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Data epistemologies / surveillance and uncertainty / Hong, Sun ha.
- Format:
- Book
- Thesis/Dissertation
- Author/Creator:
- Hong, Sun-ha, author.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Communication.
- Philosophy of science.
- Social structure.
- Communication--Penn dissertations.
- Penn dissertations--Communication.
- Local Subjects:
- Communication.
- Philosophy of science.
- Social structure.
- Communication--Penn dissertations.
- Penn dissertations--Communication.
- Genre:
- Academic theses.
- Physical Description:
- 1 online resource (361 pages)
- Contained In:
- Dissertation Abstracts International 78-04A(E).
- Place of Publication:
- [Philadelphia, Pennsylvania] : University of Pennsylvania ; Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 2016.
- Language Note:
- English
- System Details:
- Mode of access: World Wide Web.
- text file
- Summary:
- Data Epistemologies studies the changing ways in which 'knowledge' is defined, promised, problematised, legitimated vis-a-vis the advent of digital, 'big' data surveillance technologies in early twenty-first century America. As part of the period's fascination with 'new' media and 'big' data, such technologies intersect ambitious claims to better knowledge with a problematisation of uncertainty. This entanglement, I argue, results in contextual reconfigurations of what 'counts' as knowledge and who (or what) is granted authority to produce it -- whether it involves proving that indiscriminate domestic surveillance prevents terrorist attacks, to arguing that machinic sensors can know us better than we can ever know ourselves.
- The present work focuses on two empirical cases. The first is the 'Snowden Affair' (2013-Present): the public controversy unleashed through the leakage of vast quantities of secret material on the electronic surveillance practices of the U.S. government. The second is the 'Quantified Self' (2007-Present), a name which describes both an international community of experimenters and the wider industry built up around the use of data-driven surveillance technology for self-tracking every possible aspect of the individual 'self'. By triangulating media coverage, connoisseur communities, advertising discourse and leaked material, I examine how surveillance technologies were presented for public debate and speculation.
- This dissertation is thus a critical diagnosis of the contemporary faith in 'raw' data, sensing machines and algorithmic decision-making, and of their public promotion as the next great leap towards objective knowledge. Surveillance is not only a means of totalitarian control or a technology for objective knowledge, but a collective fantasy that seeks to mobilise public support for new epistemic systems. Surveillance, as part of a broader enthusiasm for 'data-driven' societies, extends the old modern project whereby the human subject -- its habits, its affects, its actions -- become the ingredient, the raw material, the object, the target, for the production of truths and judgments about them by things other than themselves.
- Notes:
- Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 78-04(E), Section: A.
- Advisors: Carolyn Marvin; Committee members: Marwan Kraidy; Sharrona Pearl.
- Department: Communication.
- Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania 2016.
- Local Notes:
- School code: 0175
- ISBN:
- 9781369338713
- Access Restriction:
- Restricted for use by site license.
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