#DATAFICATION

[asli-tan]

Do You Believe in Life After Tech? - A Critical Analysis of the Self-Optimization Focused Longevity Practices 

The year is 2025. For an average human living in the territories dressed with internet cables, the day starts by grabbing the smartphone and consuming whatever the algorithm has to offer. From grocery shopping to becoming a millionaire overnight through crypto trades, everything seems possible from behind the screen. Societies are increasingly shaped by the very algorithms that dictate behaviors, tastes, and desires. From the frenzy of aesthetic surgery trends to the instantaneous viral success of products, from the commodification of reality to the proliferation of memes, we have become subjects of a culture where everything is recontextualized, reshaped, and hyper-real. Our daily lives and social habits are shaped by the algorithm we constantly labor to. The lines between the real and the simulated blur further, as Baudrillard whispers from the early days of the internet, "We live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning." (Baudrillard 1994:79). Here, meaning becomes a construct of virtuality, a mere image or simulation of the real. As our perception of reality becomes distorted in an AI-mediated fashion, whose pace of progress is beyond our perception of the pace of living, the human condition and social order are caught in a tension between the expectations of a world driven by accelerating technological advancements and the limitations of societies struggling to keep up. The contemporary condition whispers to us to either try and stay relevant or stay out of the picture. But even then, salvation is not guaranteed. In fact, nothing is guaranteed except the increasing quest for the relentless advance of an unchecked, accelerationist future. 

This paper examines how the implications of contemporary accelerationist discourses of progress imply biopower and commodification of the subject by analyzing the longevity industry and public figures such as Bryan Johnson and viral self-optimization trends online. Through a critical analysis of the longevity industry, the paper aims to critically engage with the societal repercussions of accelerationist ideas.

[raffaellopalandri]

The Manufactured Self: Identity, Agency, and Resistance in the Age of Algorithmic Governance

In an age where algorithms curate our desires, where every choice is subtly nudged by invisible hands, and where visibility is mistaken for truth, the notion of a stable, autonomous self is under siege. Photo by Ariel Prajatama on Pexels.com We inhabit a capitalistic world that celebrates a fake individuality while simultaneously constructing, regulating, and exploiting that individuality…

[sociologyoffashion]

This week, our class benefitted from a guest lecture from Instagram sewing influencer, @pinkmimosabyjacinta, which really put the readings on the datafication of influencer work in context. Jacinta made clear how she balances her time online with her real day job due to the fact that she largely treats influencing as a hobby rather than as a way to make money. The readings opened up a vigorous class discussion later in the week, wherein we analyzed some examples of fashion influencers and bloggers. Students noted a number of ways beyond social media in which our lives are quantified and made into data. It is my hope this sets students up for some thoughtful engagement with our second documentary film of the semester next week.

- Dr. Buggs

[libraryben]

The first book to draw a direct line between the datafication and prediction techniques of past eugenicists and today's often violent and extractive "big data" regimes. Predatory Data illuminates the throughline between the nineteenth century's anti-immigration and eugenics movements and our sprawling systems of techno-surveillance and algorithmic discrimination. With this book, Anita Say Chan offers a historical, globally multisited analysis of the relations of dispossession, misrecognition, and segregation expanded by dominant knowledge institutions in the Age of Big Data. While technological advancement has a tendency to feel inevitable, it always has a history, including efforts to chart a path for alternative futures and the important parallel story of defiant refusal and liberatory activism. Chan explores how more than a century ago, feminist, immigrant, and other minoritized actors refused dominant institutional research norms and worked to develop alternative data practices whose methods and traditions continue to reverberate through global justice-based data initiatives today. Looking to the past to shape our future, this book charts a path for an alternative historical consciousness grounded in the pursuit of global justice.

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.

[innovabilita]

Rischi e Opportunità della Datafication

sai che fai parte della #datafication ?

Avete mai provato a chiedere a Chat-GPt-4: che fine fanno i nostri dati? Siamo entrati nel web2 senza una grande consapevolezza degli utenti di internet in una infosfera in cui generiamo una quantità enorme di dati. Non solo quando navighiamo su Internet o usiamo i social, ma anche nelle azioni più normali della nostra vita quotidiana: quando ordiniamo un film su Netflix, quando utilizziamo la…

[librarianrafia]

"It is easy to take for granted the value of data. It has come to seem self-evidently useful, as necessary and natural as water. It doesn’t even matter what has been measured and datafied; data in the abstract, as an idea, is taken to be a good thing, and of course there should be more of it, to enrich our knowledge of the world and to make anything that is “data-driven” work better. If data is being collected but not leveraged, why bother? Why have an archive of implosion images if not to simulate any implosion image imaginable?

