Scaling up: The radical challenge of democratic data governance

Abstract

The utopia of a globalized data space, in which information seamlessly flows to support decision making across domains and locations, has long haunted the dreams of innovators. From the ideal of universal libraries that made Nineveh, Babylon, and Alexandria into capitals of the ancient world, to the circulation of knowledge and goods overseen by modern colonial empires, to the information networks envisaged by neoliberal economists as the foundation of free-market capitalism, data sharing has taken various forms through the ages.