Technologies Of Speculation

Author : Sun-ha Hong
Publisher : NYU Press
ISBN 13 : 1479802107
Total Pages : 282 pages
Book Rating : 4.04/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Technologies of Speculation written by Sun-ha Hong and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2020-07-28 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An inquiry into what we can know in an age of surveillance and algorithms Knitting together contemporary technologies of datafication to reveal a broader, underlying shift in what counts as knowledge, Technologies of Speculation reframes today’s major moral and political controversies around algorithms and artificial intelligence. How many times we toss and turn in our sleep, our voluminous social media activity and location data, our average resting heart rate and body temperature: new technologies of state and self-surveillance promise to re-enlighten the black boxes of our bodies and minds. But Sun-ha Hong suggests that the burden to know and to digest this information at alarming rates is stripping away the liberal subject that ‘knows for themselves’, and risks undermining the pursuit of a rational public. What we choose to track, and what kind of data is extracted from us, shapes a society in which my own experience and sensation is increasingly overruled by data-driven systems. From the rapidly growing Quantified Self community to large-scale dragnet data collection in the name of counter-terrorism and drone warfare, Hong argues that data’s promise of objective truth results in new cultures of speculation. In his analysis of the Snowden affair, Hong demonstrates an entirely new way of thinking through what we could know, and the political and philosophical stakes of the belief that data equates to knowledge. When we simply cannot process all the data at our fingertips, he argues, we look past the inconvenient and the complicated to favor the comprehensible. In the process, racial stereotypes and other longstanding prejudices re-enter our newest technologies by the back door. Hong reveals the moral and philosophical equations embedded into the algorithmic eye that now follows us all.

Author : Sun-ha Hong
Publisher : NYU Press
ISBN 13 : 1479860239
Total Pages : 293 pages
Book Rating : 4.34/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Technologies of Speculation written by Sun-ha Hong and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2020-07-28 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An inquiry into what we can know in an age of surveillance and algorithms Knitting together contemporary technologies of datafication to reveal a broader, underlying shift in what counts as knowledge, Technologies of Speculation reframes today’s major moral and political controversies around algorithms and artificial intelligence. How many times we toss and turn in our sleep, our voluminous social media activity and location data, our average resting heart rate and body temperature: new technologies of state and self-surveillance promise to re-enlighten the black boxes of our bodies and minds. But Sun-ha Hong suggests that the burden to know and to digest this information at alarming rates is stripping away the liberal subject that ‘knows for themselves’, and risks undermining the pursuit of a rational public. What we choose to track, and what kind of data is extracted from us, shapes a society in which my own experience and sensation is increasingly overruled by data-driven systems. From the rapidly growing Quantified Self community to large-scale dragnet data collection in the name of counter-terrorism and drone warfare, Hong argues that data’s promise of objective truth results in new cultures of speculation. In his analysis of the Snowden affair, Hong demonstrates an entirely new way of thinking through what we could know, and the political and philosophical stakes of the belief that data equates to knowledge. When we simply cannot process all the data at our fingertips, he argues, we look past the inconvenient and the complicated to favor the comprehensible. In the process, racial stereotypes and other longstanding prejudices re-enter our newest technologies by the back door. Hong reveals the moral and philosophical equations embedded into the algorithmic eye that now follows us all.

Author : Scott Sundvall
Publisher : University Press of Colorado
ISBN 13 : 1607328313
Total Pages : 321 pages
Book Rating : 4.15/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Rhetorical Speculations written by Scott Sundvall and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2019-04-15 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The future of writing studies is fundamentally tied to advancing technological development—writing cannot be done without a technology and different technologies mediate writing differently. In Rhetorical Speculations, contributors engage with emerging technologies of composition through “speculative modeling” as a strategy for anticipatory, futural thinking for rhetoric and writing studies. Rhetoric and writing studies often engages technological shifts reactively, after the production and reception of rhetoric and writing has changed. This collection allows rhetoric and writing scholars to explore modes of critical speculation into the transformative effect of emerging technologies, particularly as a means to speculate on future shifts in the intellectual, pedagogical, and institutional frameworks of the field. In doing so, the project repositions rhetoric and writing scholars as proprietors of our technological future to come rather than as secondary receivers, critics, and adjusters of the technological present. Major and emerging voices in the field offer a range of styles that include pragmatic, technical, and philosophical approaches to the issue of speculative rhetoric, exploring what new media/writing studies could be—theoretically, pedagogically, and institutionally—as future technologies begin to impinge on the work of writing. Rhetorical Speculations is at the cutting edge of the subject of futures thinking and will have broad appeal to scholars of rhetoric, literacy, futures studies, and material and popular culture. Contributors: Bahareh Brittany Alaei, Sarah J. Arroyo, Kristine L. Blair, Geoffrey V. Carter, Sid Dobrin, Kristie S. Fleckenstein, Steve Holmes, Kyle Jensen, Halcyon Lawrence, Alexander Monea, Sean Morey, Alex Reid, Jeff Rice, Gregory L. Ulmer, Anna Worm

