Challenging New Public Analytics with a Public Understanding of Technology

Abstract

In this essay, which serves as a response to Professor Yeung’s lecture and paper, I will focus on the implications that NPA has in terms of agency for the public. Agency, to draw from the work of Amartya Sen, is the capacity of people to achieve their goals and values. To do so, they need to have the opportunities and the capacities to participate in public life, and the space to engage in deliberative discussions, such that the decisions about them are not made without them. Accounting for public reasoning in decision making requires considering not only that there must be contestation and disagreement that takes place, but also that this contestation will necessarily be plural by design.