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    Category: Big Data

    • Hypernudges as Subjectification

      By Gordon Hull In a recent paper, Karen Yeung introduces the concept of a ‘hypernudge’ as a way to capture the way Big Data intensifies design-based ‘nudges’ as a form of regulation.  Yeung’s discussion draws partly from discussions of Internet regulation, partly from literature on design, and partly from legal literature around privacy and big…

    • Facebook and the Dispossession of Preferences

      By Gordon Hull A little more than a year ago, I floated a version of the thesis that Big Data functions as a form of capitalist accumulation by dispossession.  “Accumulation by Dispossession” is David Harvey’s term for what Marx called “primitive accumulation,” and the basic idea is that capital has to extract value from individuals…

    • Hostile Information Architecture

      By Gordon Hull Surprise! Facebook is back in the news and the doghouse, this time for allowing vast amounts of user data to find its way to Cambridge Analytica, which then used it to try to elect Donald Trump.  The only surprise is that anyone is surprised.  I’ll review why that is first, then offer…

    • Facebook and Russian Meddling: Why is anyone Surprised?

      By Gordon Hull Facebook’s opaque advertising practices are in the news (again) because it was apparently the vehicle through which some of the Russian attempts to meddle in the 2016 election were routed.  This piece by Sam Biddle on The Intercept is well worth the read, as it makes the case that the public needs…

    • Limitless Home Surveillance by your Vacuum Cleaner

      By Gordon  Hull The expansion of the Internet of Things is going to provide a lot playspace for highly intensive and granular corporate surveillance – which is to say it’s going to be a catastrophe for privacy.  Sure, sure, everything will come with a “click here to accept” or comparable “notice and consent” privacy policy…

    • Kant on Big Data?

      A recent paper by Ermanno Bencivenga in Philosophical Forum argues that it’s “time for philosophy to step into the conversation” (135) about big data, in particular to refute the thesis, which the article identifies in a 2008 piece in Wired, that big data will mean that we no longer need theory: “with enough data, the…

    • Do Brands Produce Value? Thoughts on de-fetishizing use value

      Brands are of increasing importance to capitalism.  As an insightful book by Franck Cochoy argues, this is part of the logic of commodification, which generates a perpetual demand for product differentiation.  At the point that a product becomes a commodity – i.e., at the point that it leaves the bazaar, where individual vendors measure out…

    • Squaring the Circle on Big Data, Class, Value and Primitive Accumulation

      A recent paper by Hamid Ekbia presents an interesting Marxian theory of the relation between exploitation and computer networks.   The paper is intended as an intervention in to discussions of the accumulation of value in what is now called cognitive capitalism (I’ve attempted to synthesize some of that literature here).  The most interesting part of…

    • Notes on Big Data, Marx, Time, and the Production of Value

      There is a running debate in critical theory circles about the applicability of Marxian analysis to big data specifically, and to an economy dominated by immaterial goods, more generally (I have blogged about this periodically, circling primarily around the concept of primitive accumulation: see here and here).  As part of working through that literature, here…

    • Self-Tracking, Big Data, and the questions of Subjectification and Primitive Accumulation

      One question surrounding big data – in addition to well-established worries about privacy and discrimination – that is starting to get attention is how it functions as a mode of capitalist accumulation.  There is an emerging literature on capitalist value creation and big data, but a lot of that is about the creation of surplus…