Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jan 30, 2026

Measuring Engagement of Spectators of Social Digital Games
Published on: July 3, 2021
The social life of data points: Antecedents of digital technologies
1School of Population Health & Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Life Sciences & Medicine, King's College London, London, UK.
Abstract:
Recent technological advances such as microprocessors and random-access memory have had a significant role in gathering, storing and processing digital data, but the basic principles underpinning such data management were established in the century preceding the digital revolution. This paper maps the emergence of those older technologies to show that the logic and imperative for the surveillance potential of more recent digital technologies was laid down in a pre-digital age. The paper focuses on the development of the data point from its use in punch cards in the late 19th century through its manipulation in ideas about correlation to its collection via self-completion questionnaires. Some ways in which medicine and psychology have taken up and deployed the technology of data points are used as illustrative exemplars. The paper concludes with a discussion of the role of data points in defining human identity.
More Related Videos
11:13The Social Dimension of Stress: Experimental Manipulations of Social Support and Social Identity in the Trier Social Stress Test
Published on: November 19, 2015
05:32Comparing Eye-tracking Data of Children with High-functioning ASD, Comorbid ADHD, and of a Control Watching Social Videos
Published on: December 7, 2018
Related Concept Videos
Role of Emotions in Social Life
Social Foundations of Self IV: Self in Digital Communication
Social Proof
Half-life of a Reaction
Social Scripts
Social Traps