Louise Amoore - Algorithmic Life: Calculative Devices in the Age of Big Data

This book critically explores forms and techniques of calculation that emerge with digital computation, and their implications. The contributors demonstrate that digital calculative devices matter beyond their specific functions as they progressively shape, transform and govern all areas of our life. In particular, it addresses 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?
• 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?
• How does the search for hidden connections and patterns change our understanding of social relations and associative life?
• Do contemporary modes of calculation 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 science 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 and ESRC Global Uncertainties Leadership Fellow (20122015).

Volha Piotukh is currently Postdoctoctoral Research Associate at the Department of Geography, University of Durham.

Algorithmic Life

Calculative devices in the age of big data

Edited by Louise Amoore and Volha Piotukh

First published 2016

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge

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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2016 selection and editorial material, Louise Amoore and Volha Piotukh; individual chapters, the contributors

The right of Louise Amoore and Volha Piotukh to be identified as authors of the editorial material, and of the individual authors as authors of their contributions, has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Names: Amoore, Louise, editor of compilation. | Piotukh, Volha, editor of

compilation.

Title: Algorithmic life : calculative devices in the age of big data / edited by

Louise Amoore and Volha Piotukh.

Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge is an imprint of the

Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa Business, [2016]

Identifiers: LCCN 2015028239 | ISBN 9781138852839 (hardback) |

ISBN 9781315723242 (ebook) | ISBN 9781138852846 (pbk.)

Subjects: LCSH: Electronic data processingSocial aspects. | Information

technologySocial aspects. | Big dataSocial aspects.

Classification: LCC QA76.9.C66 A48 2016 | DDC 005.7dc23LC

record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015028239

ISBN: 978-1-138-85283-9 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-138-85284-6 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-72324-2 (ebk)

Typeset in Times New Roman

by FiSH Books Ltd, Enfield