Clemens Apprich, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Florian Cramer, and Hito Steyerl (eds.), Pattern Discrimination, Lüneburg/Minneapolis, meson press/Minnesota Press, 2019.

Algorithmic identity politics reinstate old forms of social segregation—in a digital world, identity politics is pattern discrimination. It is by recognizing patterns in input data that artificial intelligence algorithms create bias and practice racial exclusions thereby inscribing power relations into media. How can we filter information out of data without reinserting racist, sexist, and classist beliefs?

More information: https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/pattern-discrimination

Kristoffer Gansing and Inga Luchs (eds.), The Eternal Network, Amsterdam, INC, 2020.

‘The network is everlasting’ wrote Robert Filliou and George Brecht in 1967, a statement that, at first glance, still seems to be true of today’s world. Yet there are also signs that the omnipresence of networks is evolving into another reality. In recent times, the limits of networks rather than their endless possibilities have been brought into focus. Ongoing media debates about hate speech, fake news, and algorithmic bias swirl into a growing backlash against networks. Perhaps it is time to reconsider the contemporary reach and relevance of the network imaginary.

More information: https://networkcultures.org/blog/publication/the-eternal-network/

Carolin Wiedemann, Kritische Kollektivität im Netz. Anonymous, Facebook und die Kraft der Affizierung in der Kontrollgesellschaft, Bielefeld, transcript, 2016

Gilles Deleuze hatte es schon 1991 prophezeit: Jedem Gesellschaftstyp seine Maschinen, den Kontrollgesellschaften die Computer. Deren kybernetische Logiken haben sich mit neuen, biopolitischen Formen des Kapitalismus verbunden. Herausgekommen ist dabei Facebook, jene Plattform, auf der die User_innen sich permanent selbst vermessen und vergleichen.
Doch wodurch kann das Dispositiv von Kommodifizierung und Kontrolle unterlaufen werden? Was kann als subversiv gelten, wenn die Unterwerfung freiwillig ist und die Theorie kein intentionales Subjekt mehr kennt?

Mehr Informationen: http://www.transcript-verlag.de/978-3-8376-3403-7/kritische-kollektivitaet-im-netz?c=869

Clemens Apprich, Vernetzt. Zur Entstehung der Netzwerkgesellschaft, Bielefeld, transcript, 2015.

Many technologies and practices that have shaped Web 2.0 today date back to the 1990s – and so do the ideas of social media, user-generated content and participatory platforms. Thus, from a media-historical perspective, a lot of the ideas from that period about the future of the Internet have been implemented, albeit without fulfilling the envisioned socio-political utopias. (more…)

Florian Sprenger, The Politics of Micro-Decisions. Edward Snowden, Net Neutrality, and the Architectures of the Internet, Lüneburg, Meson Press, 2015.

Be it in the case of opening a website, sending an email, or high-frequency trading, bits and bytes of information have to cross numerous nodes at which micro-decisions are made. These decisions concern the most efficient path through the network, the processing speed, or the priority of incoming data packets. (more…)

Irina Kaldrack, Martina Leeker (eds.): There Is no Software just Services, Lüneburg, Meson Press, 2015.
Contributors: Ned Rossiter, Jussi Parikka, Christoph Neubert, Liam Magee, Andrew Lison, Christopher M. Kelty, Anders Fagerjord, and Seth Erickson. (more…)