Platforms, Data Infrastructures, and Infrastructure Stacks

Abstract

Data-driven processes extend deeply into contemporary political economies, structuring flows of economic and social activity in ways both seen and unseen. Those processes have fueled growing interest by scholars and policymakers in the idea of infrastructure, both as an analytical construct and as an object of governance. In this chapter, I use the relationship(s) between data and mobility through physical spaces to explore why the characterization of data as infrastructure might matter for law- and policy-makers. As sets of structured data flows layered over other infrastructures have multiplied and intersected with practices of data extraction and appropriation, some of those data flows—in particular, data flows maintained by entities with the resources to manipulate them in real time and at scale—have come to function as infrastructures in their own right. These shifts have destabilized existing settlements regarding the movement of people and goods. Data infrastructures (are designed to) scale both vertically and laterally; they are nimble, flexible, and adaptable to new uses. Therefore, although they lack the brute fixity of physical infrastructures such as roadways and bridges, they facilitate assertions of power in ways that physical infrastructures alone cannot, and they are also vulnerable to commandeering and cooptation. The infrastructure lens helps to explain some of the challenges that efforts at post hoc regulatory supervision of platform activities have faced, and it also suggests some important questions about the newer, platform-specific regulatory models that are now beginning to emerge.

Keywords: platforms, data, infrastructure

JEL Classification: K19, P48