But to accept that at face value would be to neglect the vast infrastructure involved not merely in collecting it and making it useful and tradable, but also establishing its reputation for objectivity. Measurement is an ideology; among its central tenets is that there is no such thing as datafication but just data itself, naturally given by the things in themselves. It presents itself as a form of representation that transcends representation: Data is no longer about the world but is instead taken to be the world itself, as though materiality were a matter not of atoms but of information. The image of an implosion is an implosion.

Likewise, this ideology would persuade us to ignore the market for data, which shapes what is measured and how, and have us believe it is more like a natural resource, a found material waiting for refinement rather than a structured informational good without any natural status at all. Implosions just happen.

Calls to measure everything and collect as much data as possible are offered as efficient strategies to better grasp the world as it is. But measurement is an act of power, not observation. Datafication always reifies an existing distribution of power that grants the measurers the ability to decide which aspects of the world count and which ones don’t. Having measurements taken as objective — having representations be treated as realities — requires power and recurrent processes of legitimation."

...

Restating that in the terms outlined above, an archive recognizes the power relations intrinsic to measurement (and representation in general) whereas a dataset suppresses them (helping entrench the power relations that underwrite the data it assembles). An archive attempts to retain how and why representations were made, and a dataset disregards all that to allow representations to masquerade as universal facts. When representations become data, they reinforce the utility of the infrastructures (algorithmic decision-making systems, AI models, etc.) developed to exploit them. And that infrastructure in turn reinforces the power relations authorizing the data.

[bccunited]

Datafication helps businesses unleash the true power of data and improves your business’ ability to predict strengths, weaknesses, potential, possibilities and outcomes accurately.

For More Visit: https://www.bccunited.com/software/data-analytics-services/

[purple-slate]

Datafication — The Future Tense of Data Analytics

La Casa de Papel — Does it ring a bell? Are you familiar with this word? But it is surely in the top 5 of your favorite web series. What? Yes, you may not know the OG Spanish version, but you are a big fan of its English version, Money Heist!

The Spanish version was not a blockbuster. But Netflix translated the show not just into English but also into other languages. The first two seasons went on to become one of the most-watched web series without any promotion or advertisements.

It happened because of recommendation systems that have sophisticated algorithms with the proper tags and classification and user personalization, backed up by data science and machine learning. It is a classic example of datafication.

What is Datafication?

What is datafication — Is that even an acceptable English word? Before, it wasn’t, but it is today.

Datafication refers to the collective tools, technologies, and processes used to transform an organization into a data-driven enterprise. An organizational trend of defining the key to core business operations through a global reliance on data and its related infrastructure.

The crux is, “Datafication” is the process of turning everything into data. It is the act of taking something that was once unquantifiable and turning it into quantitative data.

Datafication enables the transformation of business operations, behaviors, and actions, in addition to those of its clients and consumers, into quantifiable, usable, and actionable data. This information can then be tracked, processed, monitored, analyzed, and utilized to improve an organization and the products and services it offers to customers. To put them into perspective.

Google transforms our searches into data

Facebook transforms our friendships into data

LinkedIn transforms our professional life into data

Netflix or Amazon Prime transforms our watched TV shows and films into data

Tinder transforms our dating activities into data

Amazon transforms our shopping into data

Data either personal or commercial are used to monitor every activity within its reach. Massive datasets are stored that get updated daily by the above tech giants for datafication. Collected data is then used for personalization in the form of ads, push notifications, consumable content, and more within each tech app or platform. This level of interference is usually regulated by the law.

The Datafication of Business

Data has now become a commodity. The currency is data. To produce it, tech companies bring together platform users who create data.

Datafication is a far broader activity, taking all aspects of life and turning them into data format. Once we datafy things, we can transform their purpose and turn the information into new forms of value — Big Data article (2013) by Mayer-Schoenberger and Cukier

Manufacturing and Supply chains

It simplifies the formation of short supply chains, creating micro supply chain business processes condensed through low-cost technologies such as mobile phones.

Real estate

It has made it possible for companies to gain in-depth insights into different locations, which in turn provides a better understanding to business leaders on where is the best place to locate their business.

