Abstract: In my inaugural lecture I have reiterated the notion of a computational turn, referring to the novel layers of software that have nested themselves between us and reality (Hildebrandt 2013). These layers of decisional algorithmic adaptations increasingly co-constitute our lifeworld, determine what we get to see (search engines; behavioural advertising), how we are treated (insurance, employment, education, medical treatment), what we know (the life sciences, the digital humanities, expert systems in a variety of professions) and how we manage our risks (safety, security, aviation, critical infrastructure, smart grids). So far, this computational turn has been applauded, taken for granted or rejected, but little attention has been paid to the far-reaching implications for our perception and cognition, for the rewoven fabric on which our living-together hinges (though there is a first attempt in Ess and Hagengruber 2011, and more elaboration in Berry 2012). The network effects of ubiquitous digitization have been described extensively (Castells 2011; Van Dijk 2006), though many authors present this as a matter of ‘the social’, neglecting the extent to which the disruptions of networked, mobile, global digital technologies are indeed ‘affordances’ of the socio-technical assemblages of ‘the digital’. Reducing these effects to ‘the social’ does not help, because this leaves the constitutive and regulative workings of these technologies under the radar. Moreover, we need to distinguish between digitization per se and computational techniques such
Publication Year: 2015
Publication Date: 2015-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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