Artisanat de la donnée

We do not live surrounded by data: we make them, and this work requires know-how. This site calls it data craft — in French, “artisanat de la donnée”.

The corpus — second edition

Tried by the Flow

A Processual Ontology of the Datum.

Everything starts from a simple reversal: a datum is not a thing that one collects, but the result of an act that constitutes it — on its observational route, a dated drawing from the flow of the real. The corpus unfolds its substance in three moments — making, circulation, reception — then derives its concrete extensions from it.

The trilogy appears here in its second edition (October 2026), which is now authoritative: the three tomes, the Architecture Volume, the lexicon, the translation charter, the story of the rewriting and the delivery that attests to its establishment form the edition as a whole (in French). The first edition remains available, closed and frozen, in its archive (in French).

To begin

A short way in, and an overview of the second edition.

The Datum Does Not Wait “What is a datum, anyway?” The manifesto, short and freely available. The Second Edition as a Whole (in French) What makes it up, and the delivery that attests to it The texts of the edition, and the fifty pieces delivered at its closure, on 2 October 2026, each with its hash.

The second edition — the trilogy

Substance, in three phases, opened by two pieces that hold for the whole edition. Each tome carries its annotated bibliography.

Preface to the Edition Substance, form and the status of this second edition What is authoritative, and on what conditions. At the head of Tome 1. Note on the Re-edition What the second edition takes up, transforms and adds The passage from the first to the second edition. At the head of Tome 1. Tome 1 — The River and the Canal Data Literacy Tried by the Flow Making: drawing, freshness, lapse, canal. Tome 2 — From Spring to Torrent The Movement of the Datum Tried by the Flow Circulation: transport, copying without division, torrent. Tome 3 — The Trace or the Datum The Situated Reader Tried by the Flow Reception: the situated reader, the trace, the mute datum.

The second edition — the pieces that accompany it

The systematic register, the definitions, the translation, and the story of the work.

Architecture Volume — Tried by the Flow The systematic register of the trilogy The theses, the consolidated diagram, the minimal ontology and the formal machinery. Neither a summary nor a fourth tome: the systematic entry into the trilogy. Canonical Lexicon The ontology term by term: one entry per concept, its definition, its source volume, its status. The reference that settles definitions — for readers as for agents. Translation Charter of the Corpus Method and table of equivalents for re-fixing the corpus in other languages. The Story of the Rewriting How the Trilogy Went from Essay to Edition The consolidation, the audit, the corrective branch and the closure: what changed, and how. The Delivery of the Second Edition (in French) The fifty pieces delivered at the closure — texts, sources, pieces of the work —, published unchanged with their hashes.

The continuity volumes

Applications and ways of putting it into practice.

The Canal and the Workshops The sectoral applications, workshop by workshop. Complementary Notes Prospective and analytical notes, on the margins of the corpus. The Data Artisan The competency framework of a craft whose creation the corpus calls for. The TRACE Programme Institutionalization: doctrine, pilot, deployment. Technical Data The technical manual of the corpus. SGQA — Quality and Activity Management System The complete matrix, which is authoritative: documenting the movement that the canal produces — the generic basis of an activity quality system. Project 00 — Note on the Re-edition The dated origin (2007) of the SGQA, reread term by term through the ontology: what the workshop knew without naming it.

Implementation

Putting the corpus to work.

Getting Started — The AI Agent Workshop From a stated activity, the AI agent workshop produces its manual and its management software.

For debate

A support for spoken discussion.

Discussion Canvas The vocabulary of the corpus, dense, to feed the debate.

First edition — archive

Closed and frozen: it no longer receives corrections.

The first edition of “Tried by the Flow” (in French) The three tomes, the synthesis, the lexicon and the translation charter as they appeared, with the story of the essay — the making-of of the first tome.