Where Can Tell Me Who I Am?

Jeremy W. Crampton

New Maps Collaboratory &Department of GeographyUniversity of Kentucky

Political importance of algorithms (Gillespie):

1.Patterns of inclusion2.Cycles of anticipation3.Evaluation of relevance4.The promise of algorithmic objectivity5.Entanglement with practice6.The production of calculated publics

Societies of Control“All control systems try to make control as tight as possible, but at the same time, if they succeeded completely, there would be nothing left to control.”—William Burroughs

William Burroughs “Limits of Control” in Semiotext[e] Schizo-Culture 3(2), 1978, p. 38

Guilt by Geolocation“Software that makes decisions based on data like a person’s ZIP code can reflect, or even amplify, the results of historical or institutional discrimination”

1.Individuals in a population

2.“Mass” era (production, market, consumption…

3.Data doubles / derivatives / shadows

Face recognition“High-tech billboards can target ads based on the gender of who’s standing in front of them. In 2011, researchers at Carnegie Mellon pointed a camera at a public area on campus and were able to match live video footage with a public database of tagged photos in real time. ”

Questions to conclude1. What subjects are being assembled? Algorithmic life

“[Data derivatives] pose significant difficulties for the idea of a data subject with a recognizable body of rights to privacy, to liberty, and to justice” –Louise Amoore, 2014

2. Regulating space by environmental determinism

3. Simultaneous ubiquity and fragility of algorithms. “The everywhere sensor” (IoT) and its security (hackability, counter-measures).

Thank you!

@jeremycramptonjcrampton@uky.edu