Uncertain Archives Uncertain Archives Critical Keywords for Big Data Edited by Nanna Bonde Thylstrup, Daniela Agostinho, Annie Ring, Catherine D’Ignazio, and Kristin Veel The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England © 2021 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher This book was set in ITC Stone Serif Std and ITC Stone Sans Std by New Best-set Typesetters Ltd Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Thylstrup, Nanna Bonde, editor Title: Uncertain archives : critical keywords for big data / edited by Nanna Bonde Thylstrup, Daniela Agostinho, Annie Ring, Catherine D’Ignazio, and Kristin Veel Description: Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, [2020] | Includes bibliographical references and index Identifiers: LCCN 2020004704 | ISBN 9780262539883 (paperback) Subjects: LCSH: Big data—Social aspects | Archival resources—Management | Uncertainty (Information theory) Classification: LCC CD931 U53 2020 | DDC 027—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020004704 10 d_r0 Contents Acknowledgments Big Data as Uncertain Archives Nanna Bonde Thylstrup, Daniela Agostinho, Annie Ring, Catherine D’Ignazio, and Kristin Veel 1 Abuse Sarah T Roberts 2 Affect Marika Cifor 3 Aggregation Sune Lehmann 4 Algorithmic Racism Alana Lentin 5 Bots Aristea Fotopoulou and Tanya Kant 6 Care Daniela Agostinho 7 Complicity Annie Ring 8 Conversational Agents Ulrik Ekman 9 Cooling Nicole Starosielski 10 Copynorms Minh-Ha T Pham 11 Database Tahani Nadim 12 Demo Orit Halpern 13 Detox Pepita Hesselberth 14 Digital Assistants Miriam E Sweeney 15 Digital Humanities Roopika Risam 16 DNA Mél Hogan 17 Drone Lila Lee-Morrison 18 Error Nanna Bonde Thylstrup 19 Ethics Louise Amoore 20 Executing Critical Software Thing: David Gauthier, Audrey Samson, Eric Snodgrass, Winnie Soon, and Magdalena Tyżlik-Carver 21 Expertise Caroline Bassett 22 Field Shannon Mattern 23 Figura Frederik Tygstrup 24 File Craig Robertson 25 Flesh Romi Ron Morrison 26 Glitch Rebecca Schneider 27 Hashtag Archiving Tara L Conley 28 Hauntology Lisa Blackman 29 Instrumentality Luciana Parisi 30 Interface Christian Ulrik Andersen and Søren Bro Pold 31 Intersectionality Brooklyne Gipson, Frances Corry, and Safiya Umoja Noble 32 Latency Kristin Veel 33 Metadata Amelia Acker 34 Migrationmapping Sumita S Chakravarty 35 (Mis)gendering Os Keyes 36 Misreading Lisa Gitelman 37 Natural Mimi Onuoha 38 Obfuscation Mushon Zer-Aviv 39 Organization Timon Beyes 40 Outlier Catherine D’Ignazio 41 Performative Measure Kate Elswit 42 Pornography Patrick Keilty 43 Prediction Manu Luksch 44 Proxies Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Boaz Levin, and Vera Tollmann 45 Quantification Jacqueline Wernimont 46 Remains Tonia Sutherland 47 Reparative Katrine Dirckinck-Holmfeld 48 Self-Tracking Natasha Dow Schüll 49 Shifters Celia Lury 50 Sorting David Lyon 51 Stand-In Olga Goriunova 52 Supply Chain Miriam Posner 53 Technoheritage Nora Al-Badri 54 Throbber Kristoffer Ørum 55 Time.now Geoff Cox and Jacob Lund 56 Unpredictability Elena Esposito 57 Unthought N Katherine Hayles 58 Values John S Seberger and Geoffrey C Bowker 59 Visualization Johanna Drucker 60 Vulnerability Birkan Taş 61 Word Daniel Rosenberg Contributors Index Protestant Christianity, 439–440 Protest movements, 201–202, 203, 274–275, 470–471 Prototyping, 133 Providence (Rhode Island), 410 Proxies, 14, 228, 305, 362, 390, 419–424 Public Knowledge Workshop (Israel), 360 Puig de al Bellacasa, María, 569–570 Pulse, 393 Punch cards, 241 Punzalan, Ricardo, 273, 276, 306 Puppet states, 420 Pynchon, Thomas, Bleeding Edge, 109–110 Quantification, 18, 20, 398, 401, 427–431, 460, 461 See also Self-tracking Quantified Self (QS), 459–465, 481 Quantum mediations, 429 Queer aggregations, 280, 285 Queer OS, 196 Queer theories, 9, 196 Queries, 211–213 Questlove, 115 Quintanilla, Sylvia Fernández, 166 Raagan, Ronald, 134 Race, 57, 62, 128, 250–251 See also Blackness; Digital assistants; Whiteness Racial discrimination, 58, 195, 286, 306–307, 309, 310, 479 See also Redlining criminal sentencing, 252 Racial justice, 81, 309 Racial passing, 59 Racial profiling, 58 Racial stereotypes, 115–116, 120–122 Racism, 17, 18, 57, 58, 75, 76–77, 89, 90, 138, 163, 165, 213, 252–253, 306, 308, 309, 440 See also Algorithmic bias and racism; Colonialism; Slavery; White supremacism cultural and institutional, 195–196 misogynist, 222 stand-ins and, 487–488 surveillance, 4, 58, 93 Twitter bot, 174 YouTube, racist content on, 59, 60–61 Racist violence, 60, 251–252, 435, 436, 439–440, 441 See also Police violence Radiation exposure, 489 Radin, Joanna, 111–112, 230 Ramdeen, Sarah, 228, 229 Rana Plaza (Dhaka), 494, 496 Randomness, 293, 295, 296–297, 544, 545 Rao, Vyjapanthi Venuturupalli, 13 Raqqa (Syria), 94 Reading machines, 349–350 Read-only memory (ROM), 350 Real objects, 251 Real time, 527–528 Reaper UAV, 179–180, 181, 182 Reardon, Jenny, 173 Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage, 166 Redlining, 58, 310, 324, 423 Refugees, 4, 323, 331 Reinhart, Martin, 403 Religious repair, 443 Remains, digital, 17, 76, 433–441 See also Digital afterlives “rights” notion of, 17, 439–441 Remembering, 439–440 Re-moval, 284–285 Renaissance, 556 Renty and Delia, daguerrotypes of, 75–77, 76 Reparation, 18, 252, 309, 443–444 Reparative algorithms, 451–452 Reparative practice, 14, 81, 82, 443–453 RescueTime, 146 Restorative justice, 10, 440 Resurrection, digital, 17, 438–439 Reuters, 120, 479 Reveal Digital, 78, 435 R gender package, 379 Rheinberger, Hans-Jorg, 280, 284 Rice, Tamir, 76 Richard, Thomas, 128 Richardson, Alan, 541 Ride, Sally, 175 Right-wing propaganda See Far right Rijksmuseum, 502 Ring, Annie, 2, 5, 6, 21 Risam, Roopika, 17 Risk modeling, bias in, 252–253 Roberts, Dorothy, 250–251 Roberts, Sarah T., 18–19, 90 Robertson, Craig, 18 Robertson, Roland, 13 Robots, 65–66, 136, 174, 222, 499, 508, 515, 516 See also Bots; Digital assistants; Drone warfare; Social robots “Rogue archives,” 34 Roman Empire, 271 Romero, Verónica, 166 Roof, Dylann, 60 Rorschach inkblot, 461 Rosa, Jonathan, 274, 275 Rosenberg, Daniel, 15 Rosenstein, Justin, 146–147 Rosol, Christoph, 421 Royal Danish Library, 80 Ruby (programming language), 523 Ruby Gem, 379 Ruge, Eugen, In Times of Fading Light, 337 Runia, Eelco, 315 Russell, Legacy, 263–264 Russia, 12, 337 Russo, Mary, 195 Ryan, Vanessa L., 541 Said, Edward, 162, 507 St Croix (US Virgin Islands), 449 Samsung, 494 Sanford (Florida), 435 San Francisco Bay Area (California), 458 Sangwand, T-Kay, 306 Santa Fe Indian Industrial School, 167 SAP SCM, 496 Satellite data, 129, 130 (n1), 228, 337 Saussure, Ferdinand de, 579, 581 ScanOps, 490 ScareMail, 365 Schalansky, Judith, Atlas of Remote Islands, 336 Schiphorst, Thecla, 393 Schmidthuber, Jürgen, 503 Schneemann, Carolee, 18, 196, 263, 264–265, 266, 267 Fuses, 260, 261 Interior Scroll, 260–261, 262, 264 More Wrong Things, 259–260, 260, 262, 264, 265, 266 Schneider, Rebecca, 9, 18, 196, 553 Schor, Naomi, 265 Schüll, Natasha Dow, 20, 93, 390 Schulten, Susan, Mapping the Nation, 335–336 Science and technology studies, 68, 220, 221, 222, 223, 280, 380, 444, 569 Scientific gatekeeping, 286 Scientific Revolution, 404, 487 SciNet High Performance Computing consortium, 111 Scott, Robert, 416 Scourti, Erica, 302 Seager, Joni, 378 Search engines, 70, 89, 117, 143, 292 misrepresentation of marginalized groups, 195 profiling, 361 “right to be forgotten,” 441 Seberger, John, 14 Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, 443, 444, 445–446, 451 SEEK installation (Jewish Museum, NY), 136–138, 139 Selbst, Andrew, 479 Self-driving cars, 174, 192 Self-fulfilling prophecies, 411 Self-tracking, 20, 70, 390, 428, 457–465, 477, 480, 481 Sentiment analysis, 42 Sentinels, 129 Sepkoski, David, 228 Sequencing technologies, 126, 127 Serbia, 429 Sex discrimination, 61, 175, 286, 306 See also Gender discrimination Sexist trolling, 89 Sexual abuse See Child sexual exploitation Sexual orientation, 380, 382 Sexual violence, 20, 274 Shakespearean sonnets, 172 Shakur, Tupac, 438–439, 441 Shared heritage, 500 Sharma, Sanjay, 59 Sharma, Sarah, 91, 92 Shaw, Ian, 183 Shenzhen, 126 Shifters, 15, 469–474 Shipman, Seth, 171 “Shirley cards,” 488 Shulgin, Alexei, 259 ShutApp, 146 Signature strikes (drone warfare), 186–187 Signifying monkey, 275–276 Silicon Valley, 31, 350, 414, 416, 461, 487 refuseniks, 141, 142, 146 Silva, Denise da, 249, 250, 251 Simanowski, Roberto, 92 SIM cards, 490 Simondon, Gilbert, 503, 547 Simpson’s paradox, 49–51 Sina Weibo, 212 Siri (digital assistant), 65, 67–68, 69, 70, 99, 103, 151–152, 156, 214, 583 aesthetic code, 155 gender and race, 154, 155 name, meanings of, 153–154 Skarda, Christine, 544 Skloot, Rebecca, 437 SkyDrive, 32 Skynet, 406 Slave Biographies (Atlantic Database Network project), 434 Slavery, 57, 60, 75, 254, 355 archives of, 10, 75–76, 78, 441 records of trauma, 434–435 reparative practices and, 444–452 “right to be forgotten,” 441 cartography of, 335–336 child slaves, 494 funerary traditions, 439–440 Sluis, Katrina, 490 Smart cities, 99, 406, 408, 412 Smart homes, 99, 110, 152 Smart infrastructures, 134, 406 Smith, Gavin, 458 Smith, Hezekiah, 447, 447–448, 449, 451 Smith, Paul Verity, 393 Smithsonian Institute (Washington, DC), 137 Smoking ban, 147 Snoop Dogg, 438 Snowden, Edward, 1, 87, 93, 360, 477 Sobchack, Vivian, 282 Social justice, 3, 10, 19, 20, 29, 77, 78–79, 81, 309, 443, 481 digital humanities, 164 drone warfare, and, 185 hashtag archiving, 273, 276 Social listening, 42 Social media, 12, 20, 42, 116, 380 See also Data mining; Hashtags child sexual exploitation imagery, 31–34 content moderation, 29–31; see also PhotoDNA copynorms and; see Fashion copynorms far-Right propaganda, 90 Social networking, 40, 42, 135, 380, 382 Social robots, 65–72 See also Digital assistants decision-making capacities, 69, 70 partner robots, 66 Social sorting See Sorting Society of American Archivists, 231 “Society of control.” See Detox Socrates, 263 Soda