184 Big data
society, and politics. It enables communications, information exchange, and
trade that, in part, constitute globalization, and has been heralded as an
antidote to the suppression or misuse of information by governments and
corporations.
On the downside, ‘big’ data is associated with ‘information overload’
and various kinds of social isolation. It is implicated in online predation,
the mass replication of unverified and unverifiable information, and widereaching surveillance aimed at social control. A loss of privacy through
big data collection, or hacks and leaks, drives the repeated reinvention of
institutional and personal online security systems.
Like earth, water, air, and fire, ‘big’ data can manipulate and maim, as
well as liberate and sustain.
In the anticipated roll out of ‘smart’ digital technologies in the financial
sector, insurance companies are deploying digital data in the form of ‘big’
data analytics (McFall & Moor 2018). Insurance technology innovations
known as insurtech are heralded as a radical reconfiguration of how we
understand insurance (VanderLinden et al. 2018). In mobilizing self-tracking
technologies like fitness trackers, personalized data can be used to inform
individualised premium prices (McFall & Moor 2018). These changes also
promise to change self-perceptions as our sense of self and, perhaps, sense
of place is redefined by insurer logics.
Such changes can be understood through the lens of spatial imaginaries
(Watkins 2015), specifically how discourses and practices of place and space
are imagined and reimagined through insurance and Insurtech, and by
tracked individuals and groups. Lobo-Guerrero (2014) speculates – drawing
on a fictional depiction of mass genetic testing forming the basis for insurability and thus liveability – that insurance creates a spatial imaginary of
containable and manageable risk on the one hand, and uncontainable and
wild uncertainty on the other. This constitutes both places and subjectivities through which embedded exclusion and fear of the uninsured and the
uninsurable are used to grow enthusiasm for insurance (Booth 2020) and to
maintain social order.
In this final section, Maiju Tanninen, Turo-Kimmo Lehtonen, and Minna
Ruckenstein focus on the experimental rollout of personalised or ‘smart’
life insurance. The ‘big’ data underpinning this is constituted through a
complexity of privacy regulations, tracking technologies, and the occasional ambivalent behaviour of those being tracked. For this data to ‘work,’
there is struggle and negotiation in resolving expectations with actualities,
including how, for consumers, these ‘big’ data products come imbued with
both promise and suspicion. In experimenting with the nature of their own
products, insurers appear to be contributing to spatial imaginings beyond
those constructed through hegemonic insurance logics. This possibility
may be reflected in the shift of insurance office architecture from the grand,
monumental buildings of the nineteenth century to the light and dynamic
retrofitted spaces of contemporary insurtech companies. Yet, as our final
society, and politics. It enables communications, information exchange, and
trade that, in part, constitute globalization, and has been heralded as an
antidote to the suppression or misuse of information by governments and
corporations.
On the downside, ‘big’ data is associated with ‘information overload’
and various kinds of social isolation. It is implicated in online predation,
the mass replication of unverified and unverifiable information, and widereaching surveillance aimed at social control. A loss of privacy through
big data collection, or hacks and leaks, drives the repeated reinvention of
institutional and personal online security systems.
Like earth, water, air, and fire, ‘big’ data can manipulate and maim, as
well as liberate and sustain.
In the anticipated roll out of ‘smart’ digital technologies in the financial
sector, insurance companies are deploying digital data in the form of ‘big’
data analytics (McFall & Moor 2018). Insurance technology innovations
known as insurtech are heralded as a radical reconfiguration of how we
understand insurance (VanderLinden et al. 2018). In mobilizing self-tracking
technologies like fitness trackers, personalized data can be used to inform
individualised premium prices (McFall & Moor 2018). These changes also
promise to change self-perceptions as our sense of self and, perhaps, sense
of place is redefined by insurer logics.
Such changes can be understood through the lens of spatial imaginaries
(Watkins 2015), specifically how discourses and practices of place and space
are imagined and reimagined through insurance and Insurtech, and by
tracked individuals and groups. Lobo-Guerrero (2014) speculates – drawing
on a fictional depiction of mass genetic testing forming the basis for insurability and thus liveability – that insurance creates a spatial imaginary of
containable and manageable risk on the one hand, and uncontainable and
wild uncertainty on the other. This constitutes both places and subjectivities through which embedded exclusion and fear of the uninsured and the
uninsurable are used to grow enthusiasm for insurance (Booth 2020) and to
maintain social order.
In this final section, Maiju Tanninen, Turo-Kimmo Lehtonen, and Minna
Ruckenstein focus on the experimental rollout of personalised or ‘smart’
life insurance. The ‘big’ data underpinning this is constituted through a
complexity of privacy regulations, tracking technologies, and the occasional ambivalent behaviour of those being tracked. For this data to ‘work,’
there is struggle and negotiation in resolving expectations with actualities,
including how, for consumers, these ‘big’ data products come imbued with
both promise and suspicion. In experimenting with the nature of their own
products, insurers appear to be contributing to spatial imaginings beyond
those constructed through hegemonic insurance logics. This possibility
may be reflected in the shift of insurance office architecture from the grand,
monumental buildings of the nineteenth century to the light and dynamic
retrofitted spaces of contemporary insurtech companies. Yet, as our final