Home / Science / Popular Science / Popular Physics / Life by Algorithms: How Roboprocesses are Remaking Our World

Life by Algorithms: How Roboprocesses are Remaking Our World

AUTHOR
Price
€26.10
€29.00 -10%
Upon request
Dispatched within 15 - 25 days.

Add to wishlist

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.

Author: Besteman Catherine
Publisher: CHICAGO UNIVERSITY PRESS
Pages: 220
ISBN: 9780226627564
Cover: Paperback
Edition Number: 1
Release Year: 2019

Introduction: Robohumans

Hugh Gusterson

Categories

Chapter 1. Automated Expulsion in the U.S. Foreclosure Epidemic
Noelle Stout

Chapter 2. Roboeducation
Ann Lutz Fernandez and Catherine Lutz

Chapter 3. Detention and Deportation of Minors in U.S. Immigration Custody
Susan J. Terrio

Chapter 4. A Felony Conviction as a Roboprocess
Keesha M. Middlemass

Emotions

Chapter 5. Infinite Proliferation, or The Making of the Modern Runt
Alex Blanchette

Chapter 6. Emotional Roboprocesses
Robert W. Gehl

Surveillance

Chapter 7. Ubiquitous Surveillance
Joseph Masco

Chapter 8. Controlling Numbers: How Quantification Shapes the World
Sally Engle Merry
Afterword: Remaking the World
Catherine Besteman
Acknowledgments
Notes
List of Contributors

Index

Catherine Besteman is the Francis F. Bartlett and Ruth K. Bartlett Professor of Anthropology at Colby College.

Hugh Gusterson is professor of international affairs and anthropology at the George Washington University.

You may also like

Newsletter

Subscribe to the newsletter to be the first to receive our new releases and offers
Your account Your wishlist

This website uses cookies

We use cookies to personalise content and ads, to provide social media features and to analyse our traffic. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners.