‘Counting by other means’ 4S/EASST conference preview

A pre­view of our “Count­ing by oth­er means” 4S/EASST con­fer­ence track has been post­ed on the Soci­ety of Social Stud­ies of Sci­ence Backchan­nels blog. I’m run­ning the track with Sarah Kem­ber and we’re excit­ed to have these papers included:

Session 1

The Slow Times of the Dig­i­tal, Paul Dourish
Dig­i­tal Acces­si­bil­i­ty: Age­ing and the Mat­ter­ing Counts of Arts Engage­ment, Aman­da Windle
Count­ing the Future; the designed arte­facts of pre­dic­tion, David Benque
Mak­ing inven­tions count: the gen­der pol­i­tics of design patents, Kat Jungnickel
Phoebe Sen­ger — Discussant

Session 2

Writer­ly (ac)counts of finite flour­ish­ings and pos­si­bly bet­ter ways of being togeth­er, Sarah Kem­ber and Alex Taylor
Cap­i­tal num­bers and the obscure numer­i­cal­i­ty of code, Adri­an MacKenzie
Reimag­in­ing Work: Heart Labor, Heart Time, Lucian Leahu
Sec­re­taries, Count­ing Time and AI, Jes­sa Lin­gel and Kate Crawford
Repair as Tran­si­tion: Tem­po­ral­i­ties of Break­down, Main­te­nance and Recu­per­a­tion, Steve Jackson
 
See the backchan­nels post here or just see the pre­view text for our track below:

B

eneath us there is a tick­ing, the tick­ing of a com­pu­ta­tion­al count that winds its way down to the next inter­rupt. This count­ing joins up a web of sur­pris­ing­ly sta­t­ic things—an inter­net of sen­sors and input devices. But, below, the oper­a­tions are live­ly; data of all sorts and at every per­ceiv­able scale are com­bined and mined to report, fore­cast, and act on a dizzy­ing array of pos­si­bil­i­ties. Pace­mak­ers, cochlear implants, smart watch­es, activ­i­ty mon­i­tors, smart homes, trans­port sys­tems, pow­er grids, traf­fic lights, com­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tems, logis­tics, cash­less pay­ments, emer­gency ser­vices, sur­veil­lance sys­tems, space stations—everywhere, an unend­ing amal­gam of algo­rith­mic sys­tems that keep our bod­ies and spaces ticking.
Yet, as the sequen­tial and relent­less count keeps tick­ing, how and where exact­ly do the agen­cies that pulse through these com­pu­ta­tion­al sys­tems entan­gle with our own? Where do sub­stance and sys­tem con­join, or ‘intra-act’ (Barad 2007), to enact the bod­ies, spaces and worlds we share in com­mon? What capac­i­ties are afford­ed and ‘autho­rised’ (Despret 2004) through such world­ly becomings—with their obdu­rate log­ics of effi­cien­cy and ratio­nales organ­ised by num­bers? And how do they give shape, per­haps, to a dif­fer­ent kind of crit­ter, new vari­eties of “trans-cor­po­re­al­i­ty” (Alaimo 2012), gen­er­a­tive­ly fig­ur­ing dif­fer­ent worlds of num­bers (Ver­ran 2001)? Who and what else might come to count in this pro­lif­er­a­tion of counting?
Fol­low­ing their own hunch­es and leads, human­i­ties and social sci­ence schol­ars have been grap­pling with such ques­tions by work­ing through their own exam­ples of this “regime of com­pu­ta­tion” (Hayles 2005). Kather­ine Hayles start­ed ear­ly with her writ­ings of a ‘uni­verse’ where “com­pu­ta­tion… is tak­en as the ground of being.” (1999: 34). Since then, many of us have sought to account for beings of this sort through all man­ner of sub­stances (Fujimu­ra 2011; Kruse 2013; Tay­lor et al. 2014); bod­ies (Craw­ford Lin­gel and Karp­pi 2015); prac­tices (MacKen­zie 2003; Beer 2015); places (Kai­ka and Swyn­ge­douw 2000; Ken­ney 2015; Kitchin Lau­ri­ault and McAr­dle 2015); (infra)structures (Jack­son and Bar­brow 2013; MacKen­zie 2015); and pol­i­tics (Miller 2005; Nel­son 2013; McQuil­lan 2015). Although dis­parate, what this mix­ture of work might be seen to point to is an uneasy uni­for­mi­ty of time-telling, a struc­tured time that is enact­ed via the com­pu­ta­tion­al count and that con­fig­ures a pecu­liar set of rela­tions between life and labour. The count col­laps­es life as labour-time, con­sti­tut­ing it in terms of quan­ti­fied met­rics, per­for­mance and productivity.
Crit­i­cal­ly exam­in­ing these rela­tions between time, the count, and forms of life/labour, our research might also be seen to point to more care­ful and car­ing imag­i­nar­ies of who and what could count in/through com­pu­ta­tion. With what we would want to call a “fem­i­nist time-telling”—that is to say, one that thrives not in the sin­gu­lar­i­ty but promis­cu­ity of time-telling—we find the pos­si­bil­i­ty for alter­nate encoun­ters with the ubiq­ui­tous count. The allur­ing­ly sin­gu­lar, tele­o­log­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion of time is dis­rupt­ed through anom­alies raised by such things as redemp­tion, regres­sion, rep­e­ti­tion, and rup­ture (Fel­s­ki 2002: 21). Sur­faced are the mul­ti­ple bod­i­ly, polit­i­cal and eth­i­cal entan­gle­ments and becom­ings, the tem­po­ral­ly bound ‘process­es of medi­a­tion’ (Kem­ber and Zylin­s­ka 2012), in com­pu­ta­tion­al regimes. The count, then, is ‘geared towards mea­sur­ably enhanced pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, per­for­mance, trans­paren­cy and effi­cien­cy’, coin­ci­dent­ly ‘core val­ues of neolib­er­al­ism’ (Kem­ber and Zylin­s­ka 2012). Like­wise, we find it inten­si­fies and extends the reach of gen­dered biopow­er by enforc­ing an alarm­ing­ly regres­sive por­tray­al of women’s labour in/of time. Yet through the hope­ful but mod­est sto­ries we tell about the live­ly com­pli­ca­tions, we show a care for dif­fer­ence and how it might be giv­en space amidst the counting.
