Cyborg promises 

The possible pathways of the present digitally mediated moment are now shaped by the algorithms that govern our everyday lives - algorithms that are often imbued with oppressive technocapitalist values. If we are to broaden the potentiality of the present in radically transformative ways, do we need to relinquish digital tech entirely? Maybe…and yet, this is seemingly impossible in our cyborgian existence. In this episode we explore the promises that keep us attached to digital devices. Inspired by Jeanette Winterson’s ‘Ghost in the Machine’, we discuss how ‘hyper-relevant’ personalised online worlds enabled by intense surveillance keep us tied to the digital technologies that are both making everyday life into a crisis, and making it more bearable…

References: 

Amoore, L. (2020). Cloud Ethics: Algorithms and the Attributes of Ourselves and Others. Durham: Duke University Press.

Anderson, B. (2022). Forms and Scenes of Attachment: A Cultural Geography of Promises. Dialogues in Human Geography, 13 (3), pp. 392-409.

Anderson, B. (2023). Media Promises: On Attachment and Detachment with Berlant. Media Theory, 7 (2), pp. 209–224. Available at: https://journalcontent.mediatheoryjournal.org/index.php/mt/article/view/580

Bucher, T. (2018). If…Then: Algorithmic Power and Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Darmody, A. & Zwick, D. (2020). Manipulate to Empower: Hyper-Relevance and the Contradictions of Marketing in the Age of Surveillance Capitalism. Big Data and Society. Available at: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2053951720904112

Drage, E. & McInerney, K. (2024). The Good Robot: Why Technology Needs Feminism. London: Bloomsbury.

Haraway, D. (1985) A cyborg manifesto. 

Noble, S. U. (2018). Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. New York: New York University Press

Pedwell, C. (2022). Speculative Machines and Us: More-than-Human Intuition and the Algorithmic Condition. Cultural Studies, 38 (2), pp.188– 218.

Pedwell, C. (2023a). Intuition as a ‘Trained Thing’: Sensing, Thinking, and Speculating in Computational Cultures. Subjectivity, 30, pp. 348-372.

Winterson, J. (2024). The Night Side of the River. London: Jonathan Cape.

Zuboff, S. (2019). The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. London: Profile Books Ltd.

Zwick, D. & Knott, J. D. (2009). Manufacturing Customers: The Database as New Means of Production. Journal of Consumer Culture, 9 (2).

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