Author : Gayle Rogers
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231553498
Total Pages : 157 pages
Book Rating : 4.90/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Speculation written by Gayle Rogers and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2021-07-06 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the modern world, why do we still resort to speculation? Advances in scientific and statistical reasoning are supposed to have provided greater certainty in making claims about the future. Yet we constantly spin out scenarios about tomorrow, for ourselves or for entire societies, with flimsy or no evidence. Insubstantial speculations—from utopian thinking to high-risk stock gambles—often provoke fierce backlash, even when they prove prophetic for the world we come to inhabit. Why does this hypothetical way of thinking generate such controversy? In this cultural, literary, and intellectual history, Gayle Rogers traces debates over speculation from antiquity to the present. Celebrated by Boethius as the height of humanity’s mental powers but denigrated as sinful by John Calvin, speculation eventually became central to the scientific revolution’s new methods of seeing the natural world. In the nineteenth century, writers such as Jane Austen used the concept to diagnose the marriage market, redefining speculation for the purpose of social critique. Speculation fueled the development of modern capitalism, spurring booms, busts, and bubbles, and recently artificial intelligence has automated the speculation previously done by humans, with uncertain and troubling consequences. Unraveling these histories and many other disputes, Rogers argues that what has always been at stake in arguments over speculation, and why it so often appears so threatening, is the authority to produce and control knowledge about the future. Recasting centuries of contests over the power to anticipate tomorrow, this book reveals the crucial role speculation has played in how we create—and potentially destroy—the future.

Author : Ruha Benjamin
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 1509526439
Total Pages : 172 pages
Book Rating : 4.37/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Race After Technology written by Ruha Benjamin and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2019-07-09 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From everyday apps to complex algorithms, Ruha Benjamin cuts through tech-industry hype to understand how emerging technologies can reinforce White supremacy and deepen social inequity. Benjamin argues that automation, far from being a sinister story of racist programmers scheming on the dark web, has the potential to hide, speed up, and deepen discrimination while appearing neutral and even benevolent when compared to the racism of a previous era. Presenting the concept of the “New Jim Code,” she shows how a range of discriminatory designs encode inequity by explicitly amplifying racial hierarchies; by ignoring but thereby replicating social divisions; or by aiming to fix racial bias but ultimately doing quite the opposite. Moreover, she makes a compelling case for race itself as a kind of technology, designed to stratify and sanctify social injustice in the architecture of everyday life. This illuminating guide provides conceptual tools for decoding tech promises with sociologically informed skepticism. In doing so, it challenges us to question not only the technologies we are sold but also the ones we ourselves manufacture. Visit the book's free Discussion Guide here.

Author : Tom Standage
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 9781861979711
Total Pages : 372 pages
Book Rating : 4.11/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Future of Technology written by Tom Standage and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2005-08-01 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the industrial revolution to the railway age, through the era of electrification, the advent of mass production, and finally to the information age, the same pattern keeps repeating itself. An exciting, vibrant phase of innovation and financial speculation is followed by a crash, after which begins a longer, more stately period during which the technology is actually deployed properly. This collection of surveys and articles from The Economist examines how far technology has come and where it is heading. Part one looks at topics such as the “greying” (maturing) of IT, the growing importance of security, the rise of outsourcing, and the challenge of complexity, all of which have more to do with implementation than innovation. Part two looks at the shift from corporate computing towards consumer technology, whereby new technologies now appear first in consumer gadgets such as mobile phones. Topics covered will include the emergence of the mobile phone as the “digital Swiss Army knife”; the rise of digital cameras, which now outsell film-based ones; the growing size and importance of the games industry and its ever-closer links with other more traditional parts of the entertainment industry; and the social impact of technologies such as text messaging, Wi-Fi, and camera phones. Part three considers which technology will lead the next great phase of technological disruption and focuses on biotechnology, energy technology, and nanotechnology.