straw capture, 185 Softimage, 393 Software Information Technology: Its New Meaning for Art (Jewish Museum, NY, 1970), 134–137, 139– 140 Software Studies: A Lexicon, 13 Søgaard, Anders, Soldier, Layli Long, Whereas, 449 Sorting, 18–19, 477–482 algorithims, 479–480 South Asian American Digital Archive, 309 South Carolina church killings (2015), 60 Southeast Asia, 334–335 Southern Poverty Law Center, 60 Spade, Dean, 342 Spartacus (film), 359, 362 Speculation Now, 13 Speculative archives, 281 Speech recognition See Deep-learning speech recognition systems Spillers, Hortense, 251, 254 Spirit of uncertainty, 11 Spotify, 93, 303, 324 Spyware, 89 SQL, 211, 214 Standard Classification for Software Anomalies, 193 Standardization processes, 18 Stand-ins, 18, 485–491 Stanfill, Mel, 153 Star, Leigh, 321–322 Starks, Denny, 383 Starosielski, Nicole, 16 Stasi, 88 Stateful data, 342 Stateless data, violence of, 343–344 Statistics, 11, 54, 103, 104, 106, 191, 335, 380, 383, 420, 520, 535, 536, 554 aggregation, 283 calculated average, 485 outliers, 377 stand-ins, 489, 491 Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitaion Center (Rhode Island), 410 Steyeri, Hito, 91 Stiegler, Bernard, 146, 147 Stop lists, 579–582 Stowaway, 314–315 Strike Tracker, 94 Supercomputers, 174, 175 Supernudge, 219 Supply chain, 15, 35, 493–497 Supply Chain Cockpit, 496 Supply chain management (SCM), 495, 496 Surveillance, 15, 58, 89–90, 119, 480–481 See also Dataveillance as social sorting, 477, 478–480 Surveillance assets, 374 Surveillance capitalism, 370, 374, 375, 406, 482 Sutherland, Tonia, 17, 76 Svalbard Global Seed Vault, 110–111 Sweeney, Miriam E., 18 Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, 130 Sworn virgins, 378 Synthetic biology, 171 Syria, 5, 90, 94 Taş, Birkan, 19 Tactical Technology Collective (Berlin), 142–145, 146, 147 TallBear, Kim, 173 Tamaki Paenga Hira War Memorial Museum (Auckland), 507 Tansey, Eira, 229, 230, 231 Target’s “pregnancy prediction” score, 419 Tarrant, Brenton, 60 Tay (robot), 222 Taylor, Charles, 127–128 Taylor, Diana, Taylor, Frederick, 242 Taylor, Linnet, 308–309 Technochauvinist, 308 Technoheritage, 17, 499–510 Technoscience Research Unit, 22 (n2) “Teen Girl” AI, 174 Telluride Film Festival (1977), 260 Temperature regulation See Cooling Temporality, 16–17, 446–447, 523–529 Tenney, James, 261 “Terrorism” content, 35 Thailand, 119 The Aids Memorial See Aids Memorial, The (TAM) Thematic flows and constellations, 14–21 Theory, Culture and Society, 13 Thermal problems, 110 Thom, René, 561 Threat streams, 201 3G mobile services, 397 Thrill Laboratory, 393 Throbber, 15, 513–521 Thylstrup, Nanna Bonde, Time.now, 523–529 Tinder, 174 Tiqqun olam, 443 Todd, Sarah, 332 Tode, Thomas, 403 Tollmann, Vera, 14 TOR, 361, 362, 420 “Total archive,” 128 Total information awareness, 129 Toxicity, 141, 146, 147 See also Detox Toxikon See Pharmakon Tracker cookies, 89 TrackMeNot, 361, 362 Transatlantic studies, Transfeminism, 378 Transformative scholarship, 164 #transformDH, 164–165 Transgender people, 5, 18, 174, 195, 340, 378, 379, 381, 383 discrimination, 380 misgendering, 341–345 Transgender Studies Quarterly, 13 Transmedial storytelling, 285–286 Transparency, 19, 29, 116, 152, 264–265, 362, 416, 495 Transphobia, 5, 341 Trauma, records of, 20, 76, 80, 435–436, 440 Traumatizing content, 