Category: data

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Algorithms and their others, or disciplining ‘algorithm studies’

Canny commentator and provocateur Prof. Paul Dourish has a relatively recent piece in the journal Big Data & Society concerning the fashion for ‘algorithm studies’, the definitional wrangling that has ensued (i.e. people arguing over what the word means) and some proposals for what he suggests is an alternative approach

“which might put aside the question of what an algorithm is as a topic of conceptual study and instead adopt a strategy of seeking out and under- standing algorithms as objects of professional practice for computer scientists, software engineers, and system developers.” (p. 9)

Dourish proposes a kind of Foucauldian STS-style strategy for sketching out what Doreen Massey might call the ‘geometries of power‘ of specific instances of what gets called algorithms, and what kinds of power the idea of ‘algorithm’ does or doesn’t have in those (for want of a better term) institutional assemblages.

The article is an incisive and authoritative overview of the contemporary interdisciplinary debates around ‘algorithms’ and deftly outlines the frictions and tensions between the current fashion for ‘algorithms’ and the other terms that may or may not be important to the study of the phenomena we mean when we use that word. In this case Dourish offers some discussion of (software) architecture, automation, code, (big) data structures, and programs. This is a really thoughtful exposition of the stakes of the debate and a level-headed attempt at moving on the discussion. Useful interlocutors (to my mind) throughout are Alexander Galloway and Adrian Mackenzie, references to whose work are present at key points in Dourish’s discussion. This is a really clear article and probably should be an essential read for those concerning themselves with ‘algorithms’.

A really important point, which isn’t often considered, that Dourish makes very clearly is that:

One reason that an algorithm can be hard to recover from a program is that there is a lot in a pro- gram that is not ”the algorithm” (or ”an algorithm”). The residue is machinic, for sure; it is procedural, it involves the stepwise execution of one instruction followed by another, and it follows all the rules of layout, control flow, state manipulation, and access rights that shape any piece of code. But much of it is not actually part of the – or any – algorithm.
…

An algorithm may express the core of what a program is meant to do, but that core is surrounded by a vast penumbra of ancillary operations that are also a program’s respon- sibility and also manifest themselves in the program’s code. In other words, while everything that a program does and that code expresses is algorithmic in the sense that it is specified in advance by formalization, it is not algorithm, in the sense that it goes beyond things that algorithms express, or even what the term ”algorithm” signals as a term of professional practice. (p.4)

I suppose the one point of caution I’d suggest is that while excellent, Dourish’s article highlights to me the narrowness of the discussion – the relative closeness (and perhaps closed-ness) of those involved and the ways in which ‘discipline’ (and I suppose, then, ‘authority’) might thereby becoming enacted. Indeed, following Dourish’s strategy it might be (ironically) interesting to chart the forms  of ‘professional practice’ through which ‘algorithm studies’ take place. The list of people and institutions Dourish acknowledges at the close of his article offer a possible starting point…

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New book: Digital Humanities and Digital Media: Conversations on Politics, Culture, Aesthetics and Literacy

Saw this via Twitter:

Looks interesting, includes chapters from Johanna Drucker, Katherine Hayles and  Bernard Stiegler…

Blurb:

Digital Humanities and Digital Media: Conversations on Politics, Culture, Aesthetics and Literacy

edited by Roberto Simanowski

digital-humanities-and-digital-media_cover_200x300.jpg

There is no doubt that we live in exciting times: Ours is the age of many ‘silent revolutions’ triggered by startups and research labs of big IT companies; revolutions that quietly and profoundly alter the world we live in. Another ten or five years, and self-tracking will be as normal and inevitable as having a Facebook account or a mobile phone. Our bodies, hooked to wearable devices sitting directly at or beneath the skin, will constantly transmit data to the big aggregation in the cloud. Permanent recording and automatic sharing will provide unabridged memory, both shareable and analyzable. The digitization of everything will allow for comprehensive quantification; predictive analytics and algorithmic regulation will prove themselves effective and indispensable ways to govern modern mass society. Given such prospects, it is neither too early to speculate on the possible futures of digital media nor too soon to remember how we expected it to develop ten, or twenty years ago.

