On data and despotes. An introduction

An introduction explaining the meaning  of the conference title and some of  its leading questions.

• Data is never raw, but always cooked (capta)
•  Using it while forgetting or pretending to forget it determines a kind of 'data despotism'.
• Data republicanism' would require publicness, both about the data itself and how and why we "cut" them from the complexity of the experience of the world
• Publicness is an (also) infrastructural issue: a proprietary infrastructure building a bubble of capta as natural data hinders the very possibility to do research, or "treating science as a problem that has still not been fully resolved" (W.v..Humboldt).