90, 274 Trinidad, 449 Troop Train (film), 495, 496 Trump, Donald, 12, 59, 61, 87, 415 Truth, 7, 138, 191, 218, 219, 285, 292, 295, 297, 427, 460, 499, 543, 570 See also Posttruth end of, 293 ideological “truths,” 151, 153 Kant on, 362 Truth-telling, 203, 279, 429, 444 Tsing, Anna, 494 Turing, Alan, 65–66, 68, 70, 209–210, 294, 295, 296, 349 Turing tests, 138 Turner, Bryan, 13 Tuszynski, Marek, 143 Twain, Mark, 231 Twin Towers (New York), 259 Twitter, 52, 59, 115, 201, 206 (n5), 212, 283, 379, 382, 436, 583 See also Black Twitter; Hashtags; Shifters feminist discourse, 272–273 gendered communication patterns, 382 photoDNA, use of, 32 Twitter bot, 174 Twitter Meltdown, 174 Two-spirit people, 378 Tygstrup, Frederik, 15 Tynes, Brendesha, 306 UAVs See Drone warfare Uber, 497 Ubik, 406 UGC (user-generated content) adjudication of, 29–35; see also PhotoDNA child sexual exploitation imagery, 31–33 Uncertain Archives research group, 2–3, 12–13 Uncertainty, 2–3, 9, 13, 254–255, 291, 292–293 algorithmic, 496–497 contemporary condition, as, 11–12 copynorms and, 119–120 embracing, 231–232 Uncertainty (cont.) hashtag archiving and, 272–273 interface, 300–301 latent, 315–316 open future, and, 533–535 social robots, 65, 66–67, 70 statistics, 103–106 tactical, 494–495 temporality of, 313–314 values, of, 551–552 Underfitting, 537 Undocumented immigrants (subject heading), 323 UNESCO, 508 Unfit-Bits, 367 United Fronteras, 166 United Kingdom, 380, 398, 406, 471 See also Brexit delisted content, 441 United States, 60, 61, 117, 120, 126, 156, 201, 202, 227, 305, 310, 325, 380, 381, 398, 437, 440, 449, 459, 470, 479, 487, 495, 564 See also Black Americans; Library of Congress; National Institutes of Health; Native Americans 9/11 attacks, 342, 470–471 census system, 429, 430 Citizenship and Immigration Services, 156–157 Current Population Survey, 430 global climate change models, 422 Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 206 militarized drones; see Drone warfare Patriot Act, 152 predictive policing, 129 presidential elections (2016), 12, 206; see also Trump, Donald privacy, right to, 441 racism and racial violence, 60, 62, 138, 423, 441; see also Black Americans; Police violence; Slavery lynching, 435, 436, 440 “redlining,” 58, 310, 423 transgender people, 379 United States Senate, 398 Universal heritage, 500 University of Alberta, 110 University of California (Berkeley), 542, 544 University of California (Los Angeles), 39 See also Williams Institute University of Houston, 166 University of Maryland, 165 University of Toronto, 111 Unix time, 523, 524 Unlearning, 543–544 Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), 179–180 See also Drone warfare Unpredictability, 16, 174, 533–538 Unthought, 15, 316, 541–547 Urban information infrastructure See Smart cities Urban planning and design, 135, 136, 138 US Air Force, 180 User-generated content See UGC Usher, Nikki, 382 US Latinx digital humanities, 166 #usLdh, 166 US Robotics, 515, 516 US Virgin Islands See Danish West Indies UX (user experience) See Digital assistants Values, 14, 551–557 Vancouver, 115, 118 Vanity Fair, 459 Varela, Francisco, 547 Variables, 488–489 Vavarella, Emilio, The Driver and the Cameras, 490 VCR, 397 Veel, Kristin, 2, 14, 16–17 Veiled masculinity, Velkova, Julia, 111 Venn, Couze, 13 Ventura, Gabriela Baeza, 166 Vergốs, Franỗoise, 445, 451 Versioning, 133 Vesna, Victoria, 261, 264 VHS, 397 Vidal, Fernando, 230 Vietnam, 119 Vietnam War, 180, 495 Villarroel, Carolina, 166 Violence, 5, 60, 80, 201, 251–252, 275, 381, 382, 507, 553, 563 See also Administrative violence; Colonialism; Drone warfare; Police violence; Racist violence; Sexual violence; Slavery algorithmic, 249–250, 255 banality of, 266 gun sales and shooting deaths, 564–565 trauma; see Trauma, records of Violent patriarchive, 6–7 Virtual agents See Digital assistants Vismann, Cornelia, 241 Visualization, 15, 279, 281, 282, 286, 317, 458, 461, 503, 561–568 tools and platforms, 561–562 Visvanathan, Shiv, 13 Voice-activated controls, 99, 152 Voice recognition technologies, 69, 99, 152 Vondereau, Patrick, 109 Von Neumann, John, 296 Vulnerabilities, 11, 19, 37, 43, 448, 477, 478, 480, 481, 569–576 See also Disability Wallace-Wells, David, 227, 230 Wallen, Anne, 333, 336–337 Walmart, 494 War, 90–91 See also Drone warfare War on terror, 181 Warren, Kellee E., 8, 82 Warumungu Aboriginal community (Australia), 167 Waste heat, 111 Watson, James, 172 Weapons of math destruction (WMDs), 422–423 Web 2.0, 519 Web queries, 212–213 WeChat, 212 Weheliye, Alexander, 254, 267 Weiner, Eric J., 147 Weizenbaum, Joseph, 220 Weizman, Eyal, 185 Wernimont, Jacqueline, 18, 78, 165, 390 West, Sarah Myers, 29 Westworld (TV show), 110 WhatsApp, 88 Whisper(s) project, 391 White Box Gallery (New York), 259 Whitehead, Alfred North, 547, 554 Whiteness, 20, 76, 154, 441 White supremacism, 59–61, 59–61, 62, 78, 309, 435–436 WibiData, 413 Wide Area Airborne Surveillance (WAAS), 186 Wiener, Norbert, 202–203 Wikipedia, 217, 500 Wilk, James, 502 Williams, Raymond, Keywords, 13 Williams Institute (University of California), 379, 381, 382 Wilson, Andrew Norman, 490 Wind farm technology, 94 Winner, Reality, Winton Capital, 406 Wired, 459 Withdrawal imaginaries, 21 Withey, 167 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 205 Wolf, Gary, 459, 461 Wolfe, Cary, 547 Women, 4, 7, 18 See also Black women; Feminist theory Wood, Denis, 333 Wood, Stacy, Word, 579–583 Word stopping See Stop lists World Economic Forum (Davos, 2018), 503 World Health Organization (WHO), 21 World War I, World War II, 180, 359, 495 World Weather Watch, 228 Worm genetics, 129 www.docnow.io, 273 www.hastagfeminism.org, 272 x86, 214 Xenophobia, 156 Yelp, 324 Yemen, Yom Kippur War, 180 Yong, Ed, 172 Yoshimi, Shunya, 13 Young, Harvey, 434 YouTube, 5, 90, 174, 324, 325 racist content, 59, 60–61 recommendation engine, 408 “shocking” content, incentivization of, 90 Yugoslavia, 334 Zealy, Joseph T., 75 Zer-Aviv, Mushon, 13, 16, 91, 361, 366 Zielinski, Dina, 171 Zuboff, Shoshana, 89, 374, 407, 482 Zuckerberg, Mark, 89, 414 ... Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Thylstrup, Nanna Bonde, editor Title: Uncertain archives : critical keywords for big data / edited by Nanna Bonde Thylstrup, Daniela Agostinho, Annie.. .Uncertain Archives Uncertain Archives Critical Keywords for Big Data Edited by Nanna Bonde Thylstrup, Daniela Agostinho, Annie Ring, Catherine D’Ignazio, and Kristin Veel The MIT... definitions of uncertainty and doubt in relation to certainty and truth Uncertainties in the age of big data can feel very frightening indeed For instance, there are clearly political and financial