Book chapter

The technology of collective memory and the normativity of truth

Diane P Michelfelder, Natasha McCarthy & David E. Goldberg (eds.), Philosophy and Engineering: Reflections on Practice, Principles and Process, 279-290

2013

Themes: Memory

Category: Book chapter, Peer reviewed

Neither our evolutionary past, nor our pre-literate culture, has prepared humanity for the use of technology to provide records of the past, records which in many contexts become normative for memory. The demand that memory be true, rather than useful or pleasurable, has changed our social and psychological self-understanding. The current vogue for lifelogging, and the rapid proliferation of digital memory-supporting technologies, may accelerate this change, and create dilemmas for policymakers, designers and social thinkers.

Zuckerberg’s cave: smartness and discipline in digital modernity

Dariusz Brzezinsky, Kamil Filipek, Kuba Piwowar & Malgorzata Winiarska-Brodowska (eds.), Algorithms, Artificial Intelligence and Beyond: Theorizing Society and Culture of the 21st Century, 72-88

2024

Themes: Artificial Intelligence (AI), Digital modernity

Category: Book chapter, Peer reviewed

This chapter discusses some of the narratives or imaginaries that help structure our experience of, and the development of, the technological suite that mediates the affordances of social life in wealthy Western societies (and increasingly in less wealthy ones, and elsewhere than the West) in the 2020s. It argues that, far from society having transcended modernity to become postmodern, modernity has evolved, from the ‘high’ or ‘reflexive’ modernity of the late 20th century to a characteristic digital modernity. The chapter draws out some of its consequences, sketching its four institutional dimensions. Its disciplinary stance towards individuals gives rise to a myth which is termed Zuckerberg’s Cave, which is compared to the pre-modern cave of Plato, as well as analogous myths of modernity. The realistic prospects of digital modernity are assessed, setting out both its practical risks and its attractions to citizens and policymakers alike.

AI in the UK: A Short History

Wendy Hall & Jérôme Pesenti, Growing the Artificial Intelligence Industry in the UK, 18-20

2017

Themes: Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Category: Book chapter, Open access

A brief narrative of the major events in British AI research from Alan Turing to DeepMind.

Data-driven government: the triumph of Thatcherism or the revenge of society?

Antony Mullen, Stephen Farrall & David Jeffery (eds), Thatcherism in the 21st Century: The Social and Cultural Legacy, 55-73

2020

Themes: Conservatism, Digital modernity

Category: Book chapter, Peer reviewed

Margaret Thatcher’s statement that ‘there is no such thing as society’ has overshadowed Conservative Party politics since the 1980s, and has been the subject of exegesis and attempts at repudiation ever since. This chapter considers the statement in the context of Angus Maude’s critique of ‘society’ as a statistical abstraction, which comes, erroneously, to be taken as an agent in its own right, able to take on the responsibilities of individuals to their communities and ‘little platoons’, and ultimately to become the end of policy itself. This digital modernity, nascent in Maude’s and Thatcher’s day, is becoming increasingly influential, thanks to data-based policy and data-driven agency. The chapter argues that Maude’s subtler analysis still yields a conservative critique of digital modernity, whereas the less nuanced neoliberal individualism valorised by Thatcher may be seen as one of its enablers.

The future of social Is personal: the potential of the Personal Data Store

Daniele Miorandi, Vincenzo Maltese, Michael Rovatsos, Anton Nijholt & James Stewart (ed.), Social Collective Intelligence: Combining the Powers of Humans and Machines to Build a Smarter Society, 125-158

2014

Co-authors: Max Van Kleek

Themes: Computing/The Internet, Privacy

Category: Book chapter, Peer reviewed

This chapter argues that technical architectures that facilitate the longitudinal, decentralised and individual-centric personal collection and curation of data will be an important, but partial, response to the pressing problem of the autonomy of the data subject, and the asymmetry of power between the subject and large scale service providers/data consumers. Towards framing the scope and role of such Personal Data Stores (PDSs), the legalistic notion of personal data is examined, and it is argued that a more inclusive, intuitive notion expresses more accurately what individuals require in order to preserve their autonomy in a data-driven world of large aggregators. Six challenges towards realising the PDS vision are set out: the requirement to store data for long periods; the difficulties of managing data for individuals; the need to reconsider the regulatory basis for third-party access to data; the need to comply with international data handling standards; the need to integrate privacy-enhancing technologies; and the need to future-proof data gathering against the evolution of social norms. The open experimental PDS platform INDX is introduced and described, as a means of beginning to address at least some of these six challenges.

Big data, consequentialism and privacy

Kevin Macnish & Jai Galliott (eds.), Big Data and Democracy, 13-26

2020

Themes: Digital modernity

Category: Book chapter, Peer reviewed

This chapter applies a Weberian analysis to developments in big data. O’Hara argues that just as Weber noted a move from the pre-modern to the modern with the advent of bureaucracy, so we are now entering a time of digital modernity. The focus in digital modernity is less the present (what is happening now) as the subjunctive (what could happen), governed by data. This, he argues, gives data a central role in governing for both good and ill.

