<p>The easy everyday practice of counting is transferred to technology (for good reasons, it is very repetitive). But the decision of what counts is legitimized by the database. This is interesting. The counting decision is also a decision about what counts.</p>
Data are constituted where the counting device translates into “the digital”. I think it more like a process. How can this process be described? How are impulses from induction translated in machine readable code? Is it encrypted when it goes from one device to the other? Is IoT involved? What devices communicate to which others? When do computers come in?
As described in the artifact, the bike counters are co-financed by the state of Hesse and the city of Frankfurt. While we know that the signals transformed into data and numbers are presented in the ecocounters dashboard, we do not know yet where those data further travel. Obviously into the data hub of the Straßenverkehrsamt. The questions remains who else is using the data (at the State of Hesse and beyond) and integrating them into other data collections, data models, etc. It would be interesting to see if those data are used for different interpretations.
One might analyze the data journey even more fine-grained when attending to more technical processing that mostly remains hidden. However, I'll stick with those sites that I found represented in the material and was able to imagine, which is still quite a lot!
Site 1: The cables
Site 2: The sensors
Site 3: The computer under the road
Site 4: The mobile radio towers and transfer servers
Site 5: Eco Counter Servers
Site 6: The dashboard view at the workplaces of city employees
Site 7: The servers that host the public dashboard
Site 8: Computers of website visitors
Site 9: The excel-sheets that constitute the data hub
In future: Site 10: Places in which the traffic model is later used?
Site 5: