“Those who control the questions shape the answers” (Floridi)

Luciano Floridi offers some interesting thoughts on the changing nature of power in an age of information. As he puts it, power now increasingly resides in being able to shape the nature of the questions that are being used – rather than being able to shape the answers. In this sense, we need to think carefully about who gets to configure the nature and form of data that is generated within a school (and, conversely, the data that is not generated). In the first instance, this power could be said to lie with the system designers and programmers that produce school systems and software. Secondly, we need to explore the role of administrators and other school staff that get to configure these systems and software. Thirdly – in line with our interest in disrupting the power relations surrounding school data – it is important to ask how this ability to dictate what data are generated might be devolved to other staff, students and similarly marginalised stakeholders. Regardless of what the data ‘says’, perhaps the most important thing for us to be concerned with is who gets to determine what this data ‘is’ in the first place …

“We used to think that power was about either the creation or the control of things, that it was about the means of production of goods. That’s what Marx thought. It was not about the production of experiences or services. Then society switched to a focus on power being expressed through the control of information. Once control of information is recognised as a source of power, then any powerful entity wants to control this information. Governments and empires all want to control information. What we’re seeing today is the very beginning of another switch, from power over things, to power over information, to power about the questions that shape the answers that give the information about things. If you take the view that semantic information is broadly speaking delivered as a question plus an answer, then those who control the questions shape the answers. That’s the new power we need to understand and manage properly today“