The observations shared in this book take the form of conversations about digital media and culture centered around four distinct thematic fields: politics and government, algorithm and censorship, art and aesthetics, as well as media literacy and education. Among the keywords discussed are: data mining, algorithmic regulation, sharing culture, filter bubble, distant reading, power browsing, deep attention, transparent reader, interactive art, participatory culture. The interviewees (mostly from the US, but also from France, Brazil, and Denmark) were given a set of common questions as well specific inquiries tailored to their individual areas of interest and expertise. As a result, the book both identifies different takes on the same issues and enables a diversity of perspectives when it comes to the interviewees’ particular concerns.

Among the questions offered to everybody were: What is your favored neologism of digital media culture? If you could go back in history of new media and digital culture in order to prevent something from happening or somebody from doing something, what or who would it be? If you were a minister of education, what would you do about media literacy? What is the economic and political force of personalization and transparency in digital media and what is its personal and cultural cost? Other recurrent questions address the relationship between cyberspace and government, the Googlization, quantification and customization of everything, and the culture of sharing and transparency. The section on art and aesthetics evaluates the former hopes for hypertext and hyperfiction, the political facet of digital art, the transition from the “passive” to “active” and from “social” to “transparent reading”; the section on media literacy discusses the loss of deep reading, the prospect of “distant reading” and “algorithmic criticism” as well as the response of the university to the upheaval of new media and the expectations or misgivings towards the rise of the Digital Humanities.

Contents

Roberto Simanowski Introduction

Johanna Drucker At the intersection of computational methods and the traditional humanities

John Cayley Of Capta, vectoralists, reading and the Googlization of universities

Erick Felinto Mediascape, antropotechnics, culture of presence, and the flight from God

David Golumbia Computerization always promotes centralization even as it promotes decentralization

Ulrik Ekman Network Societies 2.0: The extension of computing into the social and human environment

Mihai Nadin Enslaved by digital technology

Nick Montfort Self-monitoring and corporate interests

Rodney Jones The age of print literacy and ‘deep critical attention’ is filled with war, genocide and environmental devastation

Diane Favro, Kathleen Komar, Todd Presner, Willeke Wendrich Surfing the web, algorithmic criticism and Digital Humanities

N. Katherine Hayles Opening the depths, not sliding on surfaces

Jay David Bolter From writing space to designing mirrors

Bernard Stiegler Digital knowledge, obsessive computing, short-termism and need for a negentropic Web

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Scoping review @ESRC : Ways of being in a digital age ~ anyone applying?

A kind colleague sent this to me just now and it made me both sit up in interest and slightly slump in my chair… I would love to be involved in this but just can’t see how…

This looks like a really interesting opportunity for an interdisciplinary team to provide a valuable and incisive push to the ESRC to think about what an earth “ways of being in a digital age” might mean. I do hope someone cam drive this forward in a positive way, the boosterism of “big data” etc. or the dystopian malaise of “algorithmic governance” are simply not sufficient for this task1.

Invitation to submit Expressions of Interest

We are delighted to invite Expressions of Interest (EoI) for a scoping review to inform a future ESRC initiative on ‘Ways of being in a digital age’.This is an exciting opportunity to inform ESRC’s possible future strategic investment and provide a more holistic view of how digital technology mediates our lives, and the way technological and social change co-evolve and impact each other.

This is a broad and much researched area, so the purpose of the scoping review is to undertake a systematic literature review and synthesis; to identify gaps in current research and determine where the ESRC should focus any initiative to add most value. Through this process the aim of the scoping review is also to build new networks and extend existing ones across the academic community, amongst other stakeholders and potential funding partners.

The scoping review is for a maximum duration of eight months and must commence no later than 1 August 2016. The maximum budget for the scoping review is £300,000 at 100 per cent in full economic costs. In accordance with RCUK policy, the ESRC will contribute up to 80 per cent of the full economic costs.

The call makes a brilliant plea for qualitative work (bottom of p. 3), which is very much needed. I hope this is something we can all build upon.

