The Association of Human and Dado Friendship

A data double — or dado — is the entirety of all digital information collected about an individual. Often mistaken for being neutral and true-to-the-original digital duplicates, further research reveals that the way in which data is collected and quantified imposes productivity and consumerist agendas.

Association for Human & Dado Friendship introduces dados as fictional characters that are bound to their corresponding humans, but have their own desires and interests. The association is a speculative platform for sharing ways for individuals to bond with their dados in safe and meaningful ways. It is built around the three principles of (1) local data storage (2) open source code and independent electronics (3) alternative data representation. This serves to circumvent current data extraction practices and center the individuals' interests and agency in the relationship. The idea is to create a forum that supports members in actively collaborating with their dado‘s by taking control of the data streams and rerouting them for their own purposes.

In a digitalized society there are many situations where humans are represented exclusively by their dados - many companies, services or institutions only interact with our data and never with our physical selves. The Association for Human and Dado Friendship provides a model agency agreement, which human members can customize using an accessible and transparent form, to set guidelines on how they would like to be represented. Effectively this creates a system, where users have one accessible and highly personalized privacy agreement, that sets the ground rules on how they would like all third parties to handle their personal data.

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