Algorithmic Personalization as a Mode of Individuation

Recognizing that many of the modern categories with which we think about people and their activities were put in place through the use of numbers, we ask how numbering practices compose contemporary sociality. Focusing on particular forms of algorithmic personalization, we describe a pathway of a-ty...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Theory, culture & society Vol. 36; no. 2; pp. 17 - 37
Main Authors: Lury, Celia, Day, Sophie
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: London, England SAGE Publications 01.03.2019
Sage Publications Ltd
Subjects:
Algorithms
Customization
Identity formation
Ownership
Politics
Recursion
Recursive algorithms
Tracking
numbering
personalization
pathway
optimization
individuation
algorithm
ISSN:0263-2764, 1460-3616
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Recognizing that many of the modern categories with which we think about people and their activities were put in place through the use of numbers, we ask how numbering practices compose contemporary sociality. Focusing on particular forms of algorithmic personalization, we describe a pathway of a-typical individuation in which repeated and recursive tracking is used to create partial orders in which individuals are always more and less than one. Algorithmic personalization describes a mode of numbering that involves forms of de- and re- aggregating, in which a variety of contexts are continually included and excluded. This pathway of a-typical individuation is important, we suggest, to a variety of domains and, more broadly, to an understanding of contemporary economies of sharing where the politics of collectivities, ownership and use are being reconfigured as a default social.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 14
ISSN:0263-2764
1460-3616
DOI:10.1177/0263276418818888