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Digitalization, Big Data and fantasies in education One may be surprised what digitalization and Big Data are being used for in education. Through digital technologies, Big Data is being gathered to provide access for politicians and the public to school matters in general and specifically if schools and teachers do not reach determined goals. For example, attainment of socioeconomic reference indicators, measured by students' grade point average. Many fantasies are attached to digitalization and Big Data. Fantasies about increased transparency, safety, and prediction (Zuboff, 2019). However, digitalization and Big Data may also produce a culture of 'shaming and blaming', displaying those schools that do not live up to fixed goals. This in turn may lead to goal-fixation, nearsightedness, and 'prophylactic' reasoning in schools. In this paper we analyze the fantasies and powerful beliefs that make it difficult to problematize and critically reflect on the emergence of digitalization and Big Data. Inspired by psychoanalytical theory (Zizek, 2008), political and organizational theory (Ball, 2008; Agamben, 2013; Weick et al. 2005; Gioia & Chittipeddi, 1991), and anthropological studies of the performance of magic in 'primitive' and 'modern' organizations (Malinowski, 1948; Clark and Salaman, 1996), we will discuss examples of fantasies from previous and ongoing research (Rüsselbæk Hansen & Phelan, 2019); Bøje et al., 2018; Balslev & Raae 2019). We argue that delicate balances between monitoring and democracy are tipping. Furthermore, we argue that digitalization and Big Data support and are being supported by a neoliberal fantasy where measurement, clarity, comparison, and competition set the educational scene (Brown, 2015). That way a certain regime is produced which seems to regulate schools, teachers and students in ways that risk dismantling democratic engagement and conversation. This scenario will be illustrated as well as discussed: how can this be avoided so democracy does not turn into another lost ideal in education?

This article is concerned with how we might go about theorizing the roles of nonhumans (technologies, animals, etc.), and their associations with humans, in the production of 'social data'. Drawing on recent sociological work on heterogeneity, the article explores how nonhumans contribute to the emergence of both the 'microsocial' and 'macrosocial' as complex patterns of ordering and disordering. These patterns are exemplified with reference to a 'disastrous interview episode'. With the aid of such concepts as parasite, preposition and co(a)gent, the disastrous interview episode is interpreted in three ways to show how nonhumans must be disciplined in order to allow the emergence of social data; how nonhumans' 'misbehaviour' can be understood in terms of their 'hybridic' associations with humans; and how the interaction between hybrids mediates such macro entities as universities and corporations. Finally, in conclusion, some of the broader implications of this analysis for sociological practice are considered.

This essay, part of "Data Strategy in the Digital Age—Special Report", a collection of essays commissioned by the International Law Research Program at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), exploring topics including the rationale for a data strategy, the role of a data strategy for Canadian industries, and policy considerations for domestic and international data governance. The essay notes that a major challenge in thinking about a national and international "data strategy" stems from the fundamental tensions between what information "wants" to be: free and shared, but also expensive, owned and controlled. Sometimes, information "wants" to be dangerous. Contemporary discourse around the governance of information often refer to data as "the new oil" or "the new gold". These metaphors imply ownership and exclusive control and emphasize the money that can be made by those who control data—the private benefits that they might derive from its exploitation, not the aggregate value shared by society as a whole—while ignoring that much more is at stake. The essay suggests using a better metaphor: data as "the new sea." Unlike oil or gold, but like the sea, data and information are non-rivalrous resources that can be used simultaneously by everyone without being diminished. Built around similar tensions between what the sea "wants to be": free, shared and open; expensive and owned; empowering and dangerous; the law of the sea and its historical development provide a useful framework for thinking about the national and international governance of data.