Life After Data: the conference on de-datafication | October 6, 2026
October 6, 2026
Georgetown Law Center, Washington D.C.
Billionaires and politicians say that the datafied world is the inevitable world, that if we are smart we will not fight it, that we are in some sense already merely data. Sometimes it seems that every gatekeeper has a version of this message for us, which we must pretend to accept in order to be allowed to do anything.
But all it takes is a brief glance back through history to see that this message is a lie. Civilizations rise and fall, architecture and infrastructure collapses, powerful men lose their power one way or another. Data centers, no less than the Colosseum, are destined for ruin. There is no Caesar among the tech oligarchs.
The question is not whether the digital era will end, but how? We can decide to answer this question together instead of waiting for it to be answered for us. The Life After Data conference is an invitation to do just that.
This day-long event at Georgetown Law Center on October 6, 2026, will be a space for provocations on the theme of “de-datafication.” The term “datafication” refers to the quantification of human life through digital information, which is rendered as a new form of economic value.* The conference theme of “de-datafication” is meant to be open ended, but the prompt is:
Imagine a future in which digital data is no longer the currency mediating all of our social, economic and political systems, structures and practices. How might we get there from here?
The conference is open to the public, and presentations will be recorded but not live-streamed.
View the conference program here
*Cukier, Kenneth; Mayer-Schönberger, Viktor (2013). “The Rise of Big Data.” Foreign Affairs. 92(35); Mejias, Ulisses (2019). “Datafication.” Internet Policy Review 8(4).