The initial questions offered in the invitation are interesting, but really need to be pushed a bit further For example, talking about “impacts” on society and forms of community that emerge “as a result” of technology are far too technologically determinist, and there isn’t “the digital” as some kind of amorphous separate domain,  where’s the conceptual nuance here?!

  • How we define and authenticate ourselves in a digital age

  • How do we construct the digital to be open to all, sustainable and secure

  • How digital technology impacts on our autonomy, agency and privacy – illustrated by the paradox of emancipation and control

  • What are the challenges of ethics, trust and consent in the digital age

  • How we live with and trust the algorithms and data analysis used to shape key features of our lives

  • How our relationships are being shaped and sustained in and between various domains, including family and work

  • What new forms of communities and work emerge as a result of digital technologies – for example new forms of coordination including large scale and remote collaboration Whether and how our understanding of citizenship is evolving in the digital age – for example whether technology helps or hinders us in participating at individual and community levels

  • How we define responsibility and accountability in the digital age Whether technology makes us healthier, better educated and more productive.

None of the disciplinary silos is sufficient in addressing this. It would be really, really depressing to see just a “digital sociology”, “digital geography”, or “digital anthropology” type review made here.

I hope someone is bold and imaginative and really pushes at the questions we should be asking. I would welcome conversations about how I could contribute in some small way…

Note
1. I am not seeking to denigrate those who work on such things, merely pointing out that no fashionable trope is sufficient. Just as those that led the “Virtual Society?” theme for the ESRC back in didn’t bang on about “cyberspace”, although the use of the term “virtual” is/was possibly problematic…

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Contested Cities conference ~ July 2016, Madrid

Saw this via Gillian Rose on Twitter, looks interesting!

As part of our upcoming Conference in Madrid (July 4-7, 2016), the Contested Cities network and its partners invites contributions for a radical mixed- and multi-media exploration of contestation and cities. Our goal is simple – to challenge people everywhere to see cities and the struggle for their past, present and future in a new light, and to do so by gathering an international set of creative projects in one place. We think we can do that in part by using all of the new audio and visual tools at our disposal. We have some ideas ourselves, but are looking globally for those who want to join in.
We encourage and actively seek contributions from amateurs and professionals alike – expert videographers who may be amateur urbanists, expert urbanists who are amateur photographers, people who wear multiple hats comfortably, data visualization nerds, map geeks, audioheads, visual artists and everyone in between. If you are someone new to both thinking about cities and visualizing them, and simply had a moment of inspiration and now have a provocative project they want to show someone, send us your project! 
Accepted projects will be shown via slideshow at the Congress, and we hope to invite some of the best submissions for an international book project. We may also build a web version, but will ask permission before posting your work.
All “authors” will be invited to attend, but alas we cannot cover registration fees. There is no fee for submission.

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The Museum of Contemporary Commodities in EXETER

The Museum of Contemporary Commodities

Just a quick note to let you know that the brilliant Paula Crutchlow has brought “The Museum of Contemporary Commodities” (MoCC) to Exeter for the majority of May.

There’s lots going on, much of it creative and interesting – so if you’re in Exeter or nearby: come and visit!

Two immediate things this week:

RIGHT NOW!: help re-create the internet in paper with Artist Louise Ashcroft from 11 -2 in the Exeter University Forum.

TOMORROW: sign up to do a data walkshop with Alison Powell from the LSE on Saturday from 10-1. Places have to be booked, and the Eventbrite page is here https://www.eventbrite.com/e/mocc-data-walkshop-tickets-24464719635

Please do visit the MoCC website for lots more events and activities taking place this month and visit the shop:

87 Fore St,
Exeter
EX46RT

Open 10:00-18:00pm Weds-Sat, 4th-21st May.

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Stiegler: Stop the uberisation of society!

Posted below is a translation of a piece co-authored by Bernard Stiegler with Ariel Kyrou (journo),  Yann Moulier-Boutang (writer) and Bruno Teboul (Director of innovation at Keyrus) and published in Libération on the 10th April.

I suppose it doesn’t really propose anything especially novel, if you’re familiar with others involved in debates around “postcapitalism”, automation, worklessness and universal income (e.g. Srnicek and Williams, or Mason). What is perhaps novel is an application of the ideas in a distinctly European flavour, with examples in France and in the context of a much more robust unionised response to Uber (and the task/gig economy).