FinOps

Managing financial activities across an organization is known as financial operations management (FinOps). Datafication is crucial because it enables the analysis and integration of data that was previously isolated in many systems. For example, datafication strives to bring together Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable systems together to get a single view.

Human resources

Employers can identify potential employees and their unique traits, such as their risk-taking profiles and personalities, using mobile phones, apps, and social network data. Instead of depending on obsolete personality assessments or tests that gauge analytical thinking, it will replace existing exam providers.

Customer relationship management

Many businesses are using datafication to better understand their customers and develop applicable triggers based on their personalities and habits. This information is derived from the vocabulary and tone used in emails, phone calls, and social media.

AIOps

The phrase “AI-as-a-service” (AIOps) is used to describe how AI tools are employed in businesses. Another advanced technology that applies datafication to its domain is this one. Datafication combines a variety of AI tools and is cloud-based to deliver real-time data, insights, and measurements on nearly everything. You can use a web browser or a mobile device to access it.

Benefits of Datafication

Datafication offers enormous opportunities for improving business processes, making it a strategy that is financially advantageous to implement. Datafication is a new developing approach as well as a methodology for building a secure and innovative framework for the future of data analytics.

1. Actionable Insights

Datafication converts unstructured, incomprehensible data into usable insights, allowing you to get insight into your processes and procedures — the basis of any organization.

What do you do well? What needs to be improved? Conversely, what is working well but may be improved? Datafication implies that you will be more capable of understanding your company’s strengths, limitations, potential, and prospects. Also, it provides you with insight into the outcomes and ramifications of your projects, enabling you to assess what you’re doing and how you’re doing it.

2. Digital Transformation

Digital transformation services is no longer a fleeting fad; it is becoming increasingly crucial for all businesses that want to stay up-to-date and pertinent in an ever-changing ecosystem.

To take advantage of the latest and most cutting-edge technologies you should have usable data. It is the ticket to improving business processes and efficiency. It will help you to understand where the organization stands and the required next steps to move forward.

3. Improve Productivity and Efficiency

Datafication will comprehend what you’re doing and how you’re doing it better. Streamlining operations will make better use of all available resources, including employees, to boost overall production and efficiency and, as a result, transform your business into a successful enterprise.

4. Manage Information

Any business is generating a large amount of data and it is being collected and stored every day. If the data is managed well, it shall be providing better results. Otherwise, it can be overwhelming or can become unused data.

Datafication guarantees that you organize it appropriately, allowing you to properly use data to make decisions. You will not only be able to store data but also access and interpret it. Many businesses are experimenting with integrating user-sourced data and incorporating it into apps to contextualize the customer experience.

Conclusion

We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re thinking about — Erik Schmidt

The concept of datafication may be scary, but properly handled datasets with proper law regulations, security measures, and professional ethics could bring companies to provide customer-friendly and personalized services with the data collected. As datafication becomes more common it is driving innovation, breakthroughs, and betterment for the greater good.

One of the core elements to achieving datafication is by democratizing data access. Ensuring the last line of employees is empowered to access insights can build a data-driven culture that can act as a precursor for setting organizations on the path to datafication. Which brings us to the question, how does one democratize data access?

The shortest answer will be to break the technical barriers surrounding it by introducing language as an interface between data and the user. Or simply engaging in meaningful conversations with data.

Is it possible? With the advancements that have happened around NLP, it’s very much possible. Listen to our webinar on how business intelligence can be reimagined using Conversational AI.

This post was originally published in: https://www.purpleslate.com/datafication-the-future-tense-of-data-analytics/

[subhajyotimondal]

The Transformative Power of Datafication in Healthcare

In recent years, the healthcare sector has undergone a revolutionary transformation through datafication — the conversion of diverse healthcare elements into digital data. This shift to a data-driven healthcare ecosystem is reshaping the landscape, enhancing decision-making, personalizing treatments, and improving patient outcomes. In this article, we delve into the significance of datafication in health, its transformative effects, and the benefits it brings to both patients and the industry.

The Rise of Datafication in Health

Healthcare, inherently data-rich, historically grappled with analog and paper-based formats, impeding effective analysis. The digital revolution introduced electronic health records (EHRs) and digital systems, enabling the structured collection, storage, and analysis of health data.

Transforming Health Data into Actionable Insights

Datafication empowers healthcare providers to convert raw health data into actionable insights using advanced analytics and machine learning algorithms. This enables evidence-based decision-making, influencing treatment plans, operational efficiencies, resource allocation, and public health strategies.

Personalized Medicine and Treatment

Datafication facilitates personalized medicine by analyzing individual patient data, tailoring treatment plans based on genetic makeup, lifestyle, and medical history. This approach enhances treatment effectiveness while minimizing side effects.

Predictive Analytics for Disease Prevention

Datafication, through predictive analytics, identifies potential health risks and diseases early by analyzing historical health data. This proactive intervention improves outcomes and reduces healthcare costs.

Benefits of Datafication in Health

The integration of datafication in health yields benefits across patient care, research, innovation, and resource allocation:

Enhanced Patient Care and Outcomes: Real-time monitoring through datafication enables timely interventions, resulting in better medical treatment and improved health outcomes.

Research and Innovation: The vast pool of health data supports research-driven innovations and advancements in healthcare.

Efficient Resource Allocation: Datafication aids in optimizing resource allocation, reducing costs, and increasing operational effectiveness.

The Role of Data in Healthcare

The pivotal role of data in healthcare includes informed decision-making, personalized medicine, research and innovation, healthcare operations and efficiency, healthcare policy and planning, telemedicine and remote monitoring, early disease detection and prevention, quality improvement and outcome monitoring, patient engagement and empowerment, and population health management.

Datafication is reshaping the future of healthcare by harnessing data’s power to drive informed decision-making, improve patient outcomes, and enhance operational efficiencies. As technology advances, embracing datafication becomes crucial in realizing a personalized, efficient healthcare ecosystem focused on delivering the best care possible.

[fatehbaz]

Goldstein and Mahmoudi point to what, on appearance, is a relatively new phenomenon: namely the use of digital technologies in contemporary forms of surveillance and policing, and the way in which they turn the body into the border. [...] [T]he datafication of human life becomes an industry in its own right [...] [with the concept of] “surveillance capitalism” - a system based on capturing behavioral data and using it for commercial purposes [...] [which] emerged in the early 2000s [...].

In contrast, scholarship on colonialism, slavery, and plantation capitalism enables us to understand how racial surveillance capitalism has existed since the grid cities of sixteenth-century Spanish Mexico (Mirzoeff 2020). In short, and as Simone Browne (2015, 10) has shown, “surveillance is nothing new to black folks.” [...]

[S]urveillance in the service of racial capitalism has historically aided three interconnected goals: (1) the control of movement of certain - predominantly racialized - bodies through means of identification; (2) the control of labor to increase productivity and output; and (3) the generation of knowledge about the colony and its native inhabitants in order to “maintain” the colonies [...].

---

Identification documents and practices can, like so many other surveillance technologies, be traced back to the Middle Passage [...]. [T]he movement of captives was controlled through [...] slave passes, slave patrols [...]. Similar strategies of using wanted posters and passes were put in place to control the movement of indentured white laborers from England and Ireland. [...]

Fingerprinting, for example, was developed in India because colonial officials could not tell people apart [...].

In Algeria, the French dominated the colonized population by issuing internal passports, creating internal limits on movement for certain groups, and establishing camps for landless peasants [...]. In South Africa, meanwhile, the movement of the Black population was controlled through the “pass laws”: an internal passport system designed to confine Black South Africans into Bantustans and ensure a steady supply of super-exploitable labor [...].

On the plantation itself, two forms of surveillance emerged - both with the underlying aim of increasing productivity and output. One was in the form of daily notetaking by plantation and slave owners. [...] Second, [...] a combination of surveillance, accounting, and violence was used to make slave labor in the cotton fields more “efficient.” [...] [S]imilar logics of quotas and surveillance still reverberate in today's labor management systems. Finally, surveillance was also essential to the management of the colonies. It occurred through [...] practices like fingerprinting and the passport [...]. [P]hotographs were used after colonial rebellions, in 1857 in India and in 1865 in Jamaica, to better identify the local population and identify “racial types.” To control different Indian communities deemed criminal and vagrant, the British instituted a system of registration where [...] [particular people] were not allowed to sleep away from their villages without prior permission [...].

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In sum, when thinking about so-called surveillance capitalism today, it is essential to recognize that the logics that underpin these technologies are not new, but were developed and tested in the management of racialized minorities during the colonial era with a similar end goal, namely to control, order, and undermine the poor, colonized, enslaved, and indentured; to create a vulnerable and super-exploitable workforce; and to increase efficiency in production and foster accumulation. Consequently, while the (digital) technologies used for surveillance might have changed, the logics underpinning them have not.

---

All text above by: Sabrina Axster and Ida Danewid. In a section from an article co-authored by Sabrina Axster, Ida Danewid, Asher Goldstein, Matt Mahmoudi, Cemal Burak Tansel, and Lauren Wilcox. "Colonial Lives of the Carceral Archipelago: Rethinking the Neoliberal Security State". International Political Sociology Volume 15, Issue 3, September 2021, pages 415-439. Published June 2021. At: doi dot org slash 10.1093/ips/olabo013. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Presented here for commentary, teaching, criticism purposes.]

[yesornopolls]

people who have done voice training of the transgender variety: Did you use spectrograms, pitch monitors, or other "voice datafication" tools?

[azspot]

Not only are ads visually intrusive and out of place on a government site, they also increase tracking of site users. Web users are surveilled by corporations across the internet, and our data compiled to create targeted ad profiles; it appears these ads are served by Google, one of the worst offenders for monetizing user data. Online advertising funds monopoly powers like Google that are damaging to the online ecosystem. It’s aggravating that government would contribute to the datafication and invasion of privacy of its citizens by putting advertising on its website. Normally, I can choose to leave a website if it serves ads; as a citizen trying to access government services, I cannot.

Email to King County re: advertising on its website

[pilgrimattinkercreek1974]

really painful irony of within the span of a few days going to a talk on datafication + the ceaseless drive to convert the world of objects and spaces into knowledge that can inform mechanisms of capital as an ecological crisis & also receiving a literal "gofundme wrapped" email statistically detailing My Year In Donations . thats fucked !

[ineffable-opinions]

BL Commercialization

I am not the biggest fan of commercialization of BL.

BL spread across the globe not through commercial channels but through labor of love. It grew on the backs of creators and audience who spend their efforts and affection for the genre, fought and accompanied each other. There is a sort of sisterhood, a sort of fraternity that can’t be assigned a monetary value. It was popularized by readers and audience who loved it and wanted to share that love. It was shared with a sense of competition, indoctrination and infighting. It grew out of love, desire, lust, rage, jealousy and appreciation.

BL mangas and novels from Japan reached across the globe through piracy and fan-translations.

Where BL reached, new BL formed.

Forum engagements. Check out the BL I wrote. Here’s a BL I liked. Look at this crap an author wrote. That b!tch plagiarized. She wrote it first. So many people wrote the same thing, it is a cliché now. You can’t write like that. Who are you to say that? That main character is so flat-chested. If you want to write female protagonist, go to straight romance section. Wife! Please complete this story, I’m dy!ng to read. Where are the H scenes?

It involved fans drawing fan art. Thriving under attention. Wilting under bullying.

It involved male BL lovers – queer or otherwise – voicing BL audio drama adaptations and fan-dubs for free. BL lovers asking them to moan sweetly, to pant harshly and to act cute.

It involved creators like Chai Jidan who produced a super low-budget adaptation of her novel Addicted and send the State scrambling when BL became the talk of the town.

Now companies can swoop in and reap the dividends of years of unpaid, hard, emotional work done by innumerable rotten people, acquire intellectual property born out of the universe of BL and pay no respect to what came before them.

Moreover, now international audience can fly down and rubbish BL traditions, deem them anti-queer and anti-feminist. And influence how BL is produced. Wipe out the spaces local BL fans created for themselves. Without ever wondering what purpose did the so called ‘anti-queer and anti-feminist’ tropes and themes serves. Why were they made? (Other than the premature assessment that Asian BL audience and creators are heterosexists and misogynists and need rescuing and education from international, mainly western audience.) How do they interact and intersect with local non-BL queer content? All the while enjoying the soft boy aesthetics and elaborate queer narratives their pro-feminist, pro-queer western nations are not making enough of. And production houses and creators have to bow down to their definition of right queer representation.

So, I am not the biggest fan of commercialization of BL where interactions are skewed neo-colonially.

[Update]

Ambivalent affective labor: The datafication of qing and danmei writers in the cultural industry

Liang Ge

[septemberfruits]

I didn't study all of spring break, which is my right as a student, but it's back to the grind.

"Every time it feels like society has reached peak appification - in which our "everyday activities and routines are being expressed through, carried out by, and experienced as apps" - another fact of users' lives is identified and targeted for datafication,"

-Chsiolm and Hartman-Caverly. "Privacy Literacy: From Doomscrolling to Digital Wellness."

[art1sticd3cay]

I don’t want to write an essay on datafication!! I want to play and have fun and frolic in fields!!!!!