Algorithmic Life ― Calculation in the Age of Big Data

Amid the proliferating cross-disciplinary discussion of ‘big data’ and algorithms, there is currently a lack of academic work on the changing landscape of calculative technologies and devices, this volume critically explores forms and techniques of calculation that emerge with digital computation and their implications. Taken together, the contributions demonstrate that digital calculative devices matter beyond their specific functions, as they progressively shape, transform and govern all areas of our life. In particular, the edited volume will address such questions as:

• How does the drive to make sense of, and productively use, large amounts of diverse data, inform the development of new calculative devices, logics and techniques?

• How do these devices, logics and techniques affect our capacity to decide and to act?

• In a world of changing data landscapes, how do mundane elements of our physical and virtual existence become data to be analysed and rearranged in complex ensembles of people and things?

• In what ways are conventional notions of public and private, individual and population, certainty and probability, rule and exception transformed and what are the consequences of these transformations?

• How does the search for ‘hidden’ connections and patterns change our understanding of social relations and associative life?

• Do contemporary modes of calculation, based on constant incorporation of heterogeneous elements, produce new thresholds of calculability and computability, allowing for the improbable or the merely possible to be embraced and acted upon?

• As contemporary approaches to governing uncertain futures seek to anticipate future events, how are calculation and decision engaged anew?

Drawing together different strands of cutting-edge research that is both theoretically sophisticated and empirically rich this book makes an important contribution to several areas of scholarship, including the emerging social scientific field of software studies and will be a vital resource for students and scholars alike.

Louise Amoore is Professor of Political Geography at the University of Durham. She researches and teaches in the areas of global geopolitics, security, and political theory and is particularly interested in how contemporary forms of data, analytics and risk management are changing the techniques of border control and security. Prof. Amoore is currently ESRC‘Global Uncertainties’ Leadership Fellow (2012-2015), and her project 'Securing against Future Events' (SaFE): Pre-emption, Protocols and Publics' examines how inferred futures become the basis for new forms of security risk calculus.

Volha Piotukh holds PhD in Politics and International Studies from the University of Leeds and is currently Postdoctoctoral Research Associate at the Department of Geography of the University of Durham, where she works with Prof. Louise Amoore on‘Securing against Future Events (SaFE): Preemption, Protocols and Publics’ research project. Prior to that, she taught at the University of Leeds, the University of Westminster and the UCL.