Digital Culture & Society (DCS) : Vol. 4, Issue 1/2018 – Rethinking AI: Neural Networks, Biometrics and the New Artificial Intelligence

Digital Culture & Society is a refereed international journal, fostering discussion about the ways in which digital technologies, platforms, and applications reconfigure daily lives and practices. It offers a forum for inquiries into digital media theory, methodologies, and sociotechnological developments. This issue shows: The meaning of AI has undergone drastic changes during the last 60 years of AI discourse(s). What we talk about when saying AI is not what it meant in 1958, when John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky and their colleagues started using the term. Biological information processing is now firmly embedded in commercial applications like the intelligent personal Google Assistant, Facebook's facial recognition algorithm, Deep Face, Amazon's device Alexa, or Apple's software feature Siri to mention just a few.

Ramon Reichert is European project researcher at the University of Lancaster (Erasmus+ Program of the European Commission). He is the head of the postgraduate master's course Data Studies at the Danube University Krems. He is lecturer at the Departement des sciences de la communication et des medias at the Universite de Fribourg and lecturer in contextual studies at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of St. Gallen.

Mathias Fuchs is an artist, musician, and media scholar. He was senior lecturer at the University of Salford, visiting professor at the University of Potsdam, senior fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study on Media Cultures of Computer Simulation (MECS), and is now professor at Leuphana University, Luneburg. He is a pioneer in the field of game art and is a leading scholar in game studies.

Pablo Abend is the scientific coordinator of the Research School Locating Media at the University of Siegen. He is interested in geomedia, situated methodologies, participatory culture, and science and technology studies.

Annika Richterich is an assistant professor in digital culture at Maastricht University.

Karin Wenz is assistant professor of Media Culture at Maastricht University and director of studies of the MA in Media Culture.