A fragment written for an upcoming paper on the construction of student data in higher education.
The ubiquity of data in contemporary society hides its peculiarity. Data is a very specific form of information, one in which the subject is broken down atomistically, measured precisely (in the sense of being measured to quite specific standards that may or may not involve a high level of quantitative precision), and represented consistently so that it can be compared to and aggregated with other cases. That this form of knowledge is more common in highly structured institutions and rose to ubiquity with the modern, bureaucratic state and the capitalist enterprise should surprise no one. Creating data should be regarded as a social process in which reality is made legible to the authorities of an institutional structure.
