The Myth of Big Data (the myth that big data are now our primary route to knowing the social) is oriented to the social world in a particular way. It does not have as its domain a national population, or even the particular collectivities that might gather online. It builds its population, data-bit by data-bit, […]
On a recent visit to Out of Hand: Materializing the Postdigital, an exhibition about digital fabrication at New York’s Museum of Art and Design, I was struck by the ways in which these new tools had replaced traditional materials and processes on the small, white rectangular museum labels. More specifically, in this exhibition, digital fabrication […]
Why is racism online so common? Why does it persist? If, as Gabriella Coleman said during her keynote address at the 2013 Association of Internet Researchers meeting in Denver, Anonymous is depicted by the popular press as a “Hate Machine,” this is only because it is so clear that the amount of hate on the […]
(Note: image taken from a site spoofing/critiquing the Utah data center: http://nsa.gov1.info/utah-data-center/) On August 21, 2013, Mother Jones published the headline, “The World’s Most Notorious Micronation Has the Secret to Protecting Your Data From the NSA,” reviving Sealand as the techno-utopic data haven it once promised to be. Aa a self-contained data fortress located on […]
While it has received comparatively little attention in the literature, during the 2004 presidential cycle the most technically innovative campaign was the re-election bid of George W. Bush. With online precinct captain programs complementing the work of a massive field effort, integrated databases, an expansive voter file, and micro-targeting models, party staffers and consultants on […]