Author: Cosimo Accoto

“THE EMERGENCE OF MODULATION” (UNCODING DIGITAL, 2013)

“One very notable effect is that individuals, when using digital media, are always ‘seen’ and, as such, are subject to examination on a constant basis. In the case of a frequent flyer program, for example, a customer’s actions – especially those that generate points such as grocery shopping, flying, using their phone through a specific provider, and so on – are constantly observed and recorded, and the customer is constantly tested to check if they pass the test for moving up or down a rank, of which they are constantly reminded. In the context of digital technologies, in other words, no action is not subject to constant examination in some respect”

WHAT IS THE SOCIAL IN SOCIAL MEDIA? (Lovink, 2012, E-Flux)

“[…] These algorithmic calculations run in the background and measure every single click, touch of the keyboard, and use of a keyword. For Baudrillard, this “positive absorption into the transparency of the computer” is even worse than alienation. The public has become a database full of users. The “evil genius of the social” has no other way to express itself than to go back to the streets and squares, guided and witnessed by the multitude of viewpoints that tweeting smartphones and recording digital cameras produce. In the same way that Baudrillard questioned the outcome of opinion polls as a subtle revenge of the common people on the political/media system, we should question the objective truth of the so-called Big Data originating from Google, Twitter, and Facebook. Most of the traffic on social media originates from millions of computers talking to each other”

UNCODING THE DIGITAL (Savat, 2013)

“In my view, the mechanisms and instruments that Foucault identified as critical to the functioning of the disciplinary machine have not ceased to exist or broken down. In fact, the modes of observation by which discipline as a mode of power functions now operate more forcefully than ever, whether this be through the use of social media like Facebook, GPS location via mobile phone, radio frequency identification (RFID), or the collection of consumer data in our day-to-day activities” 

MORE PARTS THAN ELEMENTS. HOW DATABASES MULTIPLY (Mackenzie, 2010)

“Databases can be understood as the pre-eminent contemporary doing, organising, configuring and performing thing-and-people multiples in sets. Participation, belonging, inclusion and membership: many of the relations that make up the material social life of people and things can be formally apprehended in terms of set-like multiples rendered as datasets. Mid-twentieth century database design derived different ways of gathering, sorting, ordering, and searching data from mathematical set theory. The dominant database architecture, the relational database management system (RDMS), can be seen as a specific technological enactment of the mathematics of set theory. More recent developments such as grids, clouds and other data intensive architectures apprehend ever greater quantities of data” 

LIFE IN CODE AND SOFTWARE. MEDIATED LIFE IN A COMPLEX COMPUTATIONAL ECOLOGY (edited by David Berry, 2012)

“This book explores the relationship between living, code and software. Technologies of code and software increasingly make up an important part of our urban environment. Indeed, their reach stretches to even quite remote areas of the world. Life in Code and Software introduces and explores the way in which code and software are becoming the conditions of possibility for human living, crucially forming a computational ecology, made up of disparate software ecologies, that we inhabit”. 

TOWARD A POLITICS OF ALGORITHMS (“The relevance of algorithms”, Gillespie, 2012)

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BEYOND THE CURRENT DISCOURSE ON BIG DATA (Cosimo Accoto, 2012)

Modeling the data intensive framework based on “time”, “space” and “agency” 

CRITICAL QUESTIONS FOR BIG DATA (boyd & crawford, 2012)

“The era of Big Data has begun. Computer scientists, physicists, economists, mathematicians political scientists, bio-informaticists, sociologists, and other scholars are clamoring for access to the massive quantities of information produced by and about people, things, and their interactions. Diverse groups argue about the potential benefits and costs of analyzing genetic sequences, social media interactions, health records, phone logs, government records, and other digital traces left by people. Significant questions emerge. Will large-scale search data help us create better tools, services, and public goods? Or will it usher in a new wave of privacy incursions and invasive marketing? Will data analytics help us understand online communities and political movements? Or will it be used to track protesters and suppress speech?”

Critical questions for big data

ALGORITHMIC IDEOLOGY (Mager, 2012)

“This article investigates how the new spirit of capitalism gets inscribed in the fabric of search algorithms by way of social practices. Drawing on the tradition of the social construction of technology (SCOT) and 17 qualitative expert interviews it discusses how search engines and their revenue models are negotiated and stabilized in a network of actors and interests, website providers and users first and foremost. It further shows how corporate search engines and their capitalist ideology are solidified in a socio-political context characterized by a techno-euphoric climate of innovation and a politics of privatization. This analysis provides a valuable contribution to contemporary search engine critique mainly focusing on search engines’ business models and societal implications. It shows that a shift of perspective is needed from impacts search engines have on society towards social practices and power relations involved in the construction of search engines to renegotiate search engines and their algorithmic ideology in the future”.

Algorithmic Ideology