On the 8th and 9th of April, I was very glad to be back to Tallinn University of Technology to participate in a workshop on “Data Migration and Mobilities“, organised by Anu Masso (with whom I collaborated at Taltech from 2019 to 2021) and Rob Kitchin (Maynooth University).

In my presentation, titled “The Digital as a Complex Ecology: Reframing the Ontological Status of Data“, I propose a post-Newtonian, post-Cartesian conceptualization of data onto-epistemological mobility, inspired by a quantum approach to the digital ecology as a complex system. Such a conceptualization, in turn, can be fruitful in reconsidering how we understand data migration and advancing fairer ways to address how data are shared.

Here the slides of my presentation.

Below the abstract:

This paper leverages the concept of “data mobilities” (Kitchin et al 2025) and “data migration” (Masso et al 2025) with the aim to challenge the common understanding of data and draw some implications for the governance of the digital ecology as a complex system.

Albeit going often unquestioned, the ontological understanding of data that informs discourses, policies, and laws regulating data (re)production, ownership, (re)use, and sharing is one of Cartesian atomism. Data are framed as givens, i.e., geometric points moving across infrastructures that are posited, in turn, on an ideal Cartesian space, with the network as the emblematic paradigm. Yet, such an understanding increasingly shows its explanatory limitation, failing to account for how data intervene in and are part and parcel of complex sociotechnical ecologies whose behaviors cannot be reduced to the mapping or the sum of their parts.

To counterbalance this inadequacy and keep with the structural concept of data mobility, this paper contends that data shall be regarded as Janus-faced artifacts, constantly shifting their own ontological framing depending on how they are used, by whom, and for which purposes. Notably, such shifting occurs between the two complementary facets of data as informational carriers (hence, potentially non-rivalrous and non-excludable) and/or technical constructs (hence, potentially rivalrous and excludable). In other words, data are never mono-dimensional points moving from here to there but complex infotechnical entities that tangle with issues of (re)production, ownership, (re)use, and sharing. De facto, it is the (more often than not) non-coextensiveness among these entangled issues (that always coexist and can conflict) that is responsible for producing frictions across digital polities, leading to question, on each and every occasion, which configuration of the data-artefact is being prioritized (e.g., the European legal doctrine emphasizes the informational facet of data, while the US legal doctrine stresses the technical facet). Hence, the space (and time) that data contribute to create through their ontological shifting is not linear, but emergent, “unprestatable” a priori and approachable from multiple entry points at once.

This reframing of data has profound implications, among other areas, for data ethics – beyond axiomatic “good vs bad” data uses – and data law – beyond the dichotomy “public vs personal” data as well as beyond the ex-ante risk-based categorization of AI technologies. These three cases, which will be touched upon, bear witness to the necessity for data governance to have its normative standpoint complemented by a dynamic rationale that, in turn, can account for and accommodate the contingencies and inconsistencies inherent to data migration(s), especially in a geopolitical scenario. Quantum communication infrastructures might represent an infrastructural supply to such a dynamic rationale.