Uncertain Archives Critical Keywords for Big Data

Scholars from a range of disciplines interrogate terms relevant to critical studies of big data, from abuse and aggregate to visualization and vulnerability.

This pathbreaking work offers an interdisciplinary perspective on big data, interrogating key terms. Scholars from a range of disciplines interrogate concepts relevant to critical studies of big data--arranged glossary style, from from abuse and aggregate to visualization and vulnerability--both challenging conventional usage of such often-used terms as prediction and objectivity and introducing such unfamiliar ones as overfitting and copynorm. The contributors include both leading researchers, including N. Katherine Hayles, Johanna Drucker and Lisa Gitelman, and such emerging agenda-setting scholars as Safiya Noble, Sarah T. Roberts and Nicole Starosielski.

Nanna Bonde Thylstrup is Associate Professor at Copenhagen Business School and author of The Politics of Mass Digitization (MIT Press).Daniela Agostinho is postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies at the University of Copenhagen. Annie Ring is Lecturer in the Faculty of Arts & Humanities at University College London. Catherine D'Ignazio is Assistant Professor of Data Visualization and Civic Media at Emerson College and coauthor of Data Feminism (MIT Press). Kristin Veel is Associate Professor at the Department for Arts and Cultural Studies at the University of Copenhagen and coauthor of Tower to Tower (MIT Press).

1 Abuse 29
2 Affect 37
3 Aggregation 47
4 Algorithmic Racism 57
5 Bots 65
6 Care 75
7 Complicity 87
8 Conversational Agents 99
9 Cooling 109
10 Copynorms 115
11 Database 125
12 Demo 133
13 Detox 141
14 Digital Assistants 151 
15 Digital Humanities 161
16 DNA 171
17 Drone 179
18 Error 191
19 Ethics 201
20 Executing 209
21 Expertise 217
22 Field 227
23 Figura 235 
24 File 241
25 Flesh 249 
26 Glitch 259
27 Hashtag Archiving 271
28 Hauntology 279
29 Instrumentality 289
30 Interface 299
31 Intersectionality 305 
32 Latency 313
33 Metadata 321
34 Migrationmapping 331
35 (Mis)gendering 339
36 Misreading 347
37 Natural 353
38 Obfuscation 359
39 Organization 369
40 Outlier 377
41 Performative Measure 389
42 Pornography 397 
43 Prediction 403 
44 Proxies 419
45 Quantification 427
46 Remains 433
47 Reparative 443
48 Self-Tracking 457
49 Shifters 469 
50 Sorting 477
51 Stand-In 485
52 Supply Chain 493
53 Technoheritage 499 
54 Throbber 513
55 Time.now 523
56 Unpredictability 533
57 Unthought 541
58 Values 551
59 Visualization 561
60 Vulnerability 569
61 Word 579
Contributors 585
Index 597