This document discusses the political importance of algorithms and how they can reflect and amplify historical discrimination. It notes that control systems try to tightly control but if fully successful would have nothing left to control. Algorithms based on data like ZIP codes can reflect institutional discrimination. High-tech devices now use face recognition and target ads to specific genders. The document raises questions about how algorithms assemble subjects and regulate space through environmental determinism, and how algorithms are both ubiquitous through sensors but also fragile through hackability.

1. Where Can Tell Me Who I Am?
Jeremy W. Crampton
New Maps Collaboratory &
Department of Geography
University of Kentucky

7. Political importance of algorithms
(Gillespie):
1.Patterns of inclusion
2.Cycles of anticipation
3.Evaluation of relevance
4.The promise of algorithmic objectivity
5.Entanglement with practice
6.The production of calculated publics

9. Societies of Control
“All control systems try to make control as
tight as possible, but at the same time, if
they succeeded completely, there would be
nothing left to control.”—William Burroughs
William Burroughs “Limits of Control” in
Semiotext[e] Schizo-Culture 3(2), 1978, p. 38

10. Guilt by Geolocation
“Software that makes decisions
based on data like a person’s
ZIP code can reflect, or even
amplify, the results of historical
or institutional discrimination”

11. 1.Individuals in a population
2.“Mass” era (production,
market, consumption…
3.Data doubles / derivatives /
shadows

12. Face recognition
“High-tech billboards can target
ads based on the gender of
who’s standing in front of them.
In 2011, researchers at Carnegie
Mellon pointed a camera at a
public area on campus and were
able to match live video footage
with a public database of tagged
photos in real time. ”

14. Questions to conclude
1. What subjects are being assembled? Algorithmic life
“[Data derivatives] pose significant difficulties for the idea of a data
subject with a recognizable body of rights to privacy, to liberty, and to
justice” –Louise Amoore, 2014
2. Regulating space by environmental determinism
3. Simultaneous ubiquity and fragility of algorithms. “The everywhere
sensor” (IoT) and its security (hackability, counter-measures).

15. Thank you!
@jeremycrampton
jcrampton@uky.edu