Automated Media

181 Pages·2019·2.429 MB·English

by  Mark Andrejevic

Automated Media
In this era of pervasiveautomation, Mark Andrejevic provides an original
framework for tracing the logical trajectoryof automated media and their
social, political, and cultural consequences.
This book explores the cascading logic of automation, which develops
from the information collection process through to data processing and,
finally, automated decision-making. It argues that pervasive digital mon-
itoring combines with algorithmic decision-making and machine learning
to create new forms of power and control that pose challenges to demo-
cratic forms of accountability and individual autonomy alike. Andrejevic
providesanoverviewoftheimplicationsofthesedevelopmentsforthefate
of human experience, describing the “bias of automation” through the
logics of pre-emption, operationalism, and “framelessness.”
Automated Media is a fascinating and groundbreaking new volume: a
must-read for students and researchers of critical media studies interested
in the intersections of media, technology, and the digital economy.
Mark Andrejevic is Professor of Media Studies at Monash University,
where he heads the Automated Society Working Group in the School of
Media,FilmandJournalism.HeistheauthorofInfoglut:HowTooMuch
Information is Changing the Way We Think and Know, iSpy: Surveillance
and Power in the Interactive Era; and Reality TV: The Work of Being
Watched, as well as numerous journal articles and book chapters on sur-
veillance, popular culture, and digital media.

Automated Media
Mark Andrejevic
Firstpublished2020
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Mark(2017).“ToPre-EmptaThief.”InternationalJournalof
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For mentors at four institutions:
Janice Peck
John Durham Peters
Graeme Turner
Arden Reed
I have been so fortunate to benefit from your support
and friendship.
Thank you.

Contents
1 The Subject of Automation 1
2 The Bias of Automation 25
3 Automated Culture 44
4 Pre-emption 73
5 The Operational City 94
6 Framelessness 113
7 Automating Desire 133
Index 168

1 The Subject of Automation
Theinventor,futurist,andGoogleguruRayKurzweilhassecularfantasiesof
immortalityand resurrection. Not onlydoeshe take “thousandsofdollars”
ofvitaminsadaytohelphimliveuntilthetechnologyisavailabletoupload
his consciousness into a machine (Blodget 2015), but he is collecting infor-
mationabouthisdeceasedfathersohecanbereincarnatedintheformofan
AI (artificial intelligence). Kurzweil imagines that some combination of
archival material and machine learning will be able to construct a digital
versionofhisfatherthathecanconversewith–perhapsforever–ifhesuc-
ceeds in surviving until the “singularity” (when human and machine con-
sciousness merge). Until then, he believes his paternal AI will be, for
conversationalpurposes,notjustanaccuratereproduction ofhisfatherbut,
asheputsit,“morelikemyfatherthanmyfatherwouldbe”(Berman2011).
Atfirstglance,suchaformulationsoundslikelittlemorethanthehyperbole
ofapracticedfuturist,albeitwithaninterestingpost-Oedipalpsychoanalytic
twist.However,thereisalurkingpsychoanalyticinsightinthisformulation:
thatthesubjectis,inanimportantsense,non-self-identical:thatis,thereare
aspectsofthesubjectthatremainunavailabletoit.Theparadox,then,isthat
a self-identical digital subject would not be like itself at all – it would be
“more” coherent and fully specified than an actual subject. To say that a
data-driven simulation might be “more like” someone than they are them-
selves is to suggest that it would be more consistent, perhaps living up to
some idealized image of the self that the subject itself was unable to attain.
However, if a subject is, in important ways, constituted by its gaps and
inconsistencies,theattemptto“perfect”itamountstoanattempttoobliter-
ate it. That Kurzweilwould aspire to thisversionof perfection isunsurpris-
ing, given his goal of achieving digital immortality by shedding the spatial
andtemporallimitsofsubjectivity.
Perhaps predictably, the promise of technological immortality is insepar-
ablefromthatofautomation,whichofferstosupplanthumanlimitationsat
everyturn.Whenitcomestothefateofthesubject,theformsofautomation
at stake are not simply mechanical (as in the factory) but informational.
Creating a digital model of individuals relies on automated forms of data
collection and information processing facilitated by digital media