Suchergebnisse

This commentary uses Paul Gilroy's controversial claim that new technoscientific processes are instituting an 'end to race' as a provocation to discuss the epistemological transformation of race in algorithmic culture. We situate Gilroy's provocation within the context of an abolitionist agenda against racial-thinking, underscoring the relationship between his post-race polemic and a post-visual discourse. We then discuss the challenges of studying race within regimes of computation, which rely on structures that are, for the most part, opaque; in particular, modes of classification that operate through proxies and abstractions and that figure racialized bodies not as single, coherent subjects, but as shifting clusters of data. We argue that in this new regime, race emerges as an epiphenomenon of processes of classifying and sorting – what we call 'racial formations as data formations'. This discussion is significant because it raises new theoretical, methodological and political questions for scholars of media and critical algorithmic studies. It asks: how are we supposed to think, to identify and to confront race and racialisation when they vanish into algorithmic systems that are beyond our perception? What becomes of racial formations in post-visual regimes?

1. Introduction: Figure, Figuring and Configuration -- 2. The Work That Figures Do -- 3. In "The Cloud": Figuring and Inhabiting Media Milieus -- 4. Figure to Ground: Felicity Allen Interviewed by Celia Lury -- 5. The Research Persona Method: Figuring and Reconfiguring Personalised Information Flows -- 6. Engines, Puppets, Promises: The Figurations of Configuration Management -- 7. Figuring Molecular Relapse in Breast Cancer Medicine -- 8. The Gardener and the Walled Garden -- 9. Data Through Time: Figuring Out the Narrative Self in Longitudinal Research -- 10. Figuring Out Exposure: Exploring Computational Environments and Personalisation in Interdisciplinary Air Pollution Research -- 11. Figures of Speech: Stuck in the Middle with 'People Like You' -- 12. Ubiquitous Surveillance and Data Selves -- 13. Figuring Accompaniment: The Creation of Urban Spaciousness.

This open access book shows how figures, figuring, and configuration are used to understand complex, contemporary problems. Figures are images, numbers, diagrams, data and datasets, turns-of-phrase, and representations. Contributors reflect on the history of figures as they have transformed disciplines and fields of study, and how methods of figuring and configuring have been integral to practices of description, computation, creation, criticism and political action. They do this by following figures across fields of social science, medicine, art, literature, media, politics, philosophy, history, anthropology, and science and technology studies. Readers will encounter figures as various as Je Suis Charlie, #MeToo, social media personae, gardeners, asthmatic children, systems configuration management and cloud computing – all demonstrate the methodological utility and contemporary relevance of thinking with figures. This book serves as a critical guide to a world of figures and a creative invitation to "go figure!"

This article describes the use of a prototype recommendation app to explore how users are included and/or excluded in categories of various kinds of 'People Like You'. In the study, interviews with users of the prototype app indicate that the experience of receiving personalized recommendations isroutinely evaluated in terms of relevance, that is, as either of interest to them or as beside the point, as accurate or inaccurate, with accuracy often understood as recognition of their context(s). We build on the interviews to develop an analysis which suggests that the capacity of recommendation systems to make relevant recommendations is a function of the parallel projections – from the app on one side and users on the other – that are made as part of an interaction order. In developing this analysis, we reflect on the implications of the interaction order for the inclusion and exclusion of users in categories or kinds of people. We highlight the importance of the temporal formatting of interaction as a continuous present for the relation between belonging and belongings, and thus for the creation of a datasset (Beauvisage and Mellett 2020).

Art-form, send-up, farce, ironic disarticulation, pastiche, propaganda, trololololol, mode of critique, mode of production, means of politicisation, even of subjectivation -- memes are the inner currency of the internet's circulatory system. Independent of any one set value, memes are famously the mode of conveyance for the alt-right, the irony left, and the apoliticos alike, and they are impervious to many economic valuations: the attempts made in co-opting their discourse in advertising and big business have made little headway, and have usually been derailed by retaliative meming. Post-Memes: Seizing the Memes of Production takes advantage of the meme's subversive adaptability and ripeness for a focused, in-depth study. Pulling together the interrogative forces of a raft of thinkers at the forefront of tech theory and media dissection, this collection of essays paves a way to articulating the semiotic fabric of the early 21st century's most prevalent means of content posting, and aims at the very seizing of the memes of production for the imagining and creation of new political horizons.With contributions from Scott and McKenzie Wark, Patricia Reed, Jay Owens, Thomas Hobson and Kaajal Modi, Dominic Pettman, Bogna M. Konior, and Eric Wilson, among others, this essay volume offers the freshest approaches available in the field of memes studies and inaugurates a new kind of writing about the newest manifestations of the written online. The book aims to become the go-to resource for all students and scholars of memes, and will be of the utmost interest to anyone interested in the internet's most viral phenomenon.

An Anthropogenic Table of Elements provides a contemporary rethinking of Dmitri Mendeleev's periodic table of elements, bringing together "elemental" stories to reflect on everyday life in the Anthropocene. Concise and engaging, this book provides stories of scale, toxicity, and temporality that extrapolate on ideas surrounding ethics, politics, and materiality that are fundamental to this contemporary moment. Examining elemental objects and forces, including carbon, mould, cheese, ice, and viruses, the contributors question what elemental forms are still waiting to emerge and what political possibilities of justice and environmental reparation they might usher into the world. Bringing together anthropologists, historians, and media studies scholars, this book tests a range of possible ways to tabulate and narrate the elemental as a way to bring into view fresh discussion on material constitutions and, thereby, new ethical stances, responsibilities, and power relations. In doing so, An Anthropogenic Table of Elements demonstrates through elementality that even the smallest and humblest stories are capable of powerful effects and vast journeys across time and space