Reimagining cosmopolitan duties in a datafied world

Dr Jon Rueda, Caroline Miles Visiting Scholar 

This is a data-rich world. If you suffer from meganumerophobia, I recommend skipping the next few sentences and going straight to the following paragraph. How much data are generated, captured, copied, and consumed daily worldwide? According to Duarte’s estimates, the daily figure stands at around 402.74 million terabytes. This is roughly 0.4 zettabytes (ZB) per day, which, when converted into the more familiar measure of gigabytes (GB), amounts to approximately 400,000,000,000 GB. Note: This is a daily estimate. Over the course of 2026, as much as 221 ZB could be generated, or equivalently, 221,000,000,000,000 GB. This is 221.000.000.000.000.000.000 megabytes per year.

As current estimates suggest that datafication will continue to grow, it is crucial to ask what the planetary impacts of data technologies are. Digital data do not live in “the clouds”. Datafication is an eminent material process. Data technologies depend on invisible human labour and scarce natural resources, generating uneven environmental and sociotechnical impacts across regions of the world. Critical data studies show that data infrastructures are embedded within natural, human, and artificial environments that produce inequalities spanning local, regional, national, international, transnational, and global scales.

Despite the growing academic attention to the transnational and global impacts of data technologies, cosmopolitan proposals for rethinking data governance remain underdeveloped. This has been precisely the aim of my research as a Caroline Miles Visiting Scholar in the spring of 2026. Building on a previous study, I have set out from the hypothesis that cosmopolitanism is a fruitful intellectual family that allows us to rethink the ethical, political, and regulatory problems of data technologies at the global level.

For a month, I have been conducting foundational research on data cosmopolitanism. I have traced the main theoretical strands of the cosmopolitan tradition. I have reflected on the core ingredients of a cosmopolitan approach to data governance. I have examined the advantages of data cosmopolitanism over rival theoretical positions, such as data nationalism and data regionalism, while also considering the main objections that may limit the appeal of my proposal. I was able to test these ideas by delivering the seminar “What is data cosmopolitanism?” at the Big Data Institute, in which I received generous, thought-provoking feedback from my colleagues at Ethox and other attendees.

What cosmopolitan duties do we have in the face of the global challenges posed by data technologies and the planetary impact of data infrastructure? Through formal and informal conversations with my colleagues at Ethox, I have drawn deeply enriching intellectual inspiration for envisioning strategies to respond to this question. I am immensely grateful for the opportunity afforded by the Caroline Miles Visiting Scholarship, which enabled me to advance this research considerably. Ethox is an unmatched human and academic community.

Beyond this research, the visit has been a constant stream of stimulation, thanks to the weekly Ethox Meetings, talks by other visitors, philosophical discussions over the lunch table (or at the pub), and the endless events of the ever-effervescent University of Oxford. If being in Oxford is always a pleasure, being there in spring is a gift for the senses. This vibrant city is an unbeatable cosmopolitan setting, a remarkably fertile intercultural breeding ground, in which to think about the global challenges of data technologies and about a great many other things besides.

Think globally, enjoy locally.