Anyway, it’s an interesting read I think…

The piece is rather conversational in tone and uses idioms I have only been able to infer (not being a fluent and native speaker) so it was quite difficult to translate, and so I’m pretty sure there are errors. As usual clarifications or original French are in [square brackets].

Stop the uberisation of society!

Libération, 10th April

The war by taxi companies against an Uber society cannot be reduced to the storyline of a film depicting an ancient evil battling benevolent forces of modernity. If on the one hand the participatory economy threatens our social structures, it can also, on the other, make possible a society with greater solidarity.

Since the first moves towards the draft Thévenoud law in June 2014[1], the urban transport soap opera has generated multiple variations on the theme of the standard storyline. On one side are the taxi federations, which have been labelled a horde of grumpy medieval malthusians by Uber, who in the opening of the second act of the performance of the trial of the 11th February demanded a whopping €100m in damages from Uber, on the other the ‘white knight’ of the new economic order, the high-tech Robin Hood of its pleb users whose UberPop service enables simple fellows in search of employment the opportunity to offer at cut-price their talents for automotive locomotion, between February 2014 and July 2015. This tale of jokers against modernisers is more attractive than the G7, queen of opaque rentier sorcery, who could not turn themselves with the wave of a magic wand into the cinderella of Parisian Transport.

Except that the movie script of the ancient evil against the benevolent ‘disruptors’ rings as hollow as any Hollywood blockbuster: seen quickly, soon forgotten. It works in the short-term, like the groan of the indefinite vigil for a taxi at 3 o’clock in the morning in the banlieue, but it hardly takes us any distance towards solving the questions about the future of our society and the search for sustainable solutions to the crisis we are experiencing.

Let’s not misunderstand this scenario: the agonism presented by this contemporary drama [série du moment] is neither the ardent need to pit global start-ups against French corporatism [corporatismes franchouillards] nor its exact opposite, namely the obligation to defend the capitalism of tired old barons against the hyper-capitalism of the rulers of the digital future. No, the issue that should be obvious to everyone with a stake in the debate is the urgent need to think about the society we want, and then act in order to build it.

For why should we anoint an ‘uberisation of the economy’ without interrogating its ideology and long-term deleterious effects? Uber, which declares only a fraction of its profits in France thanks to a complex form of tax evasion through the Netherlands, Bermuda and Delaware, is participating in the liquidation of our social structures. It embodies a short circuit that threatens the fragile economic balance between taxation, social law, transport policy, infrastructure investment at the local level and the pensions system. Worse still: its social and economic logic foreshadows the advent of a futuristic no-man’s land in which the a priori ideal of liberty becomes monetised against an a posteriori generalised casualisation throughout society. Indeed, the rictus predatory behaviour of platforms like Uber, Lyft and others such as Amazon’s Mechanical Turk is founded upon a low intensity of capital, little infrastructure, a minimum of salaried employees with more independent or self-employed workers.

The uberisation process forms the first wave in the tsunami of automation. Its primary consequence will be a net loss of five million jobs in industrialised countries by 2020, according to a report published on the 18th of January by the oracles of the World Economic Forum in Davos, the shameless apostles of the “fourth industrial revolution”. This deeply unappealing assertion has been amplified by several studies in the last three years (by Oxford, MIT, the Breugel Institute and Roland Berger) which predict around 47% fewer people in employment by 2025. This slow but inexorable extinction of of the salaried world effects not only warehouse workers, supermarket cashiers and lorry drivers but also barristers, solicitors, journalists, those working in medicine, and so on. Why should it remain necessary to use human beings for tasks that are reducible to systematic procedures? Which in our data economy robots and algorithms will soon perform much more efficiently. The combination of robotics and ‘big data’, algorithms and network effects, is already transforming us into the involuntary gravediggers for salaried employment. Welcome to a world that is ultimately ‘flexible’, boosted by robotic automation [robotisation] and work on the meter. A world where users and customers constantly account for themselves, where each becomes their own big brother and where most of the activity in every market, like with car insurance, will increasingly play out more in an automated big data-driven fashion than according to laws or to forms of trust that are not based in calculation.

