dan mcquillan dan mcquillan

Self-Tracking and Algorithmic Colonialism

Abstract for a seminar on 'The Quantified Self and the Rise of Self-Tracking Culture' at Aarhus Insitute of Advanced Studies, June 15th 2016

The Quantified Self should be questioned on both counts; the quantification, and the idea of the self. Rather than "self-knowledge through numbers", as Gary Wolf and Kevin Kelly would have it, I will argue that the rise of a self-tracking culture is leading to algorithmic colonialism. As a counter power, I propose an approach to wearables that draws on feminist critical empiricism.

The naive vision of the Quantified Self fractures as it is absorbed in to corporate and governmental assemblages. Individual goal setting is replaced by the productive force of predictive algorithms operating across a distributed apparatus. The false flag of individual wellbeing conceals the rise of preemptive environmental interventions.

While the narrative of self-tracking tries to mobilise its empiricism as an empowering form of medical research, the reliance on correlation over causation echoes the idolatry of data science; the substitution of patterns for meaning. At the same time, the elevation of an 'objective' view of the self inherits the problems latent within science itself, the disembodied view from above that Donna Haraway labels 'the God view'. The Quantified Self gets the worst of both worlds; the problems of not being science, and the problematic characteristics that science still has.

In practice, self-tracking at a social level doesn't produce insightful individuals but the kind of entity that Deleuze called 'dividuals'; aspects broken off, and separated for reassembly. The reassembly follows the form that Philip Agre described in the capture model; a modelling of lives that actually remodels them to be amenable to computational manipulation. This is an Othering of the self for extractive value creation, and a transfer of control to the distant metropolis of the data centre. In other words, an algorithmic colonialism.

The irony is that the Quantified Self could also mobilise a feminist critical empiricism, which Haraway couches as an argument for situated and embodied knowledges and an argument against various forms of unlocatable, and so irresponsible, knowledge claims. I will close by exploring the idea of a collective, reflective numeracy that replaces the Quantified Self with a convivial hybridity.

Citizen Science and Standpoint Epistemology

A talk at the seminar 'The Activist, the Academic and Digital Media' (Goldsmiths, 15th Dec 2015) which describes participatory citizen science as the mobilisation of feminist and postcolonial critiques of science, using the concrete example of 'Science for Change Kosovo'.
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Science for Change Kosovo Year 1

This reflection on the first year of Science for Change Kosovo, commissioned by Datashift and released under a CC-BY-SA license.
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Ghosts in the Algorithmic Resilience Machine

A talk for the panel on 'Resilience and the Future of Democracy in the Smart City' at the 25th anniversary conference of the Centre for the Study of Democracy, University of Westminster, 7th Nov 2015.
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Data Science and Phrenology

Abstract for a paper in preparation
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Hannah Arendt and Algorithmic Thoughtlessness

I presented this paper on Hannah Arendt and Algorithmic Thoughtlessness at the London Conference on Critical Thought in June 2015.
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Data Luddism

I presented this paper on Data Luddism at the Data Power conference in Sheffield in June 2015.
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Seventeen Theses on DIY Science

An opening provocation to the 'DIY Science: the challenges of quality' at the European Commission Joint Research Centre, Ispra 16-5-15
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Auditing Algorithms

With my colleague Ida, I'll be presenting one of the selected scenarios at the ICWSM 'Auditing Algorithms' workshop
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