Digital Technologies and Big Data from the Standpoint of Convention Theory

Since the 19th century a growing usage of numbers and indicators can be observed in a society that had become increasingly complex. Indeed, abandoning the quiet life of the so-called community, based on tradition and direct relationship, requires the development of new rules and conventions to address the planning, organization, and coordination of a progressively large, complex and developing modern society. During this evolutionary process, numbers and indicators play a central role in addressing the political and public debate by supporting the definition of strategies, rational choices, comparison and evaluation to favor the exchange of experiences, knowledge, and organizational models and processes. After all, the scientific method has always based its strength and legitimacy on the power of measurement. Still, the contrast between qualitative and quantitative approaches has become even more acute with modern science. In the big data society, the power of numbers is hidden in the data, in the platform society, and in the digital media society, which delegates to an algorithm the responsibility of processing a large amount of data, in ever shorter times, synthesizing and classifying a changing and quickly obsolescent, complex reality. This chapter focuses on the role played by the language of numbers in digital society, in the light of the economics and sociology of conventions, to reflect on using these emerging conventions as cognitive devices to create new knowledge frames in managing the so-called big data society.