Social machines as an approach to group privacy

Linnet Taylor, Luciano Floridi & Bart van der Sloot (eds.), Group Privacy: New Challenges of Data Technologies, 101-122

2016

Co-authors: Dave Robertson

Themes: Privacy, Social machines

Category: Book chapter, Peer reviewed

This chapter introduces the notion of social machines as a way of conceptualising and formalising the interactions between people and private networked technology for problem-solving. It is argued that formalisation of such ‘social computing’ will generate requirements for information flow within social machines and across their boundaries with the outside world. These requirements provide the basis for a notion of group privacy that is neither derivative from the idea of individual privacy preferences, nor founded in political or moral argument, but instead related to the integrity of the social machine and its capabilities for bottom-up problem-solving. This notion of group privacy depends on a particular technological setup, and is not intended to be a general definition, but it has purchase in the context of pervasive technology and big data which has made the question of group privacy pressing and timely.

Margaret Thatcher (1925-2013)

Mark Garnett (ed.), Conservative Moments: Reading Conservative Texts, London: Bloomsbury, 127-136

2018

Themes: Conservatism, Conservative Party

Category: Book chapter, Open access, Peer reviewed

This chapter explores three questions. First, what is the nature of Thatcher’s political philosophy, and in particular the uncompromising statement that ‘there is no such thing as society’? Second, can we judge whether her policies in office were consistent with a tenable understanding of conservatism? Third, can we trace some of the antecedents of her thinking, and place her, tentatively at least, within a tradition?

Introduction: Life and the law in the era of data-driven agency

Mireille Hildebrandt & Kieron O'Hara (eds.), Life and the Law in the Era of Data-Driven Agency, 1-15

2020

Co-authors: Mireille Hildebrandt

Themes: Privacy, Society

Category: Book chapter, Open access

This chapter introduces the core topics of the volume Life and the Law in the Era of Data-Driven Agency, providing a hopefully appetizing overview of the chapters and their interrelations.

Preface

Mireille Hildebrandt & Kieron O'Hara (eds.), Life and the Law in the Era of Data-Driven Agency, xii-xiv

2020

Co-authors: Mireille Hildebrandt

Themes: Privacy, Society

Category: Book chapter, Open access

Preface to the volume Life and the Law in the Era of Data-Driven Agency, edited by Mireille Hildebrandt and Kieron O’Hara.

Between the editors

Mireille Hildebrandt & Kieron O'Hara (eds.), Life and the Law in the Era of Data-Driven Agency, 16-43

2020

Co-authors: Mireille Hildebrandt,

Themes: Privacy, Society

Category: Book chapter, Open access

This chapter contains a crossing of swords and thoughts between the editors, who come from different disciplinary backgrounds and different philosophical traditions, but nevertheless occupy much common ground. The conversation is too short to enable the cutting edge of Occam’s razor, but refers to other work with more extensive argumentation. We agree on a great deal. In particular, we share a precautionary approach that requires proactive consideration of how one’s experimental business models or progressive politics may impact others. However, as the reader will see, at that point we part company! The ensuing dialogue has been illuminating for us, and hopefully will whet the reader’s appetite for the excellent chapters that follow in our edited book Life and the Law in the Era of Data-Driven Agency.

The conservative reaction to data-driven agency

Mireille Hildebrandt & Kieron O'Hara (eds.), Life and the Law in the Era of Data-Driven Agency, 175-193

2020

Co-authors: Mark Garnett

Themes: Conservatism, Digital modernity

Category: Book chapter, Peer reviewed

Political issues pertaining to data-driven agency and the use of ‘big data’ to make decisions about people’s lives are usually seen through the lens of liberalism. A conservative examination of data-driven agency requires a different lens. This chapter adopts the perspective of evolving modernity. It considers the philosophy of three major conservative thinkers, Edmund Burke, Alexis de Tocqueville and Michael Oakeshott, in the context of the problematisation of big data contained in Mireille Hildebrandt’s Smart Technologies and the End(s) of Law. Present-day conservatives need to rethink their traditional antipathy to the state, reverting to a Burkean understanding of the public-private distinction, and also to revise views of individual agency in the face of the facilitation of collective agency by networked digital technology.

Semantic Web

Robert A. Meyers (ed.), Computational Complexity: Theory, Techniques, and Applications, New York: Springer, 2810-2829

2011

Co-authors: Wendy Hall

Themes: Semantic Web/linked data

Category: Book chapter, Peer reviewed

Encyclopaedia article about the Semantic Web, containing a Glossary and a Definition of the Subject, together with discussions of: Linking Data; The Layered Model of the Semantic Web; Applications; Controversies; and Future Directions.

Personalisation and digital modernity: deconstructing the myths of the subjunctive world

Utal Kohl & Jacob Eisler (eds.), Data-Driven Personalisation in Markets, Politics and Law, 37-54

2021

Themes: Computing/The Internet, Digital modernity

Category: Book chapter, Open access, Peer reviewed

In this chapter, I discuss the role of personalisation in a wider narrative of the development of democratic societies, in terms of digital modernity, driven by a vision of data-driven innovation over networked structures facilitating socio-environmental control. This chapter deals with narratives of how modernity plays out and is implemented by institutions and technologies, which are inevitably partial, and selective in what they foreground and ignore. It begins with a discussion of digital modernity, showing how data-driven personalisation is central to it, and how privacy not only loses its traditional role as a support for individuality, but becomes a blocker for the technologies that will realise the digitally modern vision. The chapter develops the concept of the subjunctive world, in which individuals’ choices are replaced by what they would have chosen if only they had sufficient data and insight. Furthermore, the notions of what is harmful for the individual, and the remedies that can be applied to these, become detached from the individual’s lived experience, and reconnected, in the policy space, to the behaviour and evolution of models of the individual and his or her environment.