Nevertheless we should beware skewed perspectives: such a world is not inevitable. The digital gives us an opportunity to reconsider work not only in terms of jobs doomed to become ever more precarious, provoking anxiety about self-exploitation, but also as a part of a project for a contributory society in which salaried employment would be one means amongst many, rather than an end in itself. A company like TaskRabbit certainly creates use value through its platform of small on-demand jobs, but it keeps for itself and its shareholders the [accompanying] exchange value in the form of profit. In contrast, Loconomics is a co-operative owned by those who use it to advertise their services. Against the platforms of the so-called sharing economy (which it is in name only) Trebor Scholz endorses a ‘platform cooperativism’ [2] to build a society of commons that operates beyond solely economic and financial dimensions.

This shambles needs to be urgently addressed. Thinking in the long-term, this is political in the principal sense of the word. To buckle down to the future of work equally concerns: expertise in data to use and liberate ourselves from algorithms and a care for people without the need for machines; to classify work in a way that is both protective of our ways of life and much less administrative than today; to examine the establishment of an adequate basic income, structurally justified by massive unemployment due to automation and the coming slow death of employment; to experiment with the extension of the regime of casual work in the context of a true society of contribution, with the acquisition and sharing of knowledge by and between everyone; to study tax reform based upon the principles of a financial transactions tax [la taxe pollen], beginning with the establishment of a European tax on the flows of High Frequency Trading, to finance a universal income.

Rather than the two opposing and yet complimentary nightmares that are the integral uberisation of society and the sovereignist protection of the capitalism of yesteryear we prefer the realisation of a dream: to imagine, to experiment, to build, step by step, a freer society with greater solidarity; preferring disagreement to the brainwashing that has played out, historically, through the carrot and the stick, or, in our high-tech times, through a blind obedience to shiny artificial devices [l’obéissance aveugle à de rutilantes mécaniques artificielles et augmentées].

1. For more information on the Thévenoud law see this article – Sam.

2. See this article on Medium by Scholz.

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Reblog> Programme for Streams of Consciousness, Warwick, 21-22 April

Via Tony Sampson. All the names you’d expect/want to see and a few more… (can’t help finding it amusing that Thrift is opening the event).

It’d be interesting to hear what Rouvroy has to say…

Streams of Consciousness: Data, Cognition and Intelligent Devices

Download here short and full draft pdf versions of the programme

Register for the conference here 

Thursday 21st April

9.00 to 9.45: REGISTRATION AND COFFEE
9.45 to 10.00: OPENING ADDRESS
Nathaniel Tkacz, Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies, University of Warwick
10.00 TO 10.45: KEYNOTE SPEAKER 
Professor Nigel Thrift
10.45 to 13.00: PLENARY SESSION
Tony Sampson, University of East London 
Understanding Neurocapitalism or What Happens When Gramsci Does Human Computer Interaction
Nick Srnicek, Independent Researcher
The Eyes of the State
Antoinette Rouvroy, University of Namour (Video Conference)
Title TBC
13.00 to 14.00: LUNCH
14.00 to 16.00: BREAK OUT SESSIONS 
SESSION A: DATIFIED SELF
Sun-Ha Hong, University of Pennsylvania 
Data’s Intimacy: Machinic Sensibility and the Quantified Self
Elpida Prasopoulou, Coventry University 
The Body in the Internet of Things: An Auto-ethnography on Wearables
Aleksandra K. Przegalinska, Kozminski University 
Productivity 3.0: Mindtracking and the New Transparent Labour
Ana Viseu, Universidade Euroepia (TBC) 
Bodies, Data and the Question of Physiological Narcissism
SESSION B: ALGORITHMS, MODELS AND CALCULATIVE DEVICES
 
