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Metadata has jumped from the specialist vernacular of the archivist and programmer to public discourse in the wake of the Snowden revelations. Yet the precise nature and import of this seemingly technical artifact remains dimly understood. This chapter will undertake a cold war archaeology of metadata, from analogue information gathered by the East German Stasi to the born digital data accessed by the NSA and GCHQ. Metadata is a key cipher for the contemporary technocultural condition, and the chapter offers a case study of broader shifts in techne (the constitutive relationship between the human and technology) and in labouring practices as afforded by our data-infused digital environment. The chapter provides a concise history of metadata as highly structured data for the information discovery of data objects. Changing surveillance practices reflect the increasingly fine granularity of the digital human to the extent that now we can be considered as data objects. The degree to which this manifests an ontological shift is addressed in relation to philosophical debates about materiality and the nonhuman. It also illustrates a changing ecosystem for new kinds of informational politics. The chapter concludes by reconceptualising the persistent generation of born-digital metadata via Simondon.

This article proposes the techno-cultural workshop as an innovative method for opening up the materiality of computational media and data flows in order to increase understanding of the socio-cultural and political-economic dimensions of datafication. Building upon the critical, creative hacker ethos of technological engagement, and the collective practice of the hackathon, the techno-cultural workshops is directed at humanities researchers and social and cultural theorists. We conceptually frame this method via Simondon as a practice-led opportunity to rethink the contested relationship between the human, nature and technology, with a view to challenging social and cultural theory that ignores the human reality of the technical object. We outline an exemplar techno-cultural workshop which explored mobile apps as i) an opportunity to use new digital tools for empirical research, and ii) as technical objects and elements for better understanding their social and cultural dimensions. We see political efficacy in the techno-cultural method not only in augmenting critical and creative agency, but as a practical exploration of the concept of data technicity, an inexhaustible relationality that exceeds the normative and regulatory utility of the data we generate and can be linked anew into collective capacities to act.

Objective: The aim of this study was to determine reference physical performance values in older aging workers. Background: Cross-sectional physical performance measures were collected for 736 manufacturing workers to assess effects of work and nonwork factors on age-related changes in musculoskeletal function and health. Method: Participants underwent surveys and physical testing that included bioelectrical impedance analysis, range-of-motion measures, exercise testing, and dynamic assessment. Results: Physical characteristics, such as blood pressure and body fat percentage, were comparable to published values. Dynamic and range-of-motion measurements differed from published normative results. Women had age-related decreases in cervical extension and lateral rotation. Older men had better spinal flexion than expected. Predicted age-related decline in lower-extremity strength and shoulder strength in women was not seen. Men declined in handgrip, lower-extremity strength, and knee extension strength, but not trunk strength, across age groups. There was no appreciable decline in muscle fatigue at the trunk, shoulder, and knee with aging for either gender, except for the youngest age group of women. Conclusion: Normative values may underestimate physical performance in "healthy" older workers, thereby underappreciating declines in less healthy older workers. Work may be preservative of function for a large group of selected individuals. A "healthy worker effect" may be greater for musculoskeletal disease and function than for heart disease and mortality. Application: Clinicians and researchers studying musculoskeletal function in older workers can use a more specific set of reference values.