Are Present Concerns on Artificial Intelligence Really All That New? On Kerstin Anér’s Contribution to Data Law and Policy Debates during the Cold War and Today

Abstract

Kerstin Anér (1920–1991), Swedish liberal politician, feminist, and Christian humanist essayist, is most well known for having coined the term data shadow. The term is widely used today in computer science and beyond to denote “the digital record created by our transactions, our travels, our online activities”. Anér, however, coined the term in a different context – that of the early 1970s – and her concerns were not primarily about describing digital records. Instead, she worried about that which a shadow is the darker and fleeting representation of: the human.