Data-free Zones: Their Necessity and Chances

From a techno-realistic approach, the author discusses a range of questions relating to the use of Big Data in social sciences, including the Weaknesses and Threats of a virtual SWOT analysis in this area. After providing a brief inventory of issues that need clarification (among others, whether the present size of Big Data is a mere transient state in datafication; the temptation of using large datasets without understanding the data and the analytical tools; whether the quantitative analyses performed in large datasets will make qualitative research obsolete; the interdependence of Big Data and surveillance; the relationship between fundamental research and applied research in Big Data environments; and the role of artificial actors in the population investigated by Big Data tools), the author demonstrates the past, present and foreseeable future demands for “data-free zones”, that is, for creating virtual enclaves in the multi-layer parallel realities of contemporary society in order to reduce the impact of datafication on individuals.