Life by Algorithms : How Roboprocesses Are Remaking Our World / Catherine Besteman, Hugh Gusterson.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Besteman, Catherine, Editor.

Gusterson, Hugh, Editor.

Series:

Chicago scholarship online.

Chicago scholarship online

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Technology--Social aspects--United States.

Technology.

Algorithms--Social aspects--United States.

Algorithms.

Automation--Social aspects--United States.

Automation.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (227 pages) : illustrations

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, [2019]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Introduction: Robohumans

1. Automated Expulsion in the U.S. Foreclosure Epidemic

2. Roboeducation

3. Detention and Deportation of Minors in U.S. Immigration Custody

4. A Felony Conviction as a Roboprocess

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

6. Emotional Roboprocesses

7. Ubiquitous Surveillance

8. Controlling Numbers: How Quantification Shapes the World

Afterword: Remaking the World

Acknowledgments

Notes

Contributors

Index

Notes:

Previously issued in print: 2019.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 06. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9780226627731

022662773X

OCLC:

1101430649