Computerized processes are everywhere in our society. They are the
automated phone messaging systems that businesses use to screen calls;
the link between student standardized test scores and public
schools’ access to resources; the algorithms that regulate patient
diagnoses and reimbursements to doctors. The storage, sorting, and
analysis of massive amounts of information have enabled the automation
of decision-making at an unprecedented level. Meanwhile, computers
have offered a model of cognition that increasingly shapes our
approach to the world. The proliferation of “roboprocesses” is the
result, as editors Catherine Besteman and Hugh Gusterson observe in
this rich and wide-ranging volume, which features contributions from a
distinguished cast of scholars in anthropology, communications,
international studies, and political science. Although automatic
processes are designed to be engines of rational systems, the stories
in Life by Algorithms reveal how they can in fact produce absurd,
inflexible, or even dangerous outcomes. Joining the call for
“algorithmic transparency,” the contributors bring exceptional
sensitivity to everyday sociality into their critique to better
understand how the perils of modern technology affect finance,
medicine, education, housing, the workplace, food production, public
space, and emotions—not as separate problems but as linked
manifestations of a deeper defect in the fundamental ordering of our
society. Contributors Catherine Besteman, Alex Blanchette, Robert W.
Gehl, Hugh Gusterson, Catherine Lutz, Ann Lutz Fernandez, Joseph
Masco, Sally Engle Merry, Keesha M. Middlemass, Noelle Stout, Susan J.
Terrio
Les mer
Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780226627731
Publisert
2019
Utgiver
Vendor
University of Chicago Press
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter