape datafied worlds. Drawing on feminist new materialism, the article investigates the optical metaphor as a material-discursive practice that actively constitutes the world, as metaphors imply modes of thinking, knowing and doing that have material enactions. Expanding visual culture theories, the notion of ‘optical unconscious’ is taken up to discuss the tensions between displacement and persistence of optics within datafied worlds, that is, how optical vision is displaced but also mobilised and repurposed by data-driven knowledge. In dialogue with feminist science and technology studies and speculative ethics, I suggest that the datafication of vision offers a chance to reconceptualize the sense of sight towards a sensorial engagement with Big Data premised on responsibility, care, and an ethics of unknowability. Within this framework, vision may be conceived differently, perhaps not only as enhancement and control, but as generator of new possibilities. Ultimately, the article proposes that the visual theories after which Big Data is being imagined matter not only for our understanding of Big Data’s epistemic potential, but also for the possibility of shaping emerging data worlds.
Keywords: Optical unconscious | datafication of vision | speculative ethics | care | feminist materialism | metaphors