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Data Epistemologies / Surveillance and Uncertainty University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2016 Data Epistemologies / Surveillance and Uncertainty Sun Ha Hong University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Communication Commons, Other Sociology Commons, and the Philosophy of Science Commons Recommended Citation Hong, Sun Ha, "Data Epistemologies / Surveillance and Uncertainty" (2016). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 1766. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1766 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1766 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Data Epistemologies / Surveillance and Uncertainty Abstract Data Epistemologies studies the changing ways in which ‘knowledge’ is defined, promised, problematised, legitimated vis-á-vis the advent of digital, ‘big’ data surveillance technologies in early twenty-first century America. As part of the period’s fascination with ‘new’ media and ‘big’ data, such technologies intersect ambitious claims to better knowledge with a problematisation of uncertainty. This entanglement, I argue, results in contextual reconfigurations of what ‘counts’ as knowledge and who (or what) is granted authority to produce it – whether it involves proving that indiscriminate domestic surveillance prevents terrorist attacks, to arguing that machinic sensors can know us better than we can ever know ourselves. The present work focuses on two empirical cases. The first is the ‘Snowden Affair’ (2013-Present): the public controversy unleashed through the leakage of vast quantities of secret material on the electronic surveillance practices of the U.S. government. The second is the ‘Quantified Self’ (2007-Present), a name which describes both an international community of experimenters and the wider industry built up around the use of data-driven surveillance technology for self-tracking every possible aspect of the individual ‘self’. By triangulating media coverage, connoisseur communities, advertising discourse and leaked material, I examine how surveillance technologies were presented for public debate and speculation. This dissertation is thus a critical diagnosis of the contemporary faith in ‘raw’ data, sensing machines and algorithmic decision-making, and of their public promotion as the next great leap towards objective knowledge. Surveillance is not only a means of totalitarian control or a technology for objective knowledge, but a collective fantasy that seeks to mobilise public support for new epistemic systems. Surveillance, as part of a broader enthusiasm for ‘data-driven’ societies, extends the old modern project whereby the human subject – its habits, its affects, its actions – become the ingredient, the raw material, the object, the target, for the production of truths and judgments about them by things other than themselves. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Communication First Advisor Carolyn Marvin Keywords data, knowledge, new media, surveillance, technology, uncertainty Subject Categories Communication | Other Sociology | Philosophy of Science | Sociology This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1766 DATA EPISTEMOLOGIES / SURVEILLANCE AND UNCERTAINTY Sun-ha Hong A DISSERTATION in Communication Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2016 Supervisor of Dissertation __________________________________ Carolyn Marvin, Frances Yates Professor of Communication Graduate Group Chairperson __________________________________ Joseph Turow, Robert Lewis Shayon Professor of Communication Dissertation Committee Sharrona Pearl, Assistant Professor of Communication Marwan Kraidy, Anthony Shadid Chair in Global Media, Politics & Culture DATA EPISTEMOLOGIES / SURVEILLANCE AND UNCERTAINTY COPYRIGHT 2016 SUN-HA HONG This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/ iii Acknowledgements. The present work is entirely my own; yet in everything I write lies a debt to another. To the following, and to many others, I present this text as my thanks. Carolyn Marvin Sharrona Pearl | Marwan Kraidy Lauren Berlant | John Durham Peters Kelly Gates | Amit Pinchevski | José van Dijck Sandra Ristovska | Aaron Shapiro | Yoel Roth | Bo Mai Michel Foucault | Gilles Deleuze | Maurice Merleau-Ponty My family – past, present and future and Jessica for their many sacrifices iv ABSTRACT DATA EPISTEMOLOGIES / SURVEILLANCE AND UNCERTAINTY Sun-ha Hong Carolyn Marvin Data Epistemologies studies the changing ways in which ‘knowledge’ is defined, promised, problematised, legitimated vis-à-vis the advent of digital, ‘big’ data surveillance technologies in early twenty-first century America. As part of the period’s fascination with ‘new’ media and ‘big’ data, such technologies intersect ambitious claims to better knowledge with a problematisation of uncertainty. This entanglement, I argue, results in contextual reconfigurations of what ‘counts’ as knowledge and who (or what) is granted authority to produce it – whether it involves proving that indiscriminate domestic surveillance prevents terrorist attacks, to arguing that machinic sensors can know us better than we can ever know ourselves. The present work focuses on two empirical cases. The first is the ‘Snowden Affair’ (2013-Present): the public controversy unleashed through the leakage v of vast quantities of secret material on the electronic surveillance practices of the U.S. government. The second is the ‘Quantified Self’ (2007-Present), a name which describes both an international community of experimenters and the wider industry built up around the use of data-driven surveillance technology for self-tracking every possible aspect of the individual ‘self’. By triangulating media coverage, connoisseur communities, advertising discourse and leaked material, I examine how surveillance technologies were presented for public debate and speculation. This dissertation is thus a critical diagnosis of the contemporary faith in ‘raw’ data, sensing machines and algorithmic decision-making, and of their public promotion as the next great leap towards objective knowledge. Surveillance is not only a means of totalitarian control or a technology for objective knowledge, but a collective fantasy that seeks to mobilise public support for new epistemic systems. Surveillance, as part of a broader enthusiasm for ‘data-driven’ societies, extends the old modern project whereby the human subject – its habits, its affects, its actions – become the ingredient, the raw material, the object, the target, for the production of truths and judgments about them by things other than themselves. vi Table of Contents. INTRODUCTION. ..................................................................................................... 1 METHODS AND AIMS ............................................................................................... 16 ‘RAW DATA’ ............................................................................................................. 22 1. RECESSIVE OBJECTS. ....................................................................................... 31 THE SNOWDEN FILES ............................................................................................... 42 RECESSIVE OBJECTS .................................................................................................. 72 THE LONE WOLVES ................................................................................................. 91 2. DATA’S INTIMACY. ........................................................................................ 108 DATA’S INTIMACY.................................................................................................. 120 DATA’S PRIVILEGE ................................................................................................. 133 DATA SKEPTICISM .................................................................................................. 147 KNOW THYSELF ..................................................................................................... 157 3. KNOWLEDGE SIMULATIONS. .................................................................... 171 SUBJUNCTIVITY....................................................................................................... 176 FABRICATION ......................................................................................................... 194 INTERPASSIVITY ...................................................................................................... 207 ZERO-DEGREE RISK ............................................................................................... 230 JUST-IN-CASE POLITICS .......................................................................................... 244 4. HONEYMOON OBJECTIVITY. ..................................................................... 246 DATA-SENSE .......................................................................................................... 252 HONEYMOON OBJECTIVITY ................................................................................... 283 OF FORKING PATHS ..............................................................................................
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