“The prob­lem is” as Grosz relays in her con­cep­tu­al refig­ur­ing of fem­i­nism, mate­ri­al­i­ty and free­dom, “… how to enable more action, more mak­ing and doing, more dif­fer­ence.” (2010: 154). Our two ses­sion track is designed to pro­vide a forum where top­i­cal­ly diverse works like those above might min­gle, and pos­si­bly inter­min­gle, to enliv­en new inter­con­nec­tions and muta­tions that make a dif­fer­ence. As well as offer­ing a moment in which we might inter­rupt or make a cut along the lines of counts and com­pu­ta­tion, we invite pos­si­bil­i­ties for fric­tions, laugh­ter, exper­i­men­ta­tion, (dis)agreements, and gen­er­a­tive refig­ur­ings of where we might go with all these counts—where we might reimag­ine who/what real­ly could count amidst this count­ing. A count­ing by oth­er means.
Ref­er­ences
Alaimo, S. (2012). States of Sus­pen­sion: Trans-cor­po­re­al­i­ty at Sea. Inter­dis­ci­pli­nary Stud­ies in Lit­er­a­ture and Envi­ron­ment, 19(3), 476–493.
Beer, D. (2015). Pro­duc­tive mea­sures: Cul­ture and mea­sure­ment in the con­text of every­day neolib­er­al­ism. Big Data & Soci­ety, 2(1).
Craw­ford, K., Lin­gel, J., & Karp­pi, T. (2015). Our met­rics, our­selves: A hun­dred years of self-track­ing from the weight scale to the wrist wear­able device. Euro­pean Jour­nal of Cul­tur­al Stud­ies, 18(4–5), 479–496.
Despret, V. (2004). The Body We Care for: Fig­ures of Anthro­po-zoo-gen­e­sis. Body & Soci­ety, 10(2–3), 111–134.
Fel­s­ki, R. (2002). Telling Time in Fem­i­nist The­o­ry. Tul­sa Stud­ies in Wom­en’s Lit­er­a­ture, 21–28.
Grosz, E. (2010). Fem­i­nism, mate­ri­al­ism, and free­dom. In, D. Coole & S. Frost (Eds.), New mate­ri­alisms: Ontol­ogy, agency, and pol­i­tics, 139–157.
Kai­ka, M., & Swyn­ge­douw, E. (2000). Fetishiz­ing the mod­ern city: the phan­tas­mago­ria of urban tech­no­log­i­cal net­works. Inter­na­tion­al Jour­nal of Urban and Region­al Research.
Kem­ber, S., & Zylin­s­ka, J. (2012). Life after new media: Medi­a­tion as a vital process. MIT Press.
Kruse, C. (2013). The Bayesian approach to foren­sic evi­dence: Eval­u­at­ing, com­mu­ni­cat­ing, and dis­trib­ut­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty. Social Stud­ies of Sci­ence, 43(5), 657–680.
Fujimu­ra, J. H. (2011). Tech­no­bi­o­log­i­cal imag­i­nar­ies: How do sys­tems biol­o­gists know nature? In M. J. Gold­man, P. Nadas­dy, & M. D. Turn­er (Eds.), Know­ing Nature: Con­ver­sa­tions at the Inter­sec­tion of Polit­i­cal Ecol­o­gy and Sci­ence Stud­ies (pp. 65–80). Lon­don: The Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go Press.
Hayles, N. K. (2005). My Moth­er Was a Com­put­er: Dig­i­tal Sub­jects and Lit­er­ary Texts. Lon­don: Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go Press.
Jack­son, S. J., & Bar­brow, S. (2013). Infra­struc­ture and voca­tion: field, call­ing and com­pu­ta­tion in ecol­o­gy (p. 2873). Pre­sent­ed at the CHI ’13: Pro­ceed­ings of the SIGCHI Con­fer­ence on Human Fac­tors in Com­put­ing Sys­tems, New York, New York, USA: ACM Press.
Kitchin, R., Lau­ri­ault, T. P., & McAr­dle, G. (2015). Know­ing and gov­ern­ing cities through urban indi­ca­tors, city bench­mark­ing and real-time dash­boards. Region­al Stud­ies, 2(1), 6–28.
McQuil­lan, D. (2015). Algo­rith­mic states of excep­tion. Euro­pean Jour­nal of Cul­tur­al Stud­ies, 18(4–5), 564–576.
MacKen­zie, D. (2003). An Equa­tion and its Worlds Brico­lage, Exem­plars, Dis­uni­ty and Per­for­ma­tiv­i­ty in Finan­cial Eco­nom­ics. Social Stud­ies of Sci­ence, 33(6), 831–868.
Macken­zie, A. (2015). The pro­duc­tion of pre­dic­tion: What does machine learn­ing want? Euro­pean Jour­nal of Cul­tur­al Stud­ies, 18(4–5), 429–445.
Miller, C. A. (2005). New Civic Epis­te­molo­gies of Quan­tifi­ca­tion: Mak­ing Sense of Indi­ca­tors of Local and Glob­al Sus­tain­abil­i­ty. Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy & Human Val­ues, 30(3), 403–432.
Nel­son, D. (2013). Yes to Life= No to Min­ing’: Count­ing as Biotech­nol­o­gy in Life (Ltd) Guatemala. The Schol­ar & Fem­i­nist Online, 11(3). Retrieved Octo­ber 15, 2015, from http://sfonline.barnard.edu/life-un-ltd-feminism-bioscience-race/yes-to-life-no-to-mining-counting-as-biotechnology-in-life-ltd-guatemala/
Ken­ney, M. (2015). Count­ing, account­ing, and account­abil­i­ty: Helen Ver­ran’s rela­tion­al empiri­cism. Social Stud­ies of Sci­ence, 45(5), 749–771.
Tay­lor, A. S., Fish­er, J., Cook, B., Ish­ti­aq, S., & Piter­man, N. (2014) Mod­el­ling Biol­o­gy – work­ing through (in-)stabilities and fric­tions, Com­pu­ta­tion­al Cul­ture 1(3).
Ver­ran, H. (2001). Sci­ence and an African Log­ic. Lon­don: Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go Press.