Author : Jenny Offill
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 038535102X
Total Pages : 130 pages
Book Rating : 4.27/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Dept. of Speculation written by Jenny Offill and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2014-01-28 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the acclaimed author of Weather comes a slim, stunning portrait of a marriage--a beguiling rumination on the mysteries of intimacy, trust, faith, knowledge, and the condition of universal shipwreck that unites us all. ONE OF THE 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR - THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW A Best Book of the Year: The New Yorker, The Boston Globe, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Vogue.com, Electric Literature, Buzzfeed In the beginning, it was easy to imagine their future. They were young and giddy, sure of themselves and of their love for each other. “Dept. of Speculation” was their code name for all the thrilling uncertainties that lay ahead. Then they got married, had a child and navigated the familiar calamities of family life—a colicky baby, a faltering relationship, stalled ambitions. When their marriage reaches a sudden breaking point, the wife tries to retrace the steps that have led them to this place, invoking everything from Kafka to the Stoics to doomed Russian cosmonauts as she analyzes what is lost and what remains. In language that shimmers with rage and longing and wit, Offill has created a brilliantly suspenseful love story—a novel to read in one sitting, even as its piercing meditations linger long after the last page.

Author : Cyrus Farivar
Publisher : Melville House
ISBN 13 : 1612196462
Total Pages : 305 pages
Book Rating : 4.66/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Habeas Data written by Cyrus Farivar and published by Melville House. This book was released on 2018-05-08 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A book about what the Cambridge Analytica scandal shows: That surveillance and data privacy is every citizens’ concern An important look at how 50 years of American privacy law is inadequate for the today's surveillance technology, from acclaimed Ars Technica senior business editor Cyrus Farivar. Until the 21st century, most of our activities were private by default, public only through effort; today anything that touches digital space has the potential (and likelihood) to remain somewhere online forever. That means all of the technologies that have made our lives easier, faster, better, and/or more efficient have also simultaneously made it easier to keep an eye on our activities. Or, as we recently learned from reports about Cambridge Analytica, our data might be turned into a propaganda machine against us. In 10 crucial legal cases, Habeas Data explores the tools of surveillance that exist today, how they work, and what the implications are for the future of privacy.

Author : Brent Goldfarb
Publisher : Stanford University Press
ISBN 13 : 1503607933
Total Pages : 284 pages
Book Rating : 4.34/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Bubbles and Crashes written by Brent Goldfarb and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2019-02-19 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An interesting take on some factors that facilitate the development and bursting of bubbles in technology industries. . . . Highly recommended.” —Choice Financial market bubbles are recurring, often painful, reminders of the costs and benefits of capitalism. While many books have studied financial manias and crises, most fail to compare times of turmoil with times of stability. In Bubbles and Crashes, Brent Goldfarb and David A. Kirsch give us new insights into the causes of speculative booms and busts. They identify a class of assets—major technological innovations—that can, but does not necessarily, produce bubbles. This methodological twist is essential: Only by comparing similar events that sometimes lead to booms and busts can we ascertain the root causes of bubbles. Using a sample of eighty-eight technologies spanning 150 years, Goldfarb and Kirsch find that four factors play a key role in these episodes: the degree of uncertainty surrounding a particular innovation; the attentive presence of novice investors; the opportunity to directly invest in companies that specialize in the technology; and whether or not a technology is a good protagonist in a narrative. Goldfarb and Kirsch consider the implications of their analysis for technology bubbles that may be in the works today, offer tools for investors to identify whether a bubble is happening, and propose policy measures that may mitigate the risks associated with future speculative episodes.

Author : José A. Scheinkman
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231537638
Total Pages : 137 pages
Book Rating : 4.36/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Speculation, Trading, and Bubbles written by José A. Scheinkman and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-08 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As long as there have been financial markets, there have been bubbles—those moments in which asset prices inflate far beyond their intrinsic value, often with ruinous results. Yet economists are slow to agree on the underlying forces behind these events. In this book José A. Scheinkman offers new insight into the mystery of bubbles. Noting some general characteristics of bubbles—such as the rise in trading volume and the coincidence between increases in supply and bubble implosions—Scheinkman offers a model, based on differences in beliefs among investors, that explains these observations. Other top economists also offer their own thoughts on the issue: Sanford J. Grossman and Patrick Bolton expand on Scheinkman's discussion by looking at factors that contribute to bubbles—such as excessive leverage, overconfidence, mania, and panic in speculative markets—and Kenneth J. Arrow and Joseph E. Stiglitz contextualize Scheinkman's findings.