Papers by Jess Bier
Big Data & Society, 2019
This article proposes an analytical approach to algorithms that stresses operations of folding. T... more This article proposes an analytical approach to algorithms that stresses operations of folding. The aim of this approach is to broaden the common analytical focus on algorithms as biased and opaque black boxes, and to instead highlight the many relations that algorithms are interwoven with. Our proposed approach thus highlights how algorithms fold heterogeneous things: data, methods and objects with multiple ethical and political effects. We exemplify the utility of our approach by proposing three specific operations of folding—proximation, universalisation and normalisation. The article develops these three operations through four empirical vignettes, drawn from different settings that deal with algorithms in relation to AIDS, Zika and stock markets. In proposing this analytical approach, we wish to highlight the many different attachments and relations that algorithms enfold. The approach thus aims to produce accounts that highlight how algorithms dynamically combine and reconfigure different social and material heterogeneities as well as the ethical, normative and political consequences of these reconfigurations.
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Computer models of the economy are regularly used to predict economic phenomena and set financial... more Computer models of the economy are regularly used to predict economic phenomena and set financial policy. However, the conventional macroeconomic models are currently being reimagined after they failed to foresee the current economic crisis, the outlines of which began to be understood only in 2007-2008. In this article we analyze the most prominent of this reimagining: Agent-Based models (ABMs). ABMs are an influential alternative to standard economic models, and they are one focus of complexity theory, a discipline that is a more open successor to the conventional chaos and fractal modeling of the 1990s. The modelers who create ABMs claim that their models depict markets as ecologies, and that they are more responsive than conventional models that depict markets as machines. We challenge this presentation, arguing instead that recent modeling efforts amount to the creation of models as ecological machines. Our paper aims to contribute to an understanding of the organizing metaphors of macroeconomic models, which we argue is relevant conceptually and politically, e.g., when models are used for regulatory purposes.
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Maps are considered to be an ultimate expression of modernity. Empirical cartography plays a cent... more Maps are considered to be an ultimate expression of modernity. Empirical cartography plays a central role in daily governance, and it also has a long history of furthering displacement and erasure. In this article I argue that the landscapes of historic British colonialism and the ongoing Israeli occupation influence the digital maps made by the Palestinian Authority. Through an investigation into the borders, roads, and urban areas of one such map and its related scientific practices, I analyze how knowledge of the occupation is shaped by the occupation. Drawing upon widespread Palestinian efforts to strengthen sumud (steadfastness), I develop the concept of stasis as the ability to remain in place. Researchers have rightly pointed to restrictions on Palestinians’ movements, but greater attention should be paid to attempts to limit stasis, both within and beyond the West Bank. The detailed study of mobility and stasis, as well as other material asymmetries of research, can enable more imaginative maps and more heterogeneous passages for the production of knowledge.
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This track's papers will analyze the politics of counting and visualizing in efforts to monitor t... more This track's papers will analyze the politics of counting and visualizing in efforts to monitor the global circulation of people, practices, and data. The goal is to further examine the relationships between global circulation infrastructure and supranational efforts at regulation and surveillance.
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Information, Communication & Society, 2013
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The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, 2002
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Books and Special Issues by Jess Bier
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Information, Communication & Society 16(2)
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Papers by Jess Bier
Books and Special Issues by Jess Bier