Nathan Coombs, University of Edinburgh 
Intractable Algorithms: Representational Uncertainty in the German High-Frequency Trading Act
Tyler Reigeluth, Université Libre de Bruxelles 
“Let’s misbehave!”: The politics of Behaving with Algorithm
Jérémy Grosman, University of Namour 
A Prediction, not an Oracle – Neural Network, between Algorithms and Metaphors
Charalampos Fytros, Lancaster University 
Mediating Solvency
SESSION C: EXPERIENCE, AFFECT, ATTENTION, INTERACTION
Miguel Prado, University of West England
Noise and Cognition in the Age of Big Data
Darshana Jayemanne, University of Melbourne
The Body Eclectic: Massively Multiplayer Mimesis
John McManus, Oxford University
Football Fans, Mimesis and the Enchanting Properties of Smartphone Use
Craig Hamilton, Birmingham City University 
Can Algorithms Make You Cry?: Popular Music and Machine-Derived Curation
16.00 to 16.15: COFFEE BREAK
16.15 to 18.30: PLENARY SESSION
Steve Fuller, University of Warwick 
Neuroscience as the Mind Instrumentalised: Telescope vs. Microscope
Michael Wheeler, University of Stirling 
The Knowledge Ecology: Epistemic Credit and the Technologically Extended Mind
Caroline Bassett, University of Sussex 
The Hubris of the ‘Artificial Intelligentsia’: Eliza and the Simulation of Smart
19.30: CONFERENCE DINNER

Friday 22nd April

09.00 to 11.00: PLENARY SESSION
Louise Amoore, Durham University 
Title TBC
David Berry, University of Sussex
Human Reason and Algorithmic Judgement
James Ash, Newcastle University 
The Interface Envelope: Power, Cognition and Gaming
11.15 to 11.30: COFFEE BREAK
11.30 to 13.10: BREAK OUT SESSIONS
SESSION A: PLATFORMS, INTERFACES AND SENSORS
Jacob Johanssen, University of Westminster 
Not Belonging to One’s Self: Affect and Alienation on Facebook’s Site Governance Page
Alex Gekker, Utrecht University
Numbers are Magic: Numerical User Interfaces and Disconnect
Heather Ford – Oxford Internet Institute
Ode to the Infobox
Alison Powell – London School of Economics and Political Science
A Goose in The Stream: Animals, ‘Accidents’ and Sensing Citizenships beyond the Calculative
SESSION B: ROBOTS, DRONES AND AI 
Tero Karppi, Marc Böhlen and Yvette Granata, SUNY Buffalo
Killer Robots and Cultural Techniques
Ramon Bloomberg, Goldsmiths College
Becoming Platform
Beatrice Fazi, University of Sussex
Can a Machine Think Anything New?
Marc Böhlen (Video Conference), Tero Karppi and Yvette Granata – SUNY Buffalo
Robot Control
SESSION C: AESTHETICS AND VISUALISATIONS
Roxana Fabius, Barad College
Business Intelligence and Aesthetic Criticality
Jonathan Gray, University of Amsterdam; Liliana Bounegru, University of Amsterdam, University of Groningen, University of Ghent; Stefania Milan, Amsterdam University; and Paolo Ciuccarelli Density Design, Politecnico di Milano 
Ways of Seeing Data
Lukasz Mirocha, University of Warsaw 
Challenging Technology Obfuscation Through Aesthetics of Real-time Visual Media: An Analysis of Glitches in Post-digital Consumer Mapping and Navigation Systems
13.10 to 14.00: LUNCH
PLENARY SESSION 14.00 to 16.15
Natasha Dow-Schüll, NYU (Video Conference)
From Mood Ring to MuseTM: Digital Sensor Technology and the Mediation of Sentience
Satinder Gill – Cambridge University 
Performing Knowledge: The Mediating Body
Will Davies – Goldsmiths College 
How Are We Now?: Mood as a Real-Time Indicator

16.15 to 16.30: COFFEE BREAK

PLENARY SESSION 16.30 to 17.15
Michael Dieter, University of Warwick
Title TBC
Jennifer Gabrys, Goldsmiths College
Digital Infrastructures of Withness: Constructing a Speculative “Smart” City
18.00 to 18.15: DISCUSSION AND CLOSING REMARKS
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Internet of Things, ownership and Ts & Cs

iot-toothpaste
Toothpaste terms of service

Decided to make a spoof image that follows some others’ attempts to satirically reflect on the kinds of business models that seem to be creeping in for ‘Internet of Things’ products and services. My impetus is that I’ve enjoyed some of the recent posts on the @internetofshit satirical twitter stream, which lampoons IoT business ideas. These got me thinking…

Many of the successful posts take to the extreme a model we are already experiencing – which is that we do not necessarily totally control those things we think we own. I am aware that other folk will probably have commented in more depth and with greater nuance, but there we are… this is just a blogpost! (I welcome suggestions for further reading though)

For example – I recently bought a Kindle Paperwhite and to remove the inbuilt advertising I had to pay (in addition to the retail price) a £10 fee to ‘unsubscribe’ from ‘Special Offers‘. So, I had bought the device but to remove the adverts I had to pay more.

This, of course, resonates with the inkjet printer business model – in which the printer manufacturer can almost give away some models because the ink itself is highly lucrative, which led to stories comparing it’s value to that of gold…

In my most recent lecture for my third-year option module (Geographies of Technology) I addressed some of these issues and invited the students to consider the following questions when thinking about an ‘internet of things and places’:

Questions of ownership/responsibility:

  • Whose things?
  • Whose data?
  • Who has access? How? When? Where?

Questions of power:

  • How are decisions made on the basis of the data?
  • How doe these decisions influence our lives?

Questions of value:

  • How can/should we negotiate the value(s) of our data?
  • What are we willing to give(-up) for perceived benefits?
    • When does giving away lots of data become not worth it?

Later the same day, on the train home, I idly tweeted a speculative satirical scenario:

Which led me to create a still image (above). I think there’s a lot of scope of using speculative design techniques in a satirical way to provoke more debate about the kinds of relationship we want to enter into with and through the technologies we bring into our everyday lives. My key inspiration here is Anne Galloway‘s work, especially the beautiful Counting Sheep project.

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A politics and economics of attention

Just before Christmas (and just before injuring myself) I took part in an ESRC-funded seminar concerning the politics and economics of attention, alongside my colleague Clive Barnett and others.

Jessica Pykett very kindly invited me to talk on the back of the theme issue of Culture Machine Patrick Crogan and I co-edited back in 2012.

There are slides from the talks plus an interesting commentary by Rupert Alcock now posted to the Behaviour Change and Psychological Governance website.

My slides are on ResearchGate…

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Reblog> Digital Interfaces, Credit and Debt – new project from @ash_ecotechnics & @BenAndersonGeog

Not really sure how I missed this announcement last week but there you go… An interesting new ESRC-funded project led by James Ash concerning the growth of personal/’pay day’ loans (“High Cost, Short-Term Credit”) that are accessed through mediation, such as an ‘app’. Kudos to James and team for landing this with success rates with the ESRC as low as they are – a great achievement.

I’m sure it’ll be a great project!

Digital Interfaces, Credit and Debt

I am happy to formally announce that I am primary investigator on an ESRCfunded project entitled: ‘Digital Interfaces and Debt: understanding mediated decision making processes in high cost short term credit products’ with co-investigators: Dr Ben Anderson and Dr Paul Langley. 

This 18 month project (2016-2018) seeks to understand how consumers access HCSTC (High Cost Short Term Credit), such as cash and pay day loans through digital interfaces, on personal computers and mobile devices and in turn how these interfaces shape decision making processes regarding the purchasing of credit. The project proposes a novel approach to debt as an everyday phenomenon that is mediated through the relationship between technology and embodied practice. Understanding how people become indebted through digital interfaces is critical to analyzing and explaining contemporary indebtedness because 82% of cash and pay day loans, a key form of HCSTC, are now applied for and managed via digital interfaces on laptops, tablets and smart phones (Competition and Markets Authority, 2015). Through original empirical investigation with designers and users of mobile interfaces, debt support charities and financial regulators, the research will generate new evidence about everyday experiences of debt and indebtedness and contributes to important societal and academic debates about emerging forms of credit and problematic forms of economic subjectivity.

The project begins later this year and will have its own dedicated website and Twitter account, which will be publicized in due course.