The ordinal society / Marion Fourcade, Kieran Healy.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Fourcade, Marion, 1968- author.

Healy, Kieran Joseph, 1973- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Information society.

Information technology--Economic aspects.

Information technology.

Information technology--Moral and ethical aspects.

Information technology--Social aspects.

Power (Social sciences).

Social capital (Sociology).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (vi, 373 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Harvard University Press, 2024.

Summary:

"A sweeping critique of how digital capitalism is reformatting our world. We now live in an "ordinal society." Nearly every aspect of our lives is measured, ranked, and processed into discrete, standardized units of digital information. Marion Fourcade and Kieran Healy argue that technologies of information management, fueled by the abundance of personal data and the infrastructure of the internet, transform how we relate to ourselves and to each other through the market, the public sphere, and the state. The personal data we give in exchange for convenient tools like Gmail and Instagram provides the raw material for predictions about everything from our purchasing power to our character. The Ordinal Society shows how these algorithmic predictions influence people's life chances and generate new forms of capital and social expectation: nobody wants to ride with an unrated cab driver anymore or rent to a tenant without a risk score. As members of this society embrace ranking and measurement in their daily lives, new forms of social competition and moral judgment arise. Familiar structures of social advantage are recycled into measures of merit that produce insidious kinds of social inequality. While we obsess over order and difference-and the logic of ordinality digs deeper into our behaviors, bodies, and minds-what will hold us together? Fourcade and Healy warn that, even though algorithms and systems of rationalized calculation have inspired backlash, they are also appealing in ways that make them hard to relinquish."-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Contents

Introduction: Valley Fever

Homestead Dreams

Crabgrass Frontier

Soft City

1. The Box of Delights

The Gift of Everything

The Social Substrate

The Exfiltration of Sociality

2. The Data Imperative

Thou Shalt Count

Thou Shalt Gather

Thou Shalt Learn

3. Classification Situations

Naming and Ordering

Testing and Matching

Eigenvalues and Eigencapital

4. The Great Unbundling

Informative Payments

Market Modulations

Streams of Income

5. Layered Financialization

Layering Abstractions

Popularizing Protocols

Banking on Speculation

6. The Road to Selfdom

Authenticated Exposure

The Searching Disposition

The Self-Organization Man

7. Ordinal Citizenship

The Problem of Equality

The Problem of Merit

The Problem of Value

Conclusion: The Unbearable Rightness of Being Ranked

Ordinalization's Double Movement

The Will to Progress and the Will to Power

The Twofold Truth of Social Science

Notes

Acknowledgments

Index.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

0-674-29667-2

0-674-29668-0

9780674296688 (electronic book)